Digital Wedding Photography: Capturing Beautiful Memories

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Part II ✦ Shooting Weddings on Location

Single main light plus on-camera flash

With this system, you set up two lights. The first flash is mounted with an umbrella to soften the light.

This is your main light and it throws shadows across your subject from the side to create a very 3-D look

(see figure 8-4). Place it about 20 feet from the group and off to the side of center (your position) by 10 to

15 feet. Next, set your on-camera flash unit to produce about 1.5 stops less light than the main light. This

light fills in the shadows but not so much that they disappear. The easiest way to set these exposures is

to start with the main light and shoot test exposures while watching the resulting histograms on your

LCD. Even if the background has a lot of black in it, you really only need to watch the right (highlight

side) of the histogram. You want your main light to produce a histogram that touches the bottom of the

scale near the right side without raising up the wall on the right side. Shoot some test shots and adjust

your aperture until you get the right exposure. If your on-camera flash is a TTL model, setting the expo-

sure is as easy as adjusting the flash exposure compensation to -1.5 stops. This can usually be done

either on the flash or on the camera; the result is the same either way.

Figure 8-4: The umbrella provides the main light

source, while the on-camera flash fills in the

shadows. ...