>From Roger: > I used to use Guide Numbers, but it seems to me that they won't work > if the issue is "fill flash". Wrong? Or do I have to dial down the > flash intensity to get the result I want? yes you can, but again you need to know about the relationships between your two exposures and decide what is an acceptable lighting ratio, and dialing down may help for me it's a stop difference - I want the shadows to be one stop less well exposed than the highlight areas - this looks 'normal' to me. I dont like the current trend of giving the shadow areas a stop MORE light aws it looks unnatural to overpower the ambient, neither do I like a balanced exposure where it looks like there is *no* shadow.. So for an example, camera set to ISO 100, I find on my bright sunny day that I have a light reading of 1/60 at f16 so I want to fill with an exposure of f11 on the shadow side (ambient is around 3 stops lower here - cursed aussie high contrast light!) Say my flash is a Metz 60.. I need to set my flash 6 meters from the subject to get the exposure I want. Or dial it to 1/4 power (GN=22) and set the flash 2 meters from the subject :) OR if my camera can sync to 1/250th of a second I can change my exposure to 1/250th at f8 then with the metz set to 1/4 power(GN22) , I can set up 3m from the subject OR maybe I want to change the exposure to 1/30th of a sec at f22, metz to full power (GN 60) then I can shoot from 3m away as you can see from the above few examples I can have exposures from f 8 to f22 with no problems at the same distance :) karl
