Direct Flash Photography for Wedding Dance Floors

Описание: Sometimes it’s still light out when the dancing starts and for different reasons you might want it to look darker in the images.

If you’re almost off the clock and won’t get true night time shots, this is a good reason to do it. Or if you’re like me and want to keep the dancing images consistent across the evening and don’t want the background to look different in all the shots, that’s another good reason.

Either way, this is an easy way to make the background darker. Start by turning your flash off, so that your camera accurately simulates the exposure. Lower your ISO to 100, set your shutter to the flash sync speed, typically 1/200 and finally, increase your aperture until the desired “darkness” in the background. Turn your flash back on and start shooting. With your flash on Auto or TTL mode, it should only expose what’s directly in front of you, leaving the background dark.

As the night grows closer and the background gets naturally dark, start to lower the aperture or increase your ISO. The background will look the same, but your flash output will automatically lower. This serves two reasons, one, it will save on power and thus your batteries will last longer. Two, the flash will be less bright, and you’ll be blinding people a lot less!!

I’m Jeff Chang of Apartment Photo and this was episode 203 - If you like this style of micro learning, follow along and I’ll see you on the next one.