Shooting Sunset Portraits with Flash

SCOTT KELBY

Like a lot of shots taken with flash, this one is a formula, and if you follow it, you’ll get the look you want. First, turn off your flash, switch your camera to program mode, aim at the sky (but not at the sun itself), and hold your shutter button halfway down. This tells your camera to take a meter reading of the sky, so while that button is still held down, look in your viewfinder to see the f-stop and shutter speed, and remember what they’re reading (in the example above, it read f/5.6 at 1/60 of a second). Now, switch your camera to manual mode and dial in f/5.6 for your f-stop and 1/60 of a second for your shutter speed (even if you’ve never used manual mode before, this is a no-brainer—usually the front dial on your camera controls the f-stop, and the back dial controls the shutter speed, so just move those two dials until you see f/5.6 and 1/60 as the settings when you look through the viewfinder). Now your sunset sky will look perfect, but your subject will be almost, if not totally, a silhouette. So, turn your flash back on, but lower the brightness (power output) of the flash by around two stops, so just a little bit of flash fires—not enough to overpower the existing light, just enough to light the head and shoulders of your subject. You’ll have to fire a couple of test shots to get this just right, but remember: don’t change the camera settings—they’re perfect as is—just lower (or raise, as the case may be) the brightness of your flash. That’s it—that’s how to get great-looking flash portraits at sunset. (Note: If the shutter speed suggested by your camera is faster than 1/250 of a second, you’re hosed, as many cameras/flashes won’t sync at faster than 1/250 of a second. Not all, but many.)