How to Balance Off-camera Flash With Ambient Light - Video

[Martin Vronsky]

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In the previous off-camera flash tutorial, we started considered off-camera flash where there is no ambient light. This helped us in understanding a few of the basics. Ultimately though, where off-camera flash will be used most, is on location where you have to consider the ambient light as well. With this tutorial video, we look at how we would go about balancing flash with ambient light.

With this segment, we cover the essentials such as:

• Using maximum flash sync speed.
• Flash exposure compensation when using TTL flash.
• Manual flash vs. TTL flash
• Using a hand-held light meter to determine (manual) flash exposure.
• Adjusting your speedlight’s power according to the light-meter, to get correct flash exposure.
• And always, that acronym, PAID: Power, Aperture, ISO, Distance.

This video tutorial is one in a series that originally appeared on the Clickin’ Moms website in 2012, but licensing has now reverted back to me, and here we are – a tutorial that might be dated in terms of some of the gear used, but the principles remain the same. In conjunction with all the other articles about off-camera flash photography, these videos should make a good primer on the topic of off-camera flash.