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Flash Exposure Bracketing For Exposure Fusion and HDR

Published: 04/11/2022
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Many photographers, especially those who shoot in HDR most of the time, wonder: why do I still get glare from the windows around the edges? Even if it's a cloudy day, photographers can still get that kind of glowing blue-white around some or all of a window.

While it doesn't happen all the time, it is frustrating when this happens. The picture posted is an example of the blue out of it. Sometimes it isn't as lens flare as this, and it's more of an outline around the window. Sometimes the HDR workflow is already slow enough, so I don't want to spend more time on editing. In that case, it's better to fix this as I'm shooting.

How to Flash Exposure Bracketing

I'm amazed by the number of people I talk to that are shooting brackets for Exposure Fusion and HDR that don't use flash. This is a classic problem if you shoot interiors by bracketing only and don't use any flash or flash exposure compensation. The artifacts around the windows will vary depending on the outside light.

A quick and easy solution is to use a small manual flash. If you shoot brackets, a single flash simplifies your post-processing! Similar to focus bracketing, this hybrid flash technique not only fixes the problem you are having around the windows but it gives you whiter whites and more accurate colors.

Over the years, I've gotten several questions regarding bracketing techniques, normal exposure bracketing, and how to shoot brackets with flash. Below is my approach.

Why Should You Use Flash Exposure Bracketing?

The first question is: Why? What's the point of using a camera flash when shooting brackets? You thought the reason you shot different exposure values was so you didn't have to use flash, right? Well, the fact is that when you use HDR or Enfuse for multiple images in interiors, you tend to get low-contrast results. That is, the blacks are not as black as you'd like, and the whites are not as bright and crisp as you'd like.

The term that comes to mind is muddy colors and dirty whites. You also have issues with white balance. It turns out that if you add a kiss of fill light from a single flash, it solves these problems. If you add a little fill flash to your brackets, you don't have to spend as much time and effort in post-processing, getting rid of muddy colors and dirty whites.

Also, adding a touch of fill flash to bracketed shots can be done without having to "climb to the top of the learning curve" for a full-blown multi-off camera flash technique. There is a discussion in the PFRE HDR & Blending discussion group on this subject. I've been doing some experimentation with this technique so here's my summary of how to bracket with flash:

  1. Setup your flash bracketing as normal (on a tripod, a slower shutter speed, manual mode or aperture priority, and exposure bracketing -2,0,+2), except add a manual off-camera flash. In the shot above, the photographer used a YN560-IV triggered by a YN560-TX with those camera settings.
  2. Set the drive mode to single shot. It would be best if you released the shutter for each of the three bracket shots. This ensures the flash has time to recycle between each bracketed shot.
  3. Aim the flash either towards the ceiling, a blank wall, or the joint between the ceiling and the wall so that the light from the flash creates an ample, soft fill light. In my example above, I had the YN560-IV sitting on the top of a media cabinet, camera right, pointing at the ceiling. The ceiling diffuses the light in all directions, so there aren't many shadows.
  4. Adjust the power on the flash manually (somewhere between 1/8 and 1/1 - same power for all three bracketed images) so that you get a good set of 3 histograms (you want the histograms high but not clipped histograms together to fill up the available histogram space. -2 will be left, 0 will be center, and +2 will be right).

Conclusion

This technique adds the same constant flash level with a single flash to each of the three brackets you shot. This fill flash improves the quality of the light so that the whites are whiter and the blacks are blacker. This same technique works similarly with white balance bracketing and either bracket used for high dynamic range processing or brackets processed as Enfuse.

For those that are already shooting brackets with flash exposure bracketing, Alternatively, you can do ISO bracketing the old school way; manually; if your camera can't do it this way. I am sure you'll be able to add refinements or variations to this digital photography technique with most cameras.

12 comments on “Flash Exposure Bracketing For Exposure Fusion and HDR”

  1. Hello,

    with this technique, at the end you would not have a ambient layer right? Unless you shoot 2 series of brackets (3 ambient & 3 flash) and then combine them?

  2. I see how this would be great for a bedroom. But what about if you are shooting a den and see the kitchen in the background. Do you add a light in the kitchen for the brackets?

