A question re: TTL and shooting outside etc

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Name
John
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Hey Peeps

I usually shoot in manual. When shooting outside, I find the ambient with ISO, shutter and aperture and then drop it by a stop or two then manually adjust the power of my speedlight/AD200 to taste.
I've never explored using TTL and apeture priority mode but something got me thinking and hopefully you experts will point me in the right direction.

Presumably, if shooting manual and set speedlight/AD200 to TTL, if I set the ambient to 1 or 2 stops under, then the power output will be reduced too and the subject will be lit 1 or 2 stops under too? Is this where flash exposure compensation comes in? So if I drop the ambient by 2 stops, I use +2 FEC?

Or, if using aperture priority, I could let the camera set the exposure based on my choice of aperture, use exposure compensation on the camera to drop the ambient by 2 stops then use FEC to bring the subject up by 2 stops?

Is my thinking correct?

Dont know why my brain has not computed this beforehand. I'm going to have a play about at the weekend and see what it gives me.
Got two AD200s at the moment and very tempted to get a AD600 Pro for my outdoor work.
 
Firstly:
What camera?
Canon and Nikon work EC/FEC differently, and I’ve no idea about any other brands.

Secondly - my rule of thumb is that when flash is my key light, I don’t want to 2nd guess what the camera will decide to do, so I shoot Manual, even if the flash is TTL.
 
Firstly:
What camera?
Canon and Nikon work EC/FEC differently, and I’ve no idea about any other brands.

Secondly - my rule of thumb is that when flash is my key light, I don’t want to 2nd guess what the camera will decide to do, so I shoot Manual, even if the flash is TTL.

I shoot Nikon Phil.

Yes, I've always shot manual for exactly that reason. I dont tend to touch Auto ISO for the same reason too.
Just curious as to how it worked as I've never really played with it.
 
I shoot Nikon Phil.

Yes, I've always shot manual for exactly that reason. I dont tend to touch Auto ISO for the same reason too.
Just curious as to how it worked as I've never really played with it.
Caveat I don’t shoot Nikon but I read the hot shoe diaries.
I think Nikon assumes that if you use -EC for the ambient, it’ll automatically give +FEC to assume you want a correct exposure.
It’s clearly assuming it knows what you want to achieve. Which is why I’d run a mile.
 
And just for balance, Canon uses a weird algorithm that tries to guess from your SS whether flash is key or fill in the semi auto modes and makes some weird decisions.
Works pretty well in P though apparently.

When not using flash auto iso is brilliant on modern cameras. When all I want is control of the aperture and to avoid camera shake, why would I care if it’s chosen ISO400 and 1/1000 rather than ISO800 and 1/2000 etc.
 
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