Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

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Archive 2009 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

LERtastic
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p.1 #1 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

I have an outdoor ceremony next week at 2pm, most likely in direct sunlight. I was wondering if anyone had any tips or examples on how to deal with this type of lighting situation?

I do have two 42" 5-in-1 reflectors, but is it realistic to use these during a ceremony? I also have a "lightstick" with two Nikon SB's (three if I really need the extra 1/2 stop).

Jul 18, 2009 at 03:26 AM

Jed Eltom
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p.1 #2 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

Underexpose like a madman, then blast them away with a ridiculously powerful flash.

Jeremy Clay style.

Jul 18, 2009 at 03:42 AM

TRReichman
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p.1 #3 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

If you don't want to resort to flash (I usually don't) go with a MUCH longer lens. Get a teleconverter if you have to. With a longer lens, you are minimizing the amount of background in the image. That way, since you are outdoors you can typical position yourself a little more freely and get a perspective that allows you to pin the couple against a shaded background. If you are around trees or buildings typically there will be one side that's in shadow - try to use that as the background, expose for the couple.

If you have any choice or influence (you might!) try to keep the couple between you and the sun.

- trr

Jul 18, 2009 at 04:14 AM

DmaalaM
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p.1 #4 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

I'm also really interested in this post!

Jul 18, 2009 at 04:30 AM

Ryan Britton
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p.1 #5 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

What direction will the sun be hitting them from during the processional/ceremony/recessional? This is direct sun at about that time of day from this past Sunday:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

Jul 18, 2009 at 05:18 AM

jofoto photo
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p.1 #6 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

fill flash is your friend, I go manual flash for full control and power, long lens isolate the subject as said above but don't work if there is Strong side or Above lighting on the subject, again fill flash will be your saviour.

I argued myself out of using flash only to spend longer in PP correcting what fill would have done in capture.
In Bright/Strong light fill flash is king, unless of course you want silhouettes and dark eye sockets

Joe

Jul 18, 2009 at 09:26 AM

BrianO
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p.1 #7 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

jofoto photo wrote: fill flash is your friend

The problem with "fill" flash, in harsh light, is that when you add light to the shadows you also usually add light to the highlights, so you gain nothing.

As was said earlier: under expose the ambient, and then use flash as the "main" light, with the ambient as fill.

Jul 18, 2009 at 09:42 AM

jofoto photo
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p.1 #8 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

Thats why I use Manual flash, full control.

BrianO wrote:
jofoto photo wrote: fill flash is your friend

The problem with "fill" flash, in harsh light, is that when you add light to the shadows you also usually add light to the highlights, so you gain nothing.

As was said earlier: under expose the ambient, and then use flash as the "main" light, with the ambient as fill.

Jul 18, 2009 at 12:16 PM

HJ_Mayes
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p.1 #9 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

Fill flash is going to eliminate some of those harsh shadows that occur around the nose, eyes, etc. from full on sunlight.
Get that light stick out.

Jul 18, 2009 at 01:13 PM

DB
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p.1 #10 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

What's the look you are going for? Some people like the flashy look (like Jeremy, Ed Pignol, etc.). Others like a more natural look (which is actually less natural in a way) - blown skies, correct skin tones, etc. I go for the latter, which means I'd rather blow out the sky and use no fill if I have to. I just like that look. So think hard about what you are going for and follow advice accordingly.

Do you have any control over where the B&G stand? Like, can you keep them between you and the sun? If you follow TRReichman's advice, you can get some wonderfully backlit shots that look really nice. These were shot at noon at a workshop on using harsh light:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

These were shot around 2:30:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

The trick for all these shots was to keep a dark background behind the subjects - and use a telephoto if you can.

Jul 18, 2009 at 02:06 PM

RichardLavigne
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p.1 #11 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

DB wrote:
What's the look you are going for? Some people like the flashy look (like Jeremy, Ed Pignol, etc.). Others like a more natural look (which is actually less natural in a way) - blown skies, correct skin tones, etc. I go for the latter, which means I'd rather blow out the sky and use no fill if I have to. I just like that look. So think hard about what you are going for and follow advice accordingly.

Do you have any control over where the B&G stand? Like, can you keep them between you and the sun? If you follow TRReichman's advice, you can get some wonderfully backlit shots that look really nice. These were shot at noon at a workshop on using harsh light:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

These were shot around 2:30:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

The trick for all these shots was to keep a dark background behind the subjects - and use a telephoto if you can.

Great thread topis with some great advice.... loving it.

Deb- awesome shots and great examples here... I'm amazed at the level of improvement I've seen in your work since I really started to actively follow the wedding forum last October.

Jul 18, 2009 at 02:39 PM

mineymole
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p.1 #12 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

These were shot around 2:30:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

The trick for all these shots was to keep a dark background behind the subjects - and use a telephoto if you can.

what workshop did you take?

Jul 18, 2009 at 04:17 PM

DmaalaM
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p.1 #13 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

so does everyone use manual flash? or do any use ettl? I took a friend out about noon to practice harsh light with ettl at various settings and just could not get it

Jul 18, 2009 at 06:31 PM

DB
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p.1 #14 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

That was the Susan Stripling workshop. It was very helpful. Somewhat elementary for many shooters, but very helpful for me.

Jul 18, 2009 at 06:47 PM

TRReichman
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p.1 #15 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

DmaalaM wrote:
so does everyone use manual flash? or do any use ettl? I took a friend out about noon to practice harsh light with ettl at various settings and just could not get it

Learn to use manual, that way you'll understand what your TTL is doing and when to use it. TTL is doing some work so you don't have to think about it. However, if its not doing what you want then its not too useful at all, is it? Might as well learn to do it the old fashioned way.

