 Hey everybody, it's Greg Vitthier here and in this video I'm going to share seven reasons why I believe that using flash is better for your portraits than using just natural light alone. Now make sure you stick around to the end because I have a question for you. Now let's get started. So reason number one is that using a portable flash allows you to get it off your camera and you can control the direction of the light, allowing you to use multiple different lighting patterns on a shoot. Now if you're outdoors and you just have the sun, sure you can move around a bit, but then you're dealing with the harsh light from the sun. So that brings us to reason two, with flash you can control the quality or the softness of the light. Now how you do that is by modifying your flash. So anywhere from I would say a 36 inch modifier is what I prefer, but you can go up to 48, 50, 60, you can go as big as you want. There's even seven foot modifiers that you can get. I wouldn't use those outdoors though, but you can use a larger light source and bring it in close and you can create a very soft quality light. You can't really do that if you're shooting outdoors with just the sun. Even if you're using window light, it's still not going to be the same. So that's reason two, using a larger modifier, bringing it in close, that will give you control over the quality and the softness of the light. Now reason number three for using flash over natural light is when you have a flash, you can shoot any time of the day or night. Now if you're a natural light photographer, you can only shoot during daylight hours and really it's even a smaller window because the best lights early in the morning or just before sunset. So having that flash will give you that flexibility, especially in the northern hemisphere in the winter time, there's less daylight hours. So that would really limit you if you're only a daylight shooter. Number three, flash gives you that flexibility to shoot day or night. Now reason four and this might be the most important reason for shooting with flash over a natural light. Now our eyes can see about 20 stops of dynamic range. So what that means is when we're outside and we look up at the sun, our eyes automatically adjust and we can see about 20 stops. But your camera might only see 10 to 14 stops of dynamic range. So if you're shooting a natural light and the sun's behind your subject, you have to make a choice. Do you want to expose for your subject or do you want to expose for the background? Now with flash, you can get a perfect exposure on the background. So not blowing out any highlights, but then of course your subject would be too dark if you were shooting with natural light and you'd have to bring up your shadows, which would add noise to your image. But by bringing in a flash, you can get a proper exposure on the background and then a proper exposure on your subject. So I think reason number four for me is one of the biggest reasons to use flash. Now reason number five is that you can use a speed light like the one behind me. You can put that on top of your camera. So you have a very portable setup if you're at an event or a wedding and you're going to get accurate exposure of your subject. So you can have something portable like a speed light or you can move up to something bigger like a strobe, but really whatever works for you, flash will give you more portability to get accurate exposures regardless of the environment you find yourself in, which brings us to number six. Now with flash, you can position the height of your modifier to get the catch light in the perfect position in someone's eyes. So you want to aim for between 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock. So if you're looking at your subject, you want that flash to be between 10 o'clock or 2 o'clock. Now if you're too high, you won't see the catch light in the eye and if your modifier is too low, it'll look too low in the eye. So when you're shooting your portraits, make sure you get that position right. Now again, if you're shooting natural light, it might be hard to control the position of that catch light and that makes a big deal. So that's another reason why I think flash is better. Number six, you can control the height of the catch light in the eye. Now reason number seven is if you're using flash, you can use colored gels with your flash to get effects. That'd be pretty hard to do in natural light, but if you're using the speed light like the one behind me, you can get a small little gel, you can put that over and you can get different colors, you can get blue, you can get red, you can get purple and you can really create some interesting effects using gels and you can't really do that as easily if you're using natural light. Now because this is YouTube and the internet, I know people are going to disagree with me, but I want you to ask yourself this question. If you were shooting a blockbuster movie and you were the director of photography, would you like more control over your lighting? So would you like to be able to bring in lights, gels, be able to control the lighting in a scene, or would you like to just shoot your movie entirely in daylight? Now if you think about it, shooting a movie entirely in daylight is going to be a lot more difficult because if you move indoors, you'll have to be by a window. So I think that kind of defeats the whole, oh, I only like natural light because flash looks fake. Well if you think about it, every movie or television show that you watch that's shot indoors is using artificial lighting sources. So they're not using natural light at all. They're using artificial constant lights. But when we move outside as photographers, it's easier to have a strobe because it's a quick flash duration. If you were powering, you know, continuous lights on a shoot, it's just going to take up more battery power. So that's why we use flash. So if you think about that, you're looking at fake looks then, according to some people on the internet. If had people say, I don't like flash, it looks fake. Well that means that every movie you watch or every television show you watch must look fake to you. So I think that whole argument is flawed. So if you disagree with me, I'd like you to list three reasons why you think natural light is better than flash. So instead of just saying flash looks fake or I don't like flash or I prefer natural light, try to come up with three convincing reasons why you think that natural light is better than flash. I'd love to hear your opinion on that. Thanks for watching this video. Give me a thumbs up for this video if you found it helpful. 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