Using FE Lock in EOS3

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Hi All

I have a basic question related to the use of FE lock on my EOS3.

I have a situation where in I am forced to take some snaps at mid noon on a sunny day. I am not in a position to wait till evening or next day morning for a good light. I would have my subject in an open shade of a tree or a building. Now I get a confusion about metering because the background sky makes the situation a high contrast one. I dont want to loose the sky details and at the same time need to capture the subject's face clearly. I think about the following options.

1. Take a reading from the subjects face which is in shadow and use a fill in flash to illuminate it better. In this case I am going to loose the sky details for sure. 2. Take the reading from the sky and add light to subject using a fill flash. Here is my confusion again. Because I take the reading from sky, does the camera adjust the flash (E-TTL) to a low power out put which becomes not enough for illuminating the subjects face? 3. I think about an alternative, never tried. Take reading from sky, set it in M mode and point the center spot metring area at the face of the subject and use FEL to get a flash reading, recompose and take the shot? Does this help? In this way I think the M mode settings helps me to capture the sky details and because I have FEL at the subjects face I get proper illumination too.

I appreciate your help!

Regards John

-- John (eosquestions@yahoo.com), May 07, 2002

Answers

If you shoot in AV mode with flash, the camera will try to balance the exposure of your subject with the background--so this might solve your problem.

You didn't say you were using color or B&W. If you are using B&W, you could meter for the subject's face, use fill flash, and then burn/dodge the sky appropriately for the detail.

As a general rule, you should always meter for your main subject. The face will always be more important than the clouds.

A polarizer might help, too, to bring back some of the details of the sky. And it will cut down on the light overall.

-- Preston Merchant (merchant@speakeasy.org), May 07, 2002.


This is exactly the situation that fill flash was designed for. You camera/flash should do this automatically and do it quite well. Just set the camera in P, Tv or Av, turn the flash on & shoot. When you get the pictures developed look at the way they turn out. From there you can decide if you like more or less fill flash, and then use FEC to compensate to your taste. Canon cameras usually use some auto fill flash reduction so you may not need/want to add any more.

E-TTL flash metering never actually uses the spot meter. The ambient exposure can be set to it, but the flash metering will examine all the areas & bias its exposure to the area around active AF point. So you need to make sure that you select the AF point (either with ECF or manually, but not with auto selection) directly on the subject for use with flash. Or do the same with FEL and then recompose.

-- Jim Strutz (j.strutz@gci.net), May 07, 2002.


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