Indoor portrait using window light and builtin flash

[KWM]

Portrait taken indoor near a window and on camera flash. Post processing done according to my skill and knowledge such as WB, exposure, noise reduction and sharpening.

ISO500, 50 mm, f2.5, 1/125

[Manfred M]

A few thoughts for you on this shot:

1. Your model is too close to the background. Notice the shadows behind her head. Generally I like to keep models at least 2 metres away from the background to reduce this problem.

2. This is a mixed light situation. Notice how the tones on the camera left side are much warmer than the tones on the camera right side. The daylight coming through the window has a noticeably warmer colour temperature than your flash (around 5500K).

Mixed lighting like this cannot be colour corrected all that easily. A common practice would be to put a fractional CTO (Colour Temperature Orange) gel over your flash to get a more balanced colour temperature. Other techniques that either eliminate the flash (a white reflector) or a pure flash shot with no ambient light would work too.

3. Your on-camera flash is not a particularly good light source for this type of photography. In emergencies, I will sometimes use it as a fill light when shooting outdoors, but I will generally use a different (larger) light source that is off-camera. Direct flash, whether it is the built in camera flash or a small flash mounted on the camera are "small light sources" and produce a very hard light.

4. Having your subject's hair just touch the top of the frame is not all that effective. Either leave a bit of a gap or cropping into the hair a bit more will work better.

[vaez]

I agree with manfred

[Shadowman]

Nice work on the exposure, if you were shooting with tripod you could've reduced ISO and perhaps maintained more detail; as shown a bit too soft in most areas.

[dem]

KWM, I think you might have created a difficult lighting scenario (two light sources with different colour temperature) when a reflector would have produced better results.

Alternatively, you could have turned the model slightly towards the light (not facing the window but at a bit of an angle) and just used natural light.

[Wandjina]

+1 to all of the above comments

[KWM]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Much appreciated.