Re: do u prefer flash photography or available light?
Light is a tool and a skilled photographic craftsperson learns to use all the tools of the trade. Outdoor and indoor lighting can be equally unflattering or unflattering, flat and shapeless or angled and creating the illusion of 3D in the 2D photo. Knowing how to produce as desired natural looking result in any situation requires knowing how to use both natural and artificial light sources skillfully and sometimes seamlessly.
The basic dilemma of color photography, film and digital, has been that the scene range outdoors exceeds the capacity of the film/sensor to record detail across all of it in a single exposure. So when a full tonal range is desired its necessary to use one or more flashes to change the contrast to match the sensor. In the case of portraiture outdoors one of the more effective strategies is to keep the direct sun off the front of the subject completely and illuminate the face with flash. But the mistake many make is thinking the flash is \"Fill\". The fill in that situation comes from the skylight. The flash creates a highlight pattern over that fill, and thus acts as the frontal \"Key\" light and must be positioned over the heads of the subject -- the direction natural light comes from - to produce natural looking results. Flash on camera hits the face at too low an angle, which is why it looks fake (i.e., unnatural). One also needs to recognize the sky fill, which is 3 stops below the sunny side, produces very dark shadows. To control the tone of the shadows, and with it the illusion of \"soft\" or \"hard\" light its necessary to use two flash units in front of the subject: one over the camera to boost the sky fill, and the second off axis directly above the camera in line with the nose of the subject (i.e. butterfly pattern for full face pose) or 45 degrees to the side of the nose of the subject (i.e. short lit oblique pose)
Indoors the problems are insufficient light and the fact in many cases the direction is unflattering. But indoors there\'s the fact that all the light is typically artificial, so the fact some of it comes from a flash unit isn\'t a big deal. When a seamless match of flash and ambient is needed one just needs to gel the flash to match the color temp of the dominant indoor light source.
So its not a question of the tools, but knowing how to use them. Click the WWW button and read my tutorials and you won\'t ask such naive noob questions
Chuck
Dec 06, 2009 at 08:04 AM
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