HOME PAGE........ ......More syncro-sunlight tips

 

A pleasant balance of flash to a good rendering of the house and sky behind the subject. With a larger subject one might not use -2Flash EV as here.

 While it is not possible to do syncro-sunlight as users of film cameras and DSLRs may do it, it is possible with the Panasonic FZ3 camera, other Panasonic cameras and possibly other makes which have an adjustment of the strength of the flash.

I call this 'Flash EV' and it works independently of the normal camera EV adjustments many digital have.

When the FZ3 flash is used the aperture remains wide open even if you set it, working in manual or A mode to a smaller f/stop.

So I used P mode here.

Here the pig has come out reasonably well due to the quite large amounts of dark tones, wall - house side - hillside bush, in the shot. Except the sky is burnt out, as is the upper front of the near house.

Using full flash starts to wash out Mr. Pig and lightens the dark stained wall.

Reducing the power of the flash to minus 2 Flash EV gives us a better rendering of Mr. Pig and the wall ... but the sky is still washed out.

 

One solution is to use a minus camera EV setting to darken the sky but I suggest a quicker and easier way is to point the camera upwards to increase the amount of light tones while taking half-trigger.

Coupling this technique with the -2 Flash EV gives us some nice sky tones, shows Mr. Pig nicely, and the wall is reasonably dark. A little brighter on the left because that is closer to the flash.

There is a small difference between the sky in the last two shots because obviously I did not point the camera in quite the same angle to the sky to get the basic camera reading.

 How dark the sky becomes depends on how much of the buildings is excluded when pointing the camera towards the sky.

It could be worth using manual focusing in this situation. Using the 'focus-lock' button of the FZ3 after taking half-trigger pointing at Mr Pig before repeating that pointing at the sky to get the exposure.

Possibly a lot to think about the first few times you do it but once you get into the habit of tricking the camera into giving you the results you want in situations where it is likely to give the wrong result it becomes second nature.

I do not expect to get perfect results out of the camera but rather a result which can be adjusted in editing. So I frequently point the camera towards the sky to reduce the exposure the camera is giving to the scene.

The trap of this is that auto-focus may lock onto an object away from the subject, hence the focus lock button is useful, but I didn't use it here.

 

Mr Pig is quite a small subject and for a close-up of a person -2EV might be too little light so the choice is yours to add more Flash EV light, even to increasing the strength of the flash with a plus EV for more distant subjects.

 

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