Looking good indeed ... nice results from a range of wedding situations. I'm sure that must be one of the key challenges of weddings, the sheer variety of environments and technical approaches demanded in very quick succession.

I've not been released from work and family duties enough lately to get any 'proper' photography done , apart from the odd swan .....A common enough problem for many of us!

But I still take plenty of shots of the family in many situations. When possible I always pack one Pentax AF-540FGZ flash, as it adds greatly to the verstaility of practical image capture and brings with it the chance to balance the ambient lighting with that directly on the subject, which can help greatly by giving added 'pop' and clarity. Also, by using a straw or orange coloured gel on the flash head (eg '1/4 CTO') I can bring back warmer tones to the skin and avoid the cold, blueish tone of bare flash when its set against a warmer daylight WB behind.

I always use automatic P-TTL flash mode for these types of shots, as this is very responsive to rapidly changing subject distances and focal lengths. The ambient exposure is usually controlled with Av mode or Manual, and generally I will dial in a1/2 - 1.5 stop minus compensation below what the camera meters, in order to enrichen the tones in behind and allow the subject to stand out.

This is a randon selection of examples over a period of time, just to give a flavour and some ideas for when you could try using these techniques ..... It helps on dull days, to give life to the face, and also on sunny days, when flash helps with contrast control and to deal with shadows and bright highlights at the same time ....
All shots with the Pentax K7, AF-540FGZ (i or ii), and mostly the D FA28-105, or Tamron AF70-300 ....













































Thanks for looking and I hope you find some ideas for a situation where your on-camera flash will help out as well! Please fire back any questions and post up any other pics or other examples On-Camera direct flash gets a very bad name, unfairly really, because when used under good control and whan balanced against natural lighting it is avery formidable tool, not the least because its a lot easier to handle than more complex off-camera wireless flash setups.

Nigel

Shhh! Yes you're right, the K7 doesn't even know there were better cameras that came along after it. It seems to not care and carry on regardless!

Thanks again Peter, thank goodness for the histogram ....

Thanks! Yes, we need to get those flashes out far more often, that is all of our homework! There is a section covering the AF201 FG in the new supplement, so hopefully it will be useful to you and those thinking of getting I've themselves.

. Thanks also guys

I hope it works out, please keep us posted on progress .... 9 flashes per second will really be something to see!!

Excellent, very otherworldly!

I got that frame rate with the flash at a range of settings, from 1/256 through to 1/16th. I didn't want to exhaust my batteries so I didn't go any higher!

Even accepting the point made by Unlocker, that there is a mechanical limit to the maximum FPS on the cameras with flash working,this ultimately is unlikely to be your real-life practical limitation .... in a real life situation, where you need to actually light a scene at quality exposure settings (not just testing the equipment), then the power recycling of the flashes is likely to be more limiting than any camera imposed 2-3fps, unless you invest in professional studio type lighting.

With hotshoe type flashes, even if you could get them to recycle continuously more quickly than the 0.3 secs that we're talking about here, you would need such very low power settings that its hard to imagine what exactly you could light with them, unless you are very close and use higher ISOs.

Thanks Philip, its the lens that stays on the K7 mostly now .... very versatile!

Thanks also Don .... 'needs'? Now that's always a difficult one to answer. But 'wants'? Thats easy! Yes I want a K1 .... but the K7 is holding out in the meantime

I think its the reflections in the water that really make these, its such a dreamy tone, with such a lot of complex play between light and shade.