Granted, I don't really use fill flash at all, but in harsh sunlight I think you're much better off going manual as TTL is likely going to be changing all the time and the meter is going to have a real hard time understanding what you want.

- trr

Jul 18, 2009 at 07:04 PM

LERtastic
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p.1 #16 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

Thanks for all the input. I am gonna head out to the location this week and see what I can do. I'm not sure of how everything will be set-up, but the sun is pretty much directly overhead at 2pm this time of year in Calgary.

I seem to be trending towards a "natural" look, so I may just expose for skin and not worry about blown out highlights. Not sure how much power I can get out of 3 SB's, but I'll give it a shot and see what I can create.

I'll try to remember to post a couple of the test pics here.

Jul 19, 2009 at 03:45 AM

dpun
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p.1 #17 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

Go manual. It's the only way to achieve what you want.

Jul 19, 2009 at 04:04 AM

Marcel VanEerd
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p.1 #18 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

In situations like that, I have always set my exposure for the bright background, and set my flash with the same f-stop. For example, the bg is 1/500 @ f11 with ISO 100, my flash would be at ISO 100 and f11 also. Easy enough with a Metz 60 series.

BrianO said : "The problem with "fill" flash, in harsh light, is that when you add light to the shadows you also usually add light to the highlights, so you gain nothing." I disagree with that statement. The highlights are still quite a bit brighter than the measured bg. It has been my experience that when full sun hits a veil, a flash is NOT going to make it brighter than it already is.

Jul 19, 2009 at 04:58 AM

LERtastic
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p.1 #19 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

dpun wrote:
Go manual. It's the only way to achieve what you want.

I shoot manual 99% of the time.

Jul 19, 2009 at 05:30 AM

BrianO
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p.1 #20 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

Marcel VanEerd wrote: ...It has been my experience that when full sun hits a veil, a flash is NOT going to make it brighter than it already is.

Unless the veil is already blown out, adding flash to an exisiting light exposure must make it brighter; it's simple physics.

Marcel VanEerd wrote: In situations like that, I have always set my exposure for the bright background, and set my flash with the same f-stop.

Your proceedure for metering for the bright background (taking the "bright" down to "normal") -- and then adding flash metered for the same level -- is exactly what I was talking about in the next part of my post where I wrote "under expose the ambient, and then use flash as the "main" light, with the ambient as fill."

We're saying the same thing, just in different words.

Jul 19, 2009 at 09:17 AM

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p.1 #21 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

Jed Eltom wrote:
Underexpose like a madman, then blast them away with a ridiculously powerful flash.

Jeremy Clay style.

THIS!! (though if not possible..)

The recent Mark/Mei post was super-bright midday ceremony, and it's hard to work with..just be mindful of where you're photographing from, and how the light plays on your subject from said spot...always know basically what the light is going to do to the features before shooting from there. If you have to shoot unflattering shadows (I'll take bright sun on the face then to the back of them), nail your exposures and B&W some of them. lol

Jul 19, 2009 at 10:36 AM

Saad Syed
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p.1 #22 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

I always try to meter for the face or the dress, then tweek is as I see fit in post. Though I try to get it as close as possible in camera. Don't be afraid if "some minor" highlights get blown, as long as the overall "feel" of the image is intact. Also, shoot RAW if you can. Your angle of shooting will play a big role in these situations also.

Here are some examples:

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Jul 19, 2009 at 02:10 PM

DB
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p.1 #23 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

Excellent examples of a ceremony, Saad - you showed different angles, which is very helpful since you have little control over where people stand.

Also, keep your histogram up and watch where the highlights are blowing. In the bright sun you can hardly see your LCD, but at least you can see blinkies. If large portions of skin, or important parts of the photo are blowing out, I know to change exposure. When I'm at the beach, I usually expose to the point right before the sand blows out - that usually preserves highlights in the gown as well. But it's different for each angle I'm at.

Jul 20, 2009 at 12:46 PM

bwcat
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p.1 #24 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

So for this picture, what would you guys have done? Look at how big the contrast is between the side and front of the groom's face.

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Jul 21, 2009 at 06:02 PM

Evan Baines
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p.1 #25 · Ceremony in harsh midday sunlight

BrianO wrote:
jofoto photo wrote: fill flash is your friend

The problem with "fill" flash, in harsh light, is that when you add light to the shadows you also usually add light to the highlights, so you gain nothing.

As was said earlier: under expose the ambient, and then use flash as the "main" light, with the ambient as fill.

You're correct that adding "fill" from a light source on or near the camera typically adds to both the highlights and shadows, but not correct in the "gain nothing" argument.

Light increases in an exponential fashion, at least as it is measured by photographic equipment. Each f-stop requires twice the amount of light as the previous stop. For this reason, your fill light may make a greater difference on shadows than highlights. Here's a real world example:

On a sunny day, you may find that the highlights are two stops brighter than the shadows. This means that the highlights are getting 4x the amount of light that the shadows are. Thus, in the beginning, h=4s. If we add enough fill to increase the shadows by a full stop, we're only increasing the highlights by a 1/4 stop (beginning to be practically negligible). (we've moved to 2s for the shadows and 5s for the highlights now, respectively.)

This is not to say that fill-flash is a perfect solution. However, to say that fill flash "gains nothing" is overstating the case.

Jul 21, 2009 at 06:18 PM


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