DSLR Tips Workshop: How to brighten daytime portraits with a fill-in flash

DSLR Tips Workshop: How to brighten daytime portraits with a fill-in flash

If you’re taking photos of people on a bright or overcast day, you can often find them appearing a little too dark on the photo. This is because the camera’s been fooled by the bright background and reduced its exposure to compensate. The result is a perfect-looking background but an underexposed person in front of it. The trick here is not to brighten the overall exposure, but to simply use your flash to boost the foreground light. This is called a ‘fill-in’ flash and in this workshop we’ll show you what you need to do.

The photo at the top was taken on an overcast day with the camera’s automatic settings, where the background looks fine but the person’s underexposed. In the photo above right, we’ve simply set the flash to go off. This has provided a boost to the foreground, illuminating the person while keeping the background perfectly exposed. In our video tutorial below, we’ll explain how to achieve this effect, and at the bottom of the page you’ll find a reminder of the steps you’ll need to take.