Daylight fill flash

With the nicer weather, I recently have had a need for daylight fill flash the past few times I have been out. I recently discovered that to do HSS, I needed to have my pentax AF360 mounted to my camera (or on a cable, but not wireless). I forgot to bring it out with me for this trip, but I have some examples of photos with and without the daylight fill flash.

This first pictures does not have a fill flash. Metering is all but impossible as the transition from light to shadow on the model's face is very abrupt.


A fill flash was used here to fill in the shadows on the model's face. This was on TTL mode, and I felt that too much light was coming from the flash, and the resultant lighting seemed quite uneven. Also, on-axis flash is not particularly flattering.


I later adjusted the on camera flash output down -.5, and took the following two photos. This gives more of a kiss of light and is much more subtle. Personally, I find this much more pleasing.

This photo does not have the fill flash (tried to take 2 pictures in a row and the on camera flash did not recharge quickly enough, but it provides an excellent opportunity to compare with the photo when the flash does fire.


The second photo does have the on camera flash providing a little fill for the photo.