Fill Flash in sunlight

[badgolfer]

Does anyone have any advise for doing fill flash while shooting in direct sunlight with SB 800 flash?

[TXhummer2]

A rather wordy link:

Four Flash Photography Basics we must know

[boostedsilvafox]

Your best bet is to shoot it in manual and zoom it to about 85mm at full power if your shooting at a time where the sun is really powerful but if the flash is zoomed you have to aim it right kinda like a grid spot. I used it with cybersyncs wirelessly like that until I got a alienbee

[Bob_S]

I like using the CLS and adjusting the flash power from the menu.

[ggeen]

I used fill-flash for a family portrait session this spring during an outdoor session. First I used TTL and turned on matrix metering. This will let the Nikon do most of the work. Where I was doing work close in, I added a Sto-Fen diffuser to keep the light from being too harsh.

This did a nice job of eliminating harsh shadows on faces.

[texxter]

Originally Posted by badgolfer

Does anyone have any advise for doing fill flash while shooting in direct sunlight with SB 800 flash?

This is tricky.

First, if you have a choice, position your subject(s) such that the sun is behind them. Of course, this may screw up your background, so let's assume it doesn't.

Now you have underexposed faces if you expose properly for the highlights. You can add flash to bring the exposure on the face in balance with the back of the subject. To do this you would normally work in M mode, set the exposure for the highlights, set the flash to high speed sync mode (FP mode) and let CLS do its thing. Ideally you'd take the flash off the camera and bounce it off an umbrella, even though you'll lose some power in doing this.

If you want a large aperture, like f/4 you'll definitely need to tell the flash to use FP mode, as you'll likely be shooting over 1/250.

[badgolfer]

Thanks everyone for the feedback.

[StevenGWebb]

If you can't beat the shutter speed back to 250th or slower, you might also look into getting a ND filter that will bring the background down to a workable level then using the flash to bring your subject exposure back. This is one way to get wider apertures, thus shallower depth-of-field during times of day when it's not otherwise possible.
Steven

[49884]

Paco nailed it. Once you've got that procedure down you can also fine tune with a little flash power compensation. I usually dial down 1/3 to 2/3 power.