Fill Flash

This is not a great image but it will do. It’s a dark shot of the gathering of some of the members of the Oakville Camera Club at the end-of-the-seasonn pub night in a dark bar. When it comes to shooting in dark places or shooting in places where sunlight is going to overwhelm your exposure of somebody in the foreground you will want to use fill flash.

So what does fill flash do and when to use it.

Again we go back to Facebook where Hope had taken some rather good images of her sister and her boyfriend. Hope asked for help and the FB experts waded in.

Most of the comments were either use fill flash (the right answer) or fix the white balance (wrong answer but technically after using fill flash it might need to be checked).

So fill flash is a using flash during the day to help bring more light onto your subjects.

In some of Hope’s photos she had shot her subjects under the green foliage of trees and bushes in the background. Not only did this make her images too dark but the vegetation cast a slight green hue.

A fill flash would fix most of these problems.

Using fill flash is easy. You read your manual or watch some You Tube videos then you go practice. Find the answer for your particular camera.

A fill flash can come from a flash on your camera and if used subtly enough will hardly be notices but will have the effect of throwing some gentle light on your subject’s faces.

BTW a properly held and aimed reflector can accomplish much the same effect if you have an assistant around to hold it.

Fill flash can also come from a remote triggered flash usually inside a soft box or shot up into a photographic umbrella. The cost for a remote trigger and remote flash and soft box aren’t that expensive and will make a world of difference when shooting portraits or weddings where the white dress of the bride must be reproduces as white.