Tracht3

Best balance control for ambient and subject light is fill flash

tomcat

As the LoneRangeFinder said, you have to meter for the background and use flash. The ONLY reliable way to do this is to put your camera in Manual. Then adjust your shutter speed to give you the proper background exposure, 1/250 to 1/400 range. Then use your flash to expose the subject. The f/stop will depend upon how far away you are. Generally f/5.6 to f/8 range is ok. Note the flash in your camera should also be in manual, not on TTL

Psergel Loc: New Mexico

Extra caution should be taken when working near the edge of a cliff.

LFingar Loc: Claverack, NY

That's the exact technique a mountain climber friend of mine used one time! :shock:

Mark7829 Loc: Calfornia

1. Don't take the picture
2. Re-position yourself
3. Re-position the subject
4. Come back 12 hours later and the light will be behind you
5. Use a drone to hover overhead for flash or capture and last resort
6. Set the forest on fire for more light

Cdouthitt Loc: Traverse City, MI

a flash and reflector work great, but sometimes you don't have those available. I would likely EC +1 on the subject (to bring up shadows a bit), making sure I shot in raw and recover the rest of the shadows and pull back the highlights in post.

ETTR. Google it.

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

Love it!!!

paulrph1 Loc: Washington, Utah

Bracket widely. Many exposures. Fill Flash. Move in on subject and use spot exposure reading and lock it in. Set the camera to that setting in manual. Now go back and take the shot.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Assuming you take an average reading of the entire scene, or follow the "Sunny 16" principle, outdoor backlit subjects whose other side is lit by bright sun are typically two f/stops dimmer on the shadow side of the subject. That's pretty severe underexposure.

You have several options...

You can open up a couple of stops manually, or with exposure compensation, and correctly expose the shaded parts of the subject. The sunlit background will burn out to pastels and whites, though, and that may not be what you want! Subjects with blonde hair will look as if their hair is on fire, and glowing white hot. This is very unnatural and unflattering.

You can use a portable white, silver, or gold reflector to bounce light from the sun back onto the subject, if you have a way (or someone) to hold and aim the reflector. You may need to combine this strategy with exposure compensation... I mentioned gold reflectors, because they help kill some of the blue from skylight, which tends to make skin tones look embalmed.

You can use fill flash to bring the brightness of the shadowed subject up to the level of the sun... or close to it. However, at distances greater than about ten feet, using a typical shoe-mounted strobe becomes a losing battle. Professional strobes with 400 to 800 watt-seconds of power will get you out to about 20 feet or so.

You can find Bill Norman's excellent little book on Synchro-Sunlight photography on Amazon.com. It explains the inverse square law and how that relates to this topic. It also explains how to calculate exposure for manual flash at a given distance. It's a classic, and will teach you how the pros work.

SharpShooter Loc: NorCal

Just use an IPhone!!! :lol: :lol:
SS

James R. Kyle Loc: Saint Louis, Missouri (A Suburb of Ferguson)

+++++++++++++++++++++

YES.

And get the main subject to stand No Closer than 8 Feet from the background... Use a "Fast" lens.... One that can have the Aperture 3 and Larger (i.e.= LARGER HOLE.) 1.9 or 2.8.

jimmya Loc: Phoenix

Fill flash is your answer. Using flash in daylight can solve this problem for you.

zerobeat

Use the center focus point on a darker point of the image, keep holding down the button while reframing the photo. Press the button the rest of the way down to take the picture. The back ground should not be as light and the part you focused on should be OK.

Or... Put the camera in the manual mode, take a guess at what you want to look good and take a shot. Make lens, time and ISO adjustments from there.

Dale - Brooksville, Fl

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

There are a lot of ways to deal with a "back-lit subject", depending upon what you want to see in the final image.

If you just want to blow out the background, let it go really bright with less detail, all you need to do is increase the exposure so that it's correct for the side of the subject that's facing you (probably shaded). There are a number of ways to do this, too... The simplest being increasing the exposure by dialing in some + compensation, probably a stop or two, to brighten the subject. To measure it more accurately, use a spot metering mode... or move in close to the subject, measure with the meter and engage AE Lock, then back off, compose and take your shot.

Alternatively, maybe you want to balance the lighting to keep more of the background detail. That also can be done several ways. You can use fill flash to brighten the subject, while not effecting the brighter and more distant background behind the subject. Or you can use a reflector to bounce some light onto the subject. Or you can use one of several High Dynamic Range (HDR) techniques... either multiple exposures in-camera or multi-processing a single image... in either case making one image for the subject and one adjusted for the background, then combine the "correct" portions of each into a single image.

In some cases, a graduated neutral density filter at the time of exposure, or applied with software later in post-processing might do the trick. Or, in some cases a circular polarizing filter might be used.

You will likely have to use different methods depending upon whether the subject is moving or not. And it will make a difference how large the subject is within your image... one that occupies most of the frame can be handled differently than a more distant and/or small subject.

Which of the above you choose to use depends upon the look you want in your final image, what your gear is capable of doing and what accessory devices you have. Experiment with each method to learn how to do them and the differences in the results, so you'll have the different techniques in your "toolbox" for use the future.