| Fill can be great, but very limiting. Really depends on the brightest light levels. Shoot in your camera's manual mode. If you meter for the sky and stop down your lens, your effective flash distance will be shortened. You will see on the 430ex, the effective distance on the back. As you change the f-stop, or iso, this will vary. Just an example: If it was a sunny day with blue sky, you may be shooting at say, 1/200 at f11 iso 100. This would roughly take care of the sky's exposure. Your flash would handle the shadows. On the 430ex, you would get roughly 2 metres of usable flash at that distance. I just tried it! lol Oh and a diffuser will shorten that distance, as well as using the high speed sync feature. So it really is a balancing act, dependent on available light, distance to main subject, F-stop and shutter speed. Few.... Oh and watch your auto metering for the flash. The sky or bright areas, can fool your flash metering system, underexposing your images. I usually zoom in on my subject, lock flash exposure, then recompose and take the shot. Check your manual, you should have this function. Spot metering can be helpful also. Honestly though, I find myself shooting flash in manual flash mode quite often. If you have the time and you find the rite power level, you can shoot and recompose or do slight subject movements. Not having to worry about how the meter will compensate for any changes. Keeping things constant. Good for studio work and set ups. |
