Balance outdoor and indoor lighting

Nothing looks worse than a photo taken indoors with a window in the background that has the highlights completely blown out. It could be the best view in the world - but looking at the photo you'd never know, because it's nothing but an overexposed blob.



The window view is completely gone!

 

Alternatively - if the background is correctly exposed - the indoor becomes way too dark.                    

 



Window view back - interior gone

 

 





A bit of flash is quite obviously required here - but how do you keep that nicely exposed background as well? The answer of course is the balance the flash and the outside light, so that they both meter the same. It is plain now that 2 other pieces of equipment are required here, superfluous of course to your camera, those being a light meter and a flash of some description - studio or speedlight. For a room of this size, and taking into account that it is broad daylight outside (meaning that it's very bright), more than one light would no doubt be handy.

The following photos were more close up, with a daylight background through a large window and only one flash was used/required. A light meter reading was taken of the light passing through the windows, and our flash light power was adjusted accordingly, so as to match the light meter reading of the ambient light passing through the glass. For example - because the focus of the photo was not the outside background, the subject was to be shot as F4.5 (125th), giving the background a blurred effect. The flash was then adjusted accordingly to match - F4.5.

Nice colourful blurred background

This photo was shot at F8 - the background in the shot was more in focus this time and of course the flash power was adjusted to produce light at F8.

Background light balances perfectly with interior flash

 This is a nice little tip if you happen upon photographing real estate. Of course this is a very short and basic tutorial, but we hope it gives you somewhere to start!

PBC