Yesterday I wanted to get some cool shots of my kiddos (a.k.a. “precious cargo”) with my new Canon 5D Mark II and my Canon 16-35mm lens mounted on it. So at about 6:15pm I set up one flash on a stand aimed at them about 45 degrees from my left. The toughest part of the shoot was keeping Jordan still in one place, which as you can see, worked only once LOL. Anyway, I let Nate be his silly self =)
There are many ways to balance ambient light with your flash, go to Strobist.com for a wealth of information on the subject. For these photos I metered for the sky/background and let my off-camera flash at full power fill in my foreground, a.k.a. Nate & Jordan. As you can see from my exposure settings below, this will make the flash work harder though, which will lead to shorter battery life. A neutral density (ND) filter might do the trick in this scenario (thanks Noah for the power saving advice) by bringing it down a stop or two and then I can open up the aperture more. Sure you can use Adobe Photoshop in post to get the same look, but it will take up precious minutes or more of your time. For me, getting the image right in the first place is important. If you have a good image from the beginning, it can stand on its own. Any post-processing you do is just a bonus, not to cover up your mistakes.
Exposure: f/16, 1/125 sec, ISO 100. Other than resizing for the web and a touch of sharpening, these are almost straight out of the camera.
by Armin
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