How to Use Balanced Fill Flash

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By Two Hands Gatlin
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You don't need a camera with an auto fill-in setting to improve your photos with fill flash. Fill flash is the technique of using flash to light certain areas of a shot that is generally already well lit, such as a scene of a relatively dark room with a bright view out the window, or a face in a shadow with the sun behind. The key is to take advantage of the fact that a flash is much briefer than all but the fastest shutter speeds: the slowest flashes will be about 1/1000 second, on up to 1/20,000. Which means that you get the full effect of the flash, whether using longer or shorter shutter speeds. If your camera is set for flash synchronization only at one shutter speed, usually 1/60 and marked with a lightning bolt on the shutter speed dial, you may not be able to use faster shutter speeds, because the flash might not fire at the correct moment.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

a camera and flash that can be set manually

Step 1

Take a meter reading of the bright area. If you're taking a room with a window view, meter the window light, even if it's only a small part of the image.
Step 2

Choose your shutter speed and aperture for the bright area.
Step 3

Set the flash to the same aperture.
Step 4

Fire!
Step 5

Once you're familiar with this technique, you can also overflash or underflash. For example, you may want the room to appear slightly darker than the view out the window, to draw more attention to the view. In this case, set the flash to one or two f-stops larger aperture than the metered reading.