How do I balance high ISO with flash?

Question #1 (Shawn): High ISO on shoots instead of flash?

Dave: You’ve got to visualize the outcome you want, and if you want the available light being used, then I’d say you use ISO.

Taylor: Just the depth that high ISO gives you – for more photojournalistic –type stuff, I far prefer cranking the ISO with a little bit of grain. And I’ve never heard my clients say they hate a photo because “it’s a little bit grainy”.

Dave: Charlotte and I crank up the ISO – like during receptions, we shoot 25, 3200 or something like that and bounce the flash through the room. We use reflective light, so that means using the light bounced off backs of chairs or walls.

Taylor: I was just listening to someone who said when they shoot with flash they try to bounce the light off the side of the face that’s not facing them. So instead of lighting the face you can see, you try to throw the light behind them and do it that way so it hides the flash.

Dave: The rule is if you’re going to light with one light someone’s face, you want to light the short side of their face. Meaning if somebody’s nose is turned to your left – camera left – you’re going to light from the left. And that way the longer side of their face isn’t lit and they look slimmer. And that’s classic painting technique, anyway.

But I’m not opposed to flash. We love to edit everything in colour, and we don’t do a lot of black and white as a brand so we try to balance our flash with the [text?] around the room, which we do with gels – and if you don’t know what a gel is, just Google it.

Taylor: It just makes your flash the same colour as the light around it in theory.

Dave: And so you’re putting yellow light out of your flash instead of blue light relative to the yellow light in the room. And it means when you colour code that out, you can have your camera on the [ . . . ] setting, and you’re good to go.

Taylor: I ordered the Strobus gel pack and it was about $2.99 off Ebay, and it comes with little straps of Velcro, so if I need to use a flash, I have almost every available gel colour right there.

Dave: It depends on what you’re shooting, but if you want clean skin tones, you’ll want to use flash as opposed to ISO – like portraits.