PCPhoto 
Tip Of The Week Archive Get On Balance - 1/21/08
Tip Of The Week Archive Get On Balance - 1/21/08 
Get On Balance - 1/21/08 |
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 I can think of a handful of Eureka moments in my life, but one of the most significant was the day in college when I finally understood how to control ambient and strobe exposures independently within the same shot. The gist is simple: shutter speed has no effect on strobe exposure. It took a while, but once I got it, a whole world of control opened up to me. Because a strobe’s duration is so short—1/1000th of a second and faster—the entire flash occurs well within any shutter speed of that duration or slower. Think of it as a timeline: 1/125th of a second or 1/250th of a second doesn’t matter—the flash happens just the same within each exposure. So the only way to modify the flash exposure—short of changing the flash’s power or distance from the subject—is to open or close the lens aperture. In practice, it’s easiest to start with the ambient exposure you want—say ƒ/8 at 1/125th of a second—and adjust the flash output until it matches the ƒ/8 mark, changing only the shutter speed then to adjust the ambient exposure. The best part of all of this is you can create great effects by slightly underexposing the ambience—say to make a sunset background even more vivid—and correctly exposing the flash by maintaining a constant aperture and simply adjusting the shutter speed. It will keep the flash exposure constant but can take the background from over- to underexposed in just a few clicks of the thumbwheel. Eureka!Illustration: Timeline of Strobe vs. Shutter Speed   |
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