Fill Flash on the 40d with 430EX

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peterc2609

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Peter
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How do I do it outdoors at night?

Going to Dubai tomorrow and would like to take some photos of family in front of burj al arab etc so need to work out how to expose properly to get both subject and background lit properly.
 
Put the camera in AV mode or manual. Expose for the backround. It will peob give you a rather long shutter speed so a tripod is almost a necessity. The flash is left on ETTL-II mode and will fill in your subjects nicely
 
not lugging a tripod over to dubai!

Would it give a long exposure even if the burj was all lit up?

What about with a 50mm f/1.8?
 
Rest the camera on a wall or something.

If you want to hand hold (as I would) be prepared to push your ISO - a lot.

50mm 1.8 will help but be VERY careful if you're shooting group shots at that kind of apperture.
 
Flickr is your friend.. search and you shall find.

1/30, f/1.4, ISO 3200

Very tight depth of field for a group, you might be able to go up to f/2 and still have the burj al arab identifiable in the background - but whatever you do that's a long exposure to hand-hold.

Would be better to try and catch sunset with more ambient and fill-flash against that.
 
Put the flash in second curtain sync mode, and the camera in night portrait mode, it will expose for the background and then use flash at the end of the exposure to illuminate the foreground subject
 
trencheel303 said:
on evaluative metering yes.
Click to expand...

Evaluative metering is much more likely to give you a good exposure if the light is difficult. Spot might be better, but you have to know exactly what you're doing with that. Probably use the FEL flash exposure lock button - see handbook.

Best way to asses exposure is to shoot a test pic and chimp it on the LCD. On Av, adjusting the +/- compensation on the camera alters the background exposure level, and the +/- compensation on the gun adjusts the flash power. It's really easy.

iancandler said:
Put the flash in second curtain sync mode, and the camera in night portrait mode, it will expose for the background and then use flash at the end of the exposure to illuminate the foreground subject
Click to expand...

Second curtain sync is only useful if a) the subject is moving, and b) the direction of movement is important. For example, a car moving fowards, the direction is important, but for people dancing the movement is random and it doesn't matter.
 
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