[Marc Sabatella]

In this particular photo, the details take second place to ambience.

OK, so that leads to the next question: in what situations is that not true? Here is where I expect the answers to become more subjective/personal. For my tastes, when dealing with candid photography, I'd say it's basically *always* the case that ambiance trumps detail in importance. The situations where it wouldn't be outside the realm of candid photography - product photography, say, or macro.

Of course, flash - particularly when bounced or diffused and used just as slight fill - isn't completely at odds with ambiance. But it does take a certain degree of skill to pull off a successful merger, and it does come at a certain price in terms of calling attention to oneself, as well as the issue of recharge time.

[cardinal43]

I'm late to the party (no pun intended), but I like #2 the best as the young lady is much nicer to look at. Seriously, #1 by far.

[Rondec]

I would say that for me personally, there is never a situation where I like direct, head-on flash. The only place where I would use it, would be in situations where it is too dark to take a photo otherwise and then, I would likely just delete the photos after the fact. They may be good for documentation of an event, but they look like a point and shoot.

[Canada_Rockies]

... <snip> ...
Of course, flash - particularly when bounced or diffused and used just as slight fill - isn't completely at odds with ambiance. But it does take a certain degree of skill to pull off a successful merger, and it does come at a certain price in terms of calling attention to oneself, as well as the issue of recharge time.

I agree with you Marc, 100%, about the "feel" of a flash photo. However, flash is the only way to get the image contrast up to the point where it could survive 10,000 copies an hour on a Goss offset press on newsprint. Anyone who has looked at a newsprint page has seen colours that are off registration - sometimes as much as 1/8 inch - and I have seen the odd flyer that is 1/4 inch off.

Newsprint stretches as it passes through the rollers, and the registration goes off. The only solution that I know of (and I don't know all of them) is to add a bit of punch with a flash. Ideally, the flash would be off camera, and diffuse, but that is highly unlikely given the equipment used by weekly newspaper photographers.

Please note that Sports Illustrated and similar are not weekly or even daily newspapers. The process is not the same. I should have made it clear that I was describing the pitfalls of high speed four colour printing on newsprint.

[raider]

Set the camera to get the exposure that Marc used in M manual mode. Set the flash to -2, then see what you need to adjust to get the effect of Marc's shot with flash to clear up some of the details.

Thanks for the tips but I still don't quite understand why we need to set the flash to eV of -2.

In manual mode, say we want a depth of field of say F3.2. We press the green button (on the K-7 for instance) to determine the shutter speed. If the shutter speed is low enuf, this would mean that sufficient ambient light is entering into the sensor, no? If the shutter is not too low, and we are comfortable that we can handheld without contributing to camera shake, then that shutter speed is selected. If not, we select a higher iso to compensate.

This will allow the camera to properly expose with the ambient light but at this exposure we might still think the photo is too dark. So we put on a P-TTL flash and set it to fire automatically in PTTL mode. The flash should then act as a fill flash automatically and working with the exposure we just set, correct? Why would we need to adjust the eV of the flash to -2?

Sorry. I am really not good in flash photography. I am trying to learn. 2 books are on their way

[Ash]

Having the flash automatically set its intensity in P-TTL mode means that it will attempt to ensure the scene as a whole is adequately exposed, which is not necessarily the intent of the photographer.

To maintain the ambience of the scene and just have a touch of fill to boost some shadow details, the correct exposure for the scene without flash is selected (just as Marc had done), but now an EV of -2 will tell the flash to tone down on what it expects to fire to brighten up the whole scene and just give a slight boost to the lighting of the subjects and consequently their surrounds. So the intent is really on accentuating the subjects, and as a side effect get the rest of the scene slightly lit also.

A lot of permutations and combinations are available to the flash photog...

[Ash]

OK, so that leads to the next question: in what situations is that not true? Here is where I expect the answers to become more subjective/personal. For my tastes, when dealing with candid photography, I'd say it's basically *always* the case that ambiance trumps detail in importance. The situations where it wouldn't be outside the realm of candid photography - product photography, say, or macro.

Of course, flash - particularly when bounced or diffused and used just as slight fill - isn't completely at odds with ambiance. But it does take a certain degree of skill to pull off a successful merger, and it does come at a certain price in terms of calling attention to oneself, as well as the issue of recharge time.

I alluded to this in my response to Raider, but I do consider capturing the ambience as paramount to such moody scenes. Fill flash should only serve to augment the subject's impact in the frame, but at the same time focus on the subject in the image should not be distracted by background elements inadvertently lit by the same flash.

This is where thinking on your feet comes in and finding creative ways to use flash to create the effect you see in your mind's eye.

[audiobomber]

I alluded to this in my response to Raider, but I do consider capturing the ambience as paramount to such moody scenes.

I suspect Marc's photo has exaggerated the moodiness of the original scene.

[Ash]

I suspect Marc's photo has exaggerated the moodiness of the original scene.

And that's the creative part of photography IMO.

The photographer can create the mood with the style of shooting, and that in turn adds a further dimension to the image. The standard rules of photography don't quite explain the overall impact such an image has on a viewer.

[raider]

But how do we know the flash should be tone down to EV -2 and not EV -1 or EV -1.7 or ?? How do we "calculate" the correct EV setting in this case?

[Ash]

On the move or in a candid shoot, you're not going to get out the light meter, so there's no calculation per se. It's more experience - e.g. I know that I only want a small contribution of light to effect the subject's expsoure, so I'd start at FEC -1 (considering my unit is usually on FEC +0.7 to begin with for a completely flash-exposed shot), which makes its output 1.7 stops less than what would be required to fully illuminate the subject to my liking and work from there. I may need to go up or down a notch - just depends on the conditions.

[Marc Sabatella]

I suspect Marc's photo has exaggerated the moodiness of the original scene.

I have no doubt you are right, although not exactly deliberately. It's just a side effect of how the dynamic range the scene laid out. Sometimes I lighten shadows in PP if I don't want the background so dark, but this is actually quite close to SOOC.

[tokyoso]

I like #1 photo better, without flash....

I try not to use my K-x built in flash I'm very lousy with it, but then I see these strobist photos on flickr and wow i wanna learn how to do that!

Strobist
lights / strobist - a set on Flickr

[PDL]

In general - I dislke axial flash for many reasons. The primary one is that it makes images look artificial ----- since when did the sun come from your forehead?

There are reasons to use flash, but have it off camera, be a little more creative that just blasting eyeballs.

The Elitist - formerly known as PDL

[Pablom]

I like the Pentax strap in the 2nd photo