Quick & Dirty Way to Control TTL flash Exposure

I know that using flash in manual mode is the way to go to control the
desired power. However, it requires a lot of hours and practice to really
master and bend the light the way you like it. Eventually practice makes
perfect.

Sometimes,...a lot of time maybe, I use TTL to let the camera computes
the desired power for me. Set the camera to manual and bounce the flash.
However, sometimes I found out the flash throw extra power than what I
needed. From my research (by internet laa.) TTL computes quite accurately
when the subject is dead in the center of frame.

Most of time,my subject is not in the centre, probably more to either side.
This is where I open my camera manual and study a bit about the FV lock function
in my camera. I found it very useful for a quick & dirty way to control the
flash power. Here is my experiment:

I set up my subject like this to simulate the distance subject to background. (The toy car is my subject i.e #7)




I wanted to compose the car a little bit to the left and normally I set the camera
to manual mode and set the flash to TTL. Since the ceiling was not that high I
set the TTL to 0 compensation. Here I used shutter speed of 250 to kill all
the ambient light. The flash was bounced straight upward.I find some blown
highlights from the subject and the background was not as dark like I wanted
to. The camera did a very good job to expose the whole scene but not to the
photographer's preference.



Next, to correct this, I centered the subject and fired the FV button. It threw
a flash and kept it in memories. (erm..maybe for those don't know how to
set the FV button need to open camera manual . I took the picture here


Needed to chimp the result, and I think I needed to increase a little more power to the subject. I set Flash Compensation to +0.3


With the flash power still in the memory, I shot the subject with my desired
composition. I think, this time there was a lot of improvement from the first pic


When we have locked the flash value, we can place the subject anywhere we like
(in the frame) as long we keep the distance to the subject as same as the initial setup.
Exposure will remain the same throughout the shots.

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After all those discoveries, I practiced often to familiar myself with the method. Knowledge needs to be applied to let it resides in our head. Here are some..

I use ISO800 and longer shutter speed to control the background exposure.
I use the FV lock to control my flash. Without the FV, the flash throw its
power to compensate the far backgound and blown my subject. I bounce
the flash up to the right. Even though its one directional but I like the way
the picture looks like. Something like there were no flash used.


For this picture, I bounce the flash to the left of camera and use the FV
lock. I need to be quick or else they'll loose their mood to the cold. There's
shadow cast from the son face to his father body that I forgot to notice.


Yeah, U can use it to your built in flash. Especially when you want somebody to take your picture.


Note : Need to check ur camera whether it has the Flash Value Lock Function.

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