Taming the light...

Taking a shot against the light is always a difficult task. 9 out of 10 shots are unsatisfactory. Having a balance of the light falling on the subject and the light coming from the back is necessary. The simplest way to encounter this situation is to turn around and take the click with the light... :) If I have the shooting conditions in my hand, I generally prefer shooting with the light. But again thats not the case always.

A cheap way to go with, is to fire the flash which adds more light on the subject. This will make the subject brighter than the oncoming light. Might do the trick... But there are times when the oncoming light is too too bright and intense for the flash to nullify...

There is cheap, and then there is a poor mans cheap: Crop away the over exposed part!! :) This works well, as long as you don't have a tightly packed frame. (Tightness of the image is the % of the total area that the subject occupies.) So in case of tight images its again difficult to crop...

But when all the above 3 ways are dumped, we endup with the LIGHT...

We then go to the last escape, which is a combination of flash and apperture ...

Have a look at this image. A quick run through the setting of the conditions: The subject here is the vase, which is kept in front of the door. It was ~1130 in the morning, bright sunlight outside. The sunlight reflected from the wind shield & body of the car is creating intense light interfence in the picture. This was taken at 1/160sec & f5.6 AND THE FLASH DID FIRE!!



With the aperture logic, it would make sense to have a smaller appreture(higher f stop) to allow lesser light. Sure enough with a trade off with the Depth of field. But then have a look at the image below:



Certainly you can now read the number plate of the car, but it has eaten up the excess light. And I would be happy to buy this image than the one taken with excess light. This was taken at f/14. Now in here, I might have gone with a faster shutter as well, but then "Flash Sync" comes in my way, and the electronic lock binds my fastest shutter with flash to 1/160sec.

With all the above stuff, you might want to experiment with shutter speed in addition to flash and aperture. Hoping that your cameras allow you with a faster shutter and flash.

Let me know of the results..