How to Use Backlight Correctly
Sunshine is endowed with a symbol of beauty, but at the same time, it is a difficult problem for photographers. Especially the low-angle backlighting at sunrise and sunset often brings strong shadow contrast on the subject, resulting in a large difference in light ratio, and there are always many details in the light receiving and backlighting parts that cannot be taken into account.
Even with tens of thousands of high-end lenses, it is inevitable that there will be glare and auto-focus obstacles in the case of complete backlighting, which is even more serious for ordinary lenses. However, as long as it is used properly and combined with a good composition, you can also get beautiful effects when shooting against the light.
1. Metering a bright background without filling the foreground at all can get a contrasting silhouette effect and a good rendering atmosphere.
2. Use a reflector or flash to fill the foreground appropriately to get more details.
3. When shooting with backlight, it can produce dazzling contour light around the object, which strongly outlines the appearance of the object.
Try to avoid direct sunlight at noon when shooting portraits. But nothing is absolute, sometimes just when you think sunlight is quite unsuitable for shooting and you are ready to put away the camera, you can get some unexpected effects.
4. When shooting forest plants and other subjects that are easy to transmit light, you can adopt the backlight position, the illuminated subject will show a stronger texture, and the feeling of the light beam will make the picture full of mystery.
5. When there is severe halo in the lens, pay attention to the composition and slightly adjust the lens position to avoid the flare covering the subject.
6. Backlight shooting will affect the auto focus accuracy, you can switch to manual mode for precise focusing.
In terms of metering, it is recommended to use spot metering on the face and increase the exposure by at least one stop at the same time, because the metering on the face will not be very accurate when it is backlit, especially when shooting portraits with strong backlighting! If you want the photo to have flare, the lens must include the sun when framing the lens. At this time, focusing will be very difficult. At this time, using manual is a good choice. We recommend that the aperture value should not be too large, so as not to get too much sunlight and burn the sensor. It’s not worth the loss!
If you use a reflector to fill the light, do not let the light reflect from the bottom to your face, because the shadows formed by the strong sunlight obliquely hitting the face when shooting against the light will be very ugly. The correct way is to lift the reflector. Let the sun shine directly on your face from diagonally upwards, don’t doubt its feasibility, just try it!
7. Side backlight-looking for the beauty of light contrast
This photo is a good example of the dramatic contrast between light and shadow. It is not necessarily a good portrait if there is no shadow on the model’s face. Controlling the angle and range of the shadow is also a good portrait work. This feeling will be good at the same time. The atmosphere reflects the atmosphere at that time!
Key Points for side-backlight Shooting:
Use the warm sun in the afternoon and look for the presence of light and shadow. Use “spot metering” (higher light ratio) for focus metering, so that we can accurately grasp the correct exposure value when shooting. Use aperture priority mode (AV mode) to shoot and measure well The exposure value can also be adjusted in the cloudy white balance (high color temperature) by using the M file, so that the picture presents a warmer tone. Try bold composition and backlight shooting. Control the camera’s exposure compensation (+/-EV) in time, and use natural light and shadow to shoot portraits outside. , No specific shooting technique is required, just put the character in a light position and match the ideal angle, you will have unexpected gains! Try it when you are out shooting!
Use the flash cleverly when shooting against the light
In the case of strong backlighting, clever use of the forced flash method to fill light on the subject can make the protagonist of the photo look clear in the subject, with obvious contours, and more fashionable. If the weather is good, the reflected blue sky will be bluer. For example, in the daytime, you need to use flash fill light and enlarge the aperture to blur the background. If the flash sync speed is low, you need to use a neutral density (ND) filter to dim the lens.
This backlit photo uses flashing lights in the evening to cleverly make the sunset just right on the edge of the screen and form a strong warm and cold effect with the blue sky background, making the theme stand out and hard light dazzling. After turning on the flash, pay attention to the unity of artificial light and natural light. Often the background sunlight will be warmer and the flash output will be colder, so try to reduce the flash value, or use auxiliary equipment such as diffusers and reflectors.
Hair glow effect—When shooting with the light behind the subject, the best thing is that the subject will be surrounded by a halo. When light penetrates any translucent object, it will illuminate the person or thing.
In this photo, the sunlight is behind the subject. At this time, the model’s hair is bathed in sunlight. The high-speed TTL flash is used to fill the shadows of the model’s head, face and hair. The model’s face is exposed to normal exposure, and the soft sunset light lines give The whole picture creates a golden atmosphere, a great sugar water portrait!
Although photography is the art of using light, human thought is more important. This is like writing essays when you were a child. If you don’t know what the central idea of your essay is, then what is the use of gorgeous words? In addition, for photography, “feeling” is also very important, especially the touch of that moment.