  3. I've been adding flash to my brackets for awhile now, but haven't quite figured out the amount of flash I should be adding ... across the entire bracket of exposures, the flash doesn't contribute much at the shadow end (long exposure), but at mid-bracket and the highlight end (short exposure), it's "presence" is obvious and helps "bring up the shadows" in these exposures where without the flash, the shadows would go black. Where I'm struggling is to figure out just how much helps versus hinders, i.e. too much flash. What should I be looking for?

    Beth Johnson brings up a great point that comes up with open floor plans. I've been adding additional flashes to light up these other areas too, but sometimes i seem to be doing more harm than good. This comes back to my question above...

    Last point/question I have is related to the final "brightness" of the delivered image. Enfuse does a great job of delivering an image that captures a broader exposure range than a single exposure can deliver and the images seem very true to the room as-it-is. The challenge is then to brighten the room to the level that realtors want. Regardless of approaches, braketed-with-flash or Hargis-flash, I don't seem to be able to get a look that doesn't show the tell-tail signs of flash ...

  4. Brady,
    I have been watching a lot of Rich Baum's video's on Youtube and he uses an ambient layer with a 3-5% opacity brush in Photoshop to tone down the "flashy" look.

  5. I bracket all my real estate shoots, mainly to clean up the color and add contrast. Three brackets one stop apart, bounce flash, auto WB, exp fusion. Manual exp settings, manual flash power. Separate bracket for ambient to mask in post... might have to adjust WB on the ambient shot to make it look right. This works great for light colored ceilings, have to flash differently for dark or wood ceilings. https://scottdphotos.smugmug.com/Other-2/Jay-Los-Altos-proofs/n-6QrrGk/

  6. Oh the other reason I shoot this way is to get good window pulls. Faster shutter speed + bounce flash + masked ambient to remove flash hotspot and shadows.

  7. Beth - Ironic, I have been reviewing Rich Baum's videos lately too! Layering in an ambient shot is something I have been experimenting with on the last couple of shoots, but I haven't got my technique down sufficiently that I can completely abandon the bracketing necessary for Enfuse. As I introduce more and more flashes into my shooting, I'm hoping to move away from the intense post-processing that I end up doing with Enfuse (adjusting the highlights before Enfuse and then brightening the room after Enfuse.) Don't get me wrong, Enfuse has enabled me to deliver better quality than a lot of my competition, but at a big cost in processing time.

    All of my training on Enfuse has been through Simon's eBook and I've found it quite informative, but I do have a question for everyone regarding the span and step size of their bracketing. I believe Simon suggests a single stop as a step size and the number of exposures within the bracket being driven by your histogram -- being sure you have a range of shots that assure you a shot without clipped shadows up to a shot that has no highlights clipped. For me this means for shots with exterior windows, I might need brackets of between 5 and 7 shots (occasionally 9 on a really bright day). At 1 stop per image, a 5 image bracket would have the equivalent exposure range of a 3 image bracket where the step is 2 stops each.

    This is a gross simplifications, but it the simple answer "add flash until the longest exposure (exposing for the shadows) is within 5 stops of your shortest exposure (exposing for the hightlights)?"

  8. @Scott
    Your final bracketed shots look great. How do you process the brackets - Enfuse, Photomatix, LR? And do you always blend in an ambient in PS?

  9. Hi @scott.

    Do you export the edited raw files to photomatix, or do you process the raw filled first and then import the jpg files to photomatix? The reason why I'm asking is the speed time, batching and I think the results look quite different sometimes?

  10. Nick I shoot only JPEG for standard RE shoots, then batch the entire folder in PM. Since I'm not working with RAW files that means I have to set WB manually for shots where AutoWB is off. So that means I don't do lens correction in LR, I do it in the batch process with a relatively unknown PC utility called ShiftN. And I know that all sounds so old fashioned and untrendy... but all the batching happens on my laptop in my car... as I'm driving to the next shoot. I get home and just do final masking and other PS work. And btw I wouldn't recommend doing it the way I do it... only because once you develop an efficient way to shoot and process single RAWs, you will be way ahead of the game.

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