Mastering New Camera Techniques 2014 – How to Use TTL Flash

Camera flash is one of features that rarely used due to the unflattering and harsh light that it produces. That’s why many people are consciously not using it. However, it’s easy to use flash with TTL, which is a handy measuring sensor.

You have to understand the relationship between the flash exposure and ambient exposure as important as a key before using the flash. Similar to photographing without flash, you will need to adjust the exact exposure for the lighting conditions in a scene to improve the results of using flash. With practice, exposure adjustment is far easier to get grip while using the flash.

Adjusting TTL Flash Exposure

TTL flash exposure does a great job, just like using Automatic exposure mode on normal photographs. Most of times it can give great results, but quite often you have to set the exposure to fit the subject or the effect that you wish to achieve. There are two parts of the exposure you need to control when using TTL flash, which are the flash and the ambient light.

Exposure Compensation control is the basic technique to adjust the exposure of ambient light. This technique have introduced in the article before. You can control the light from the flash by using the flash exposure compensation.

However, these two controls make a little different effect over the different camera models. For the example, these two compensation adjustments don’t affect each other since they are completely separate on Canon EOS cameras. So when you set the flash exposure compensation it doesn’t have any effect on the ambient light setting.

It’s slightly different on Nikon cameras. When you adjust the main Exposure compensation, it affects both the flash and the ambient exposure. But, it doesn’t work the same way to flash exposure compensation setting, while it only affects the flash.

Set Down the Exposure of Your Camera Flash

For a more subtle effect, you can tone down the flash exposure. Don’t touch the Exposure Compensation button, so it still remains at 0. You have to reduce the amount of flash by adjusting the flash exposure compensation to – 1. This technique will hide the fact that you are actually using the flash for your images.

Working with Flash to Add Drama

Position a flashgun off-camera to allow you to be more creative with TTL radio triggers and lighting. But, all the automatic features of your flash will be retained at a little of the cost with a TTL flash cord.

In under-expose scene, you can set the camera’s Exposure compensation to -1 to make the subject stand out from the background. It can even stand out more if you leave the exposure compensation at zero (for Canon) or adjust it to +1 (for Nikon).