Balancing Strobe Lights With The Setting Sun
One of the most challenging lighting techniques is balancing your camera's flash with ambient light. Here I’ll show how I used one strobe light with the sun fading in the background. The challenge is keeping the fading sun balanced with the one strobe light long enough to shoot a usable photo. Balancing strobe lights with the setting sun.
Remember, the background that will be changing very fast. Adjusting the exposure several times will be necessary to maintain the setting sun background. Here is my first photo with my camera settings at the start of the shoot. The background is controlled by the shutter speed, then lengthen the speed until the sun goes down.
These were my camera settings to start:
Aperture: f/11 to accommodate for the depth of field - I wanted the subject and background to both be in focus.
Shutter speed: 1/125th of a second, a starting point that I would adjust for the changing background exposure.
ISO: 160 is my choice for clean blacks.
Here's my first result. [Figure 1] taken at 6:57 pm
Figure 1
I set up an AlienBees B1600 flash unit and attached a 47” Octabox to diffuse it for a more natural quality of light. Using a light meter at the subject, I set the power of the strobe so that it exposed properly at f/11. This light would remain constant throughout the shoot, and any adjustments to exposure would be made to the shutter speed to accommodate for the changing exposure of the background.
Here’s my result. [Figure 2] taken at 7:06 pm. Shutter speed: 1/100th of a second
Figure 2
We continued to shoot as the light faded and got a lot of great shots, adjusting the shutter speed for the changing sky, but the basic lighting technique was all set up here at the beginning of the shoot.
Here’s my result. [Figure 3] taken at 7:18 pm. Shutter speed: 1/80th of a second
Figure 3
Here’s my result. [Figure 4] taken at 7:27 pm. Shutter speed: 1/50th of a second
Figure 4
It finally got dark as we got the last bit of light from the setting sun
Figure 5
To see more photos from the shoot click on the link –> Kamerra Simpson.
This series was shot at my Las Vegas portrait studio.
