About technique and more.

The shutterspeed mystery/nonsense

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You don’t want to know how often people ask me about this topic, and how many cameras are “destroyed” online due to a so called limitation of shutterspeed when working with strobes, but also strobes are destroyed online because they don’t work as people think. So I thought it would be helpful to write a very short blogpost explaining how it works.

 

X-sync
When you take a picture a lot happens in the camera but in short you can see it like this.
The shutter opens, the first shutter curtain starts to open and after an X amount of time the second curtain follows covering the sensor and the mirror flips back up.
Now this X amount of time is of course variable and will change with the shutterspeed.
As you can image there is a point where the second curtain actually is following the first curtain pretty quickly and this is where the problem lies for people to understand strobes. When the two curtains are closing so close to each other this means that there is NO point in time where the WHOLE sensor is lit by the light, it’s always just a small part (bigger part by slower speeds, smaller parts by higher speeds).

 

Now when we start using strobes you can imagine that it’s important to choose a moment where the whole sensor is available to catch the light.
And this is what we call the X-Sync speed, X-Sync speed is always the maximum speed in which a sensor is 100% free of a curtain or any other thing blocking the light so it can catch the whole light emitted by the strobe. In most FULL FRAME DSLRs this is around 1/125 to 1/250 although most cameras will be between 1/125 and 1/160. All my Canons for example topped out at 1/125 when using radio triggers and barely 1/160 when using the cable.

 

Yes indeed with a cable it’s possible that you get a little bit extra.
Now why do people think that you can get much higher sync speeds with strobes?

Nadine Juli 27 2013 12859-Edit Read more

The simple light

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According to some you always need strobes, according to some you never need strobes.
According to me you have to vary, use whatever you have available but most of all use it all.
Today a sample with some tips of how to transform a scene completely with the use of light, many thanks to Nadine for her amazing styling and posing.

 

Let’s first see how this scene looks with strobes.
Oh by the way this location is an old building just across the street from our studio, and streets here are 10 mtrs 😀

Nadine November 11 2013 (273 of 435)-EditIn this shot I just aimed the Elinchrom Ranger RX with Maxilight + grid straight at the model, a very simple setup that creates a high contrast image with a nice vignetting effect, but in this shot it’s all about the shirt, now let’s see what happens if we start chancing or own angle.

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Sony A7r with Leica R glass

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As many of you asked me about 3rd party glass on the Sony I’ve decided to do some testing this weekend with different convertors and glass.
Many thanks to our friends at CameraNU.nl for lending us the convertors.
Before you look at the samples do remember that the samples (and crops) are not straight out of the camera… well almost, the only thing I do with retouching is change the color and retouch the skin, so there is no “freaky” stuff going on, all retouching I do is always done within a few minutes per shot, for the crops it doesn’t matter but I did want to mention it.

 

Now the first thing I REALLY like about the A7r is the compatibility with so many different lenses out there, with the Kipon convertors I already can mount M42, Leica M and Leica R glass but with the Metabones convertors you can even mount Nikon and Canon glass (including the AF on some lenses from Canon, but VERY slow) which makes this system I think the best camera out there for compatibility, I know a lot of Leica shooters out there are drooling over the option to use their glass on a 36MP camera with the dynamic range of the Sony.

 

The first test is with a Kipon convertor for Leica R glass.
Here you see the two cameras next to each other.

Leica en Sony-1 On the Sony you see the 50mm f2.0 with Kipon and on the R4 a 135mm lens.
As you can see the Kipon does add some “body” to the A7r but it’s still a nicely balanced combination, and even with the 135mm I never actually felt that it was unstable or “too” long.

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Work with different lights in the same location

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One of the things I always try to “push” towards the attendees during my workshops is maximizing the looks you can get from one location. Most photographers will start out on a location and decide whether or not to use strobes for example, and…. well that’s it, they will shoot the location with (or without) strobes.

 

In my opinion that’s a waste of a great opportunity, when you setup for strobes it’s very easy to also shoot some images without strobes (just power down your trigger), in this blog post a sample of the same location shot once with natural light and once with strobes. As you can see you get 2 complete different looking sets from the same location, this way your client can always choose.

 

The shots were taken with the new Sony A7r.
As you can see in the natural light shots the dynamic range of the camera is pretty impressive, there is still detail in the windows, and when you pull back more highlights you can even see some trees but somehow I found that not fitting for the natural light shots.

Sanne Suikerfabriek October 31 2013 -47

 

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