Mr Kris
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 p.2 #10 · Fill Flash for Outdoors. Why? It looks bad. | |
(just to start out- like 5 other posts came through while I was typing this haha!)
Hey Chuck,
I fully understand the concept of how the sun renders shadows, and balancing fill vs. key. The reason I said that your first post had good info, but was not relevant to this thread, is because you only discussed flash as a key light. The topic of this thread is specifically flash as fill.
Your next post responding to me started to get to some relevant info, but again, wasn't totally relevant for fill flash. You started to get toward the subject-
cgardner wrote:
Is the flash in the second shot automatically "fill flash" because I moved outside and it's hitting the shaded side of the head? That's how photographers generically refer to flash added outdoors, but in terms of role and cause and effect it is "key" light because it is modeling the face with highlights. Fill doesn't model a face the "key" light does. The fill in the outdoor shot came from the natural ambient light.
Indoors and out raising the flash off axis vertically on the bracket in changed it from flat "fill" into a directional "key" light.
But you didn't tie it all the way back to the topic at hand. The topic, again, is fill flash. You started hinting toward the real problem when you said
cgardner wrote:
That's how photographers generically refer to flash added outdoors, but in terms of role and cause and effect it is "key" light because it is modeling the face with highlights.
Perhaps what the original poster (correct me if I'm wrong, Drewski!) has observed is probably that outdoor "fill flash" looks bad when the fill flash ceases to become a fill, and instead becomes the key light. It looked like you were beginning to allude to this, but didn't directly tie it back here.
You also wrote-
cgardner wrote:
NEAR AXIS FILL WILL KILL NATURAL MODELING
I think we need to flesh out that thought. Let's just assume that we're using the term fill "properly" here. A fill light is used to reduce shadow contrast, and/or to reveal detail that would otherwise be in shadow. Near axis "fill" will certainly reduce the effects of natural modeling. Which is what we want, right? Natural modeling looks.... natural  .... but as you said, isn't necessarily always flattering. So we use a fill light to reduce the contrast of the shadows in the eye sockets, corners of the lips, maybe under the cheekbones depending on facial structure, etc.
cgardner wrote:
You never want to use a single flash for "fill" you instead want to make the sun your "hair light", the skylight your fill, and raise the flash above the head as your frontal "key" light.
Again, here, it's hard to tell because "fill" is in quotes. I would disagree with this statement if fill really means fill. Also I think in photography, never say never applies always 
I think you have a lot of good info to share, but I think you would be even more helpful if you selected out directly relevant info to particular threads. I could probably summarize your thoughts into a few key points that are applicable here-
1. The sun and the sky are above us, and therefore render shadows downwards (at a 45 degree-ish angle, depending on time of day). This looks "natural" to us.
2. If you add in a light source that *totally* destroys these rendered shadows, then the resulting picture will look unnatural.
3. And my point- if you add in a light source that is a fill, to decrease shadow contrast but not *completely* eliminate it, it can add to the overall impact of an image and/or make the light more flattering.
I also totally disagree with this statement:
cgardner wrote:
Photography is engineered to mimic how we perceive the world around us
And maybe that's really the root of this; you're viewing photography as an engineering task to be solved, and most of the rest of us are viewing it as art. So we like words like good and bad, vs natural or unnatural. I fully agree with you that if your goal is to mimic natural light, high and pointed down is the way to go. But for most of us, we're trying to enhance light. We'll work with it, and try to complement it, but we want to make it better- not just replicate it.
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@ what shutter. Assuming 100 ISO, the 7 stops from 16 to 1.4 would mean a shutter @ 7 stops faster than 100 to 12,800. Did I miss something ?? Even if it was 1 or 2 EV below Sunny 16, that would still be a shutter @ 6400 or 3200.