Revealing the use skills of outdoor portrait photography flash

Revealing the use skills of outdoor portrait photography flash

For ordinary portrait photographers, there may be a misunderstanding about the use of flash, thinking that flash is used for lighting, and outdoor portrait photography with strong sunshine during the day is useless. Of course, this understanding is one-sided. People who only use natural light to take pictures may not necessarily use flash, but those who can master flash well must know natural light, so the really excellent flash works are not necessarily pure flash, but the proper combination of natural light and artificial light. Although natural light has the advantages of being true and natural, it can properly express the scene atmosphere when shooting, but natural light is not perfect and cannot appear in every place where lighting is needed. Therefore, adding flash can help make up for the shortage of natural light and improve the quality of photos. When you master the technical skills of flash and integrate them into your future creation, you will find the same content and the same picture, but the work is "borrowed from the next level".

First, outdoor portrait fill light during the day-flash as fill light.

Don't think that you only need to use a flash when the light is dark. Sometimes you must use a flash to fill the light when the light is sufficient. In one case, there is a great contrast between the subject and the background when shooting against the light. If the subject is exposed, the background will inevitably be overexposed, the background will return to normal, and the subject will be underexposed. At this time, you need to fill the light with a flash.

As shown below, the shooting environment is 4: 30 in the afternoon. Although the ambient light darkens with the setting sun, the light is still bright due to the influence of backlight. This man is backlit, and his face is very black. When taking this photo, measure the environment first. The measured data is the aperture F3.5 and the shutter is 1/250. After the measurement is completed, set the camera to M, set the aperture shutter, turn on the flash, TTL mode, and reduce the output by 1.5. Finally, the finished product drawing shows that people's faces are exposed normally and the environmental atmosphere is also obtained.

Shooting parameters: Nikon D3 digital camera Nicole 85/ 1.4 lens aperture F4 shutter 1/250.

Backlight draws a circle of warm lines around girls' hair and sweaters, which is isolated from the background and highlights the main body of the characters. The front flash fills the light. When shooting a composition, pay attention to covering a part of the main body of the sun with the subject to avoid too much glare.

Shooting steps:

Generally, it is not easy to shoot portraits of sunny days, blue sky and white clouds in the backlight environment, because the light difference between the subject and the background environment is too big, and it is not easy to take into account the normal exposure of both. If the face of a portrait is used as the basis of photometry, the background will be overexposed and there will be no details. If the blue sky is used as the basis of photometry, the face of the portrait will be underexposed and even become a silhouette.

It is an effective method to fill the subject with TTL flash or automatic flash:

1. First measure the light in the background. Then switch to M mode and set the aperture and shutter values to the previous metering results (please note that the shutter must be within the synchronous shutter range of the flash).

2. Use TTL flash or automatic flash to fill the light on the subject.

note:

In backlight photography, in order to enrich the picture level and obtain good color reproduction, flash is needed to fill the light. Generally speaking, as a supplementary light, it is not necessary to apply enhanced power lighting to the flash, but attention should be paid to controlling the brightness of the flash to avoid excessive supplementary light. Generally, it can be set to about two steps equivalent to normal exposure. If you use the wide-angle end of the camera zoom lens or the viewing angle equivalent to the standard lens, setting the flash to the "zoom-out" position can prevent excessive fill light.

In the shooting of lovers' films, the backlight shooting technique is used to highlight the warm and warm emotional atmosphere of the picture. The flash is reduced to 1 output. Shooting parameters: Nikon D3 digital camera Nicole 24-70/2.8 lens aperture F3.2 shutter 1/200 seconds

Tip:

Add a soft cover to the flash lamp holder. The light of the small flash is hard, you can add a soft light cover, if not, cover it with a layer of paper towel. So the light can be softer.

Outdoor photography during the day, and in another case, we also use flash to fill the light. For example, in a cloudy environment, or in other scenes such as tree shade, the outdoor light is uniform. We use flash to fill the light for the characters, which will make the skin color of the characters smoother and brighter. In this case, we can directly measure the light, because the light is uniform. Of course, the flash must generally reduce the output by about two gears to weaken the strong light trace.

Shooting parameters: Nikon D3 digital camera Nicole 85/ 1.4 lens aperture F3.2 shutter 1/60 seconds.

As shown above: the model is lying on the leaves, the flash moves down, and the characters are bright.

Second, the outdoor portrait fills the light during the day-the flash is the main light

In outdoor portrait photography, when we use the flash as the main light of photography, the flash can dim the ambient light, the blue sky can be bluer, and the environmental layers are more distinct. The picture effects presented often have strong personality characteristics, strong texture and rich details. Using the flash as the main light for shooting, we can summarize the shooting idea in one sentence: use the aperture to control the brightness of the flash on the face and use the shutter to control the brightness of the environment.

As shown in the figure below, we first measure the environment, and the measured data are: aperture F 1 1, shutter1125. After obtaining the ambient luminosity data, we set the intensity value of the flash to F 1 1, and the shutter can be set to 1/250, which not only ensures the brightness of people, but also darkens the environment, highlighting the fashion sense of the picture. If the ambient light is still too strong, you can continue to adjust the exposure combination.

Sunlight is the backlight, and the front flash is used to supplement the light, and the intensity exceeds one level, slightly darkening the background.

Shooting parameters:

Nikon D3 digital camera Nico 24-70/2.8 lens aperture F8 shutter1125 seconds Photography skills: If you want to express blue sky and white clouds and make the sky bluer under the front light condition, you must use external light to supplement the front light and cooperate with natural light to enhance the illumination, improve the light ratio between the front light and the background and make the sky bluer. In the case of backlight,

note:

The instantaneous luminous duration of the flash lamp is very short, generally within one thousandth of a second. Therefore, camera control to control flash exposure is only related to aperture and sensitivity settings, and has nothing to do with shutter speed. As long as the shutter speed is within the flash synchronization range, no matter how it changes, as long as the aperture and sensitivity settings are unchanged, the flash exposure is the same. We can use the subject as the main light source and the environment as the light source. Select and fix the correct aperture value of the subject flash exposure, and then adjust the shutter speed during shooting. At this time, the exposure of the subject has been fixed by the aperture and has hardly changed, the brightness of the environment can be greatly dimmed, and the subject and the environment can be separated.

Tip:

The special flash for outdoor shooting can be equipped with many light effect accessories. Adding a soft mask can make the light quality very soft. With the light shield, light can be used more accurately. The color of light can be changed by inserting films of different colors. If the outdoor shooting lamp is only used as supplementary light under natural light conditions, it can directly illuminate the reflector at any required position to generate supplementary light for the main body, with more controllable space of intensity and more freely adjustable position.

Third, portrait at night.

Generally speaking, it is not advisable to use flash when shooting night scenes. A small aperture and a long exposure can show a beautiful night scene. Flash is generally used to shoot portraits at night. If you directly turn on the flash to take a portrait, the restoration of the character is normal, but the night scene behind it is very dark and cannot be restored. At this time, you need to use the slow flash function. The general night scene, the background is usually very dark. In order to make the background light and color appear, this time may be110 second or longer. As for the foreground model, because we use a flash, it actually takes only1100 seconds to complete the exposure.

As shown in the figure below, we measured the background first, and found that aperture 2 and shutter110 second can realize accurate exposure of the background. We directly manually adjust the exposure combination to aperture 2, shutter110 second, and then we choose to turn on the flash, TTL mode, and downshift between 1.5 and 2. In this way, we can see that the faint light in the background and the model's face are fully exposed, the light in the background creates a soft atmosphere, and the models are organically integrated in the background, making the whole night portrait more attractive.

Balcony shooting, setting metering data in camera M file, adjusting aperture value, darkening the background, separating people from the environment, showing the picture atmosphere. Shooting parameters: Nikon D3 digital camera Nicole 24-70/2.8 lens aperture F 13 shutter1100 second.

In this photo, in order to get the blur effect of background light, we specially choose Nikon's large aperture lens with a large aperture of 85mm F 1.4, set the aperture to 2, and use the large aperture to obtain obvious background spot effect. From the photos, we can see that the background light sets off the model's expression well, making the whole portrait at night look softer and more harmonious than the portrait during the day.

Shooting parameters: Nikon D3 digital camera Nicole 85/ 1.4 lens aperture F2 shutter115 seconds.

Shooting steps:

First, measure the environment and set the camera aperture and shutter combination. Then turn on the flash, TTL mode, and set the flash dimming on the flash. The value of this setting can be set according to the specific situation, generally around 1.5. Put the camera on the tripod. When shooting, unless shooting special effects, remind the model not to move after flashing, because for normal background exposure, the shutter time is longer,110 seconds or longer.

note:

If you don't have high-end equipment in your hand, it means that you can't use high ISO to increase the shutter speed to achieve handheld shooting. So you have to prepare a stable tripod, which is an indispensable condition for getting beautiful night portraits.

Tip:

In order to shoot a dreamy night portrait, the choice of scene is particularly important. We usually choose squares, shopping malls, pedestrian streets and other places with rich neon lights, street lamps and car lights to make photos have such an effect.

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