Flash calendering technology for rapid photography

When it comes to flash, everyone will think of "lighting in low light environment". The following are the photography quick flash calendering skills I shared, welcome to read!

In fact, the flash can also be used in sunny and well-lit conditions, resulting in the effect of darkening the background and highlighting the main body. This is the calendering skill of the flash.

1. Basic principles

The principle of this method is simple: the "range" of flash, that is, the effective action range, is limited.

As long as there is a certain distance between the background and the subject, the flash will only illuminate the subject and objects close to the subject, and will not affect the whole environment.

It is precisely for this reason that when shooting night scenes, the flash is generally not turned on, but the exposure time is extended or ISO is improved, and the brightness of the subject and background is improved at the same time.

Flash can only illuminate people and extremely close railings.

But it is precisely because of the characteristics of the flash that we can only improve the brightness of the subject, make the subject brighter than the background, and then darken the background in disguise through exposure control.

2. Basic operation

The next step is to control the exposure. According to our different needs, there are two different operation schemes to control exposure.

The first scheme is simple and direct: aim at the subject to measure light, and then press the shutter.

Different from the real-time viewing photometry results seen on the LCD screen, after the flash is turned on, the camera's automatic exposure system will wait for the shutter to open, and then photometry will be performed after the flash works.

In this way, the subject is exposed normally and the background becomes dark. If your flash is powerful enough, you may even turn the background into all black, so as to achieve the effect of "reversing black and white".

Comparison of effects before and after calendering

The advantage of this scheme is very simple, convenient and fast, but the disadvantage is the lack of effective control of background brightness. Everything depends on the power of your flash and the brightness difference of the background.

The second operation scheme is to measure the area of the background first, then manually lower the ev (generally -2/3 to-1ev) according to the desired effect, and then shoot.

In this way, you can control the brightness of the background: whether it is completely dark, slightly dark, or just make the bright background less bright, it is up to you.

Determine the brightness of the background first, and then take pictures of people.

The essence of this scheme is to measure light first and then illuminate the subject. Then the problem is that the brightness of the subject depends entirely on the brightness of the flash. How to ensure the correct exposure of the subject?

The answer is to turn on the TTL mode of the flash.

TTL mode

The essence of this mode is to pre-flash before the official flash, and adjust the actual output power of the official flash by calculating the reflected light, so as to achieve the effect of "just exposing the subject correctly".

Sounds high-tech. In fact, this function was invented in the 1970s. Now many models will come with this model. You might as well see if your machine is available.

If your machine just doesn't have TTL mode, you must use other controllable light sources to fill the light yourself. .....