Experiementing With Flash On Location

Today we were experimenting with using an external flash in direct sunlight. For this short shoot I used my Nikon D5300 with an 18-55mm lens.  For the first 3 photos I shot using aperture priority and for the other 4 I used manual.

The 1st photograph I took using only natural light from the sun. This created very harsh shadows on my subject.

For the 2nd photograph I used a Vivitar Flash unit with a Thyristor sensor and an umbrella diffusor attachment. I selected the orange setting, which gave out a half powered flash. This softened the shadows on my subject without making the lighting look unnatural.

The for 3rd photograph I used the same flash unit but this time I selected the Blue setting which gave out a full powered flash. This again made the shadows less harsh but it also made the lighting look unnatural.

For photograph 5003 I attached a Neewer TT520 Speedlight to my camera and set it to 1/8 power. This did very slightly fill in the shadows however it wasn’t quite strong enough.

For photograph 5004 I set the flash to 1/4 power. Again this did fill in some of the shadows but still not quite enough. 

For the next photo I set the flash to 1/2 power and this filled in the shadows quite considerably without making the light look unnatural. In my opinion this setting was the best setting for the situation.

For the final photograph I put my flash up to full power. This setting was too high and washed her face out too much, the lighting also looks completely unnatural.

Before today I had only ever used flash in the studio where I have control over all of the lighting so I found it very useful trying it out on location. I would like to use flash on location again especially if I decided to do anything fashion related as it makes the model look much more attractive. I would also like to experiment using different diffusers and reflectors.

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