LLMSFMBC

Went for a ride on Mt. Seymour today, and decided I'd bring the camera and try a group portrait.  I'd recently seen some outdoor portraits using off camera flash to highlight the subject while leaving the background in the mid to lowlights.  Thought I'd give that a try.

(click for the original)

For this shot, my SB-600 was set on the ground at camera right, tuned to full pop and wide angle.  I used a 50mm lens and shot from about 4m back.  The shots didn't look great on my camera's LCD screen.  In particular, I was worried that the flash throw wasn't large enough to get the full group, and that the lighting was uneven.  Since it was lightly raining and these guys were waiting to start their ride, I didn't take much time to experiment with settings, or to play with the composition and subject position.

Once I opened it in photoshop I was able to do a half-decent job with it though.  I brought up the exposure 2 stops and did a little bit of localized exposure adjustment to normalize the faces.