Outdoor On-Camera Flash Techniques

Much of the flash photography you’ll be doing outdoors will be with the flash unit mounted on the camera and in TTL mode. The following techniques show you how to create better pictures outdoors with on-camera flash.

Flash as Fill Light

Figure 5.4 Using on-camera flash as fill light for outdoor daytime shots.

Using flash as fill light can give your outdoor images a more natural look. The idea here is to pop in just enough light to fill in the shadows and help reduce contrast (see Figure 5.4). Successfully applied, fill light can do its job without being too obvious. This way, it comes off looking like good natural light, instead of an artificial fix. Some cameras have very good automatic features that make it easy to produce good fill light. Whether you control your fill light manually, or let the camera work it out for you, the idea is the same: the overall exposure of the scene is normal, and just enough light from the flash is emitted to create the desired effect.