When I was out shooting a few days ago, my good friend Jen was with me and mentioned that sometimes she likes to use flash because it makes all the colors pop more. I found this to be an interesting comment, as flash can only effect relatively close objects and I was doing a test shot of the red sky. The problem with this is…that sky is a couple miles away, so I of course challenged her on this quoting the inverse law of light. She returned with: “It does! I swear it does, it makes all colors brighter and pop more”.
I decided to prove her wrong. So I took two shots on manual, one with and one without flash. All other camera settings were the same. Lo and behold….there was a difference in color.
It took me a minute to figure out what was happening, and it was actually something I knew and had somehow forgotten. Its a good lesson though, so I will present it to you here.
Why do the colors on the “flash” side appear to be more saturated, even when the clouds are so far away?
For extra credit- How could you prove the cause of this effect?
Does it have to do with the way the flash meters?
Anthony- That is a supremely excellent good guess, it is related to the flash- why would the colors change like this?
does it change the white balance?
That’s exactly right Adrian, Very good– If you are shooting on Auto White Balance (AWB) putting a flash on your camera and turning it on will automatically change the white balance being used by the camera.
How can you prove that the light from the flash is not effecting color hue?
custom wb with and without flash.
Very good- that would work, Kelvin WB would work too. Great answer!
Out of curiosity, how strong was your flash setting for this photo? Did you use Manual Flash? I noticed this shooting an engagement session in front of some vibrant graffiti. btw I love your before and after photos.
Awesome comparison. Question: If you did a test shot with the flash and noted the Kelvin WB setting and then set the WB to that setting and did not use the flash, would the picture look the same? And/or would setting the WB to flash without a flash have the same effect? I use a Rebel XSi and don’t have a speedlite yet.