Tag Archive for: high speed sync

Outside fashion shot for sunglasses with extreme styling and flash Part III : let’s talk storytelling

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This is it

I think we can all agree that gear, lighting, styling, location etc. are all important for a successful shoot. Although during this workshop series we already saw that the location can be transformed quite easily from ok to wow by choosing the right angles and lighting/styling etc.

If you missed the previous ones you can read them here (highly recommended)
Let’s talk about the flash
Let’s talk about gear

Ok so now it’s about story telling, and what do I mean with story telling.

When we look back into history, even as far as the cavemen, the main reason to create “art” was to tell stories. Ranging from one man killing a Bison in the caves to whole paintings containing scenes from the Bible, and everything in between. Now of course there are also still lives and landscapes but I hope you know what I mean 🙂

When we look at what we see online today it’s a boatload of selfies, photos of food or things I can’t mention here. We are bombarded with a huge amount of images every single day. But when is the last time you really stopped to look at something? or when was the last time you were really impressed with an image?

Most of them probably have have the same element

And that’s story telling.
Now story telling can be done in just one image, but also in a series.

During the workshop on location in Emmeloord we find locations that are not immediately awesome, but I show the attendees how, together with an awesome model and styling in this case, you can transform those locations to something great with choosing the right lighting and shooting angles.

This is the second set of that workshop.
For this setup we went to the local beach, we chose a location with some trees behind Nadine and a slight rise.
Nadine brought a lot of Delfts blue we used as props spread around her.
Now the styling on it’s own already did a lot but when I saw that the umbrella was breaking down I decided to