Ric Trexell wrote:
Wouldn't the areas not in shadow then be overexposed by a
half stop?
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I don't understand why you say a half stop, but think of fill flash
as only being a fraction of the available light on the subject. The
meter in the flash (assuming you have an automatic flash) or the
OTF-TTL flash camera combo will measure the extra light and
compensate for it. Doing it manually is still sort of a hit and miss
thing but generally you are not over exposing that much. Ric in
Wisconsin.

Initially my logic was this:

You have a normally exposed outdoor scene. Let's call the amount of light in
this scene 100 units. Now, you add a fill flash which is set to -.5. That
would add 50 units of light. If you add them together, you get 150 units of
light for a scene which was properly exposed with 100 units of light. Of
course the real world is much more complicated than this especially since it
was pointed out to me that the fill flash is not pointing in the same
direction as the main light.

As far as manual vs. automatic, the "how to" aritcles I've read say to set
your exposure manually as if you didn't have the flash. Then, dial in the
flash compensation to whatever you like, usually between. -2 to -.5. Then,
the automatic circuits in the flash will figure it out.

Thanks for your reply.
--
David Farber
L.A., CA