Controlling the dynamic range

Earlier, we mentioned the concept of dynamic range the range of tones that your digital cameras sensor can record, and this relates to the tonal range displayed in histograms. You can think of your cameras dynamic range as an exposure window. Your job is to try to get the full range of tones in your subject into this window. As weve seen, if the brightness range is too high, you may have to decide whether to sacrifice extreme highlight or shadow detail, depending on what you consider to be the main subject. This isnt your only option, however there are things you can do to reduce the contrast range in the scene at the time of shooting.

Using balanced fill flash

Outdoor portraits are often difficult to pull off successfully, especially in bright sunlight. If you face your subject towards the sun you reduce the contrast range, but you make them squint; if you position them side-on, you get ugly shadows across their face; and if you shoot them with their back to the light, their face will be in shadow against a bright background. However, if you set your cameras flash to forced flash mode, and as long as your subjects just a metre or so away, the flash can provide enough fill light to even up the tones. You can use fill flash indoors, too, as we have here, to balance up dim indoor lighting against bright daylight outside. If your camera has a slow sync mode, you can create interesting flash effects at dusk, illuminating nearby objects against a colourful sunset or twilit sky.

Fill flash is a usefull way of 'balancing' very high contrast scenes,but only works on subjects within the range of the flash-typically 2-4 metres for built-in flash.

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