Exposing for the sky and using fill flash

Pants

Pants

Pants

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
3,166
Location
Leicester
Hi,

I'm not exactly pushed my 60D very far as i'm still a bit of a noob. But i'm starting to use more and more of the cameras features. I'm a bit confused with the behaviour of the AE Lock " * " button.

Without flash I can aim at the sky, get an exposure lock with the " * " button, then aim somewhere and re-focus / shoot.

I want to do exactly the same thing now but with some fill flash in the foreground. But the " * " button no longer locks the exposure with the flash up? So how do I go about exposing for the sky for my "ambient" exposure and then having the flash fill in the foreground with a normally metered flash fill (while focusing on the foreground)?

I could just add in some negative ambient exposure compensation and leave the flash exposure compensation at normal levels, but this doesn't seem that accurate and there's some guesswork involved.

Cheers!
 
i find a good way to do the type of shot you describe is to,
1,set your camera to manual,
2,pick an aperture that gives enough dof but wide enough to get the ambient light
3,then point the camera at the sky to get a meter reading and adjust the shutter speed untill the meter is near the center. You could under expose about 1 stop to bring out the colour in the sky
4,pop up the flash and take your shot. The camera should work out the flash power useing ettl. Take a look at the pic and if the flash is too bright then adjust the flash compensation.
i tend to take a few shots and adjust as needed and dont worry about experimenting.
you can get the effect in day light if you under expose the sky as i did with this shot of my daughter Becky which i took well befor sunset

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hope this helps
 
The easiest way on shots with bright sky and dark foreground is to Bracket the EV, say by - 1 & +1

Then combine in PS
 
You want...

Shutter speed about 1/120 - 1/160
Aperture set so the sky is metered correctly could range from anything to F11-F18
Flash on ETTL

Have fun with that :)
 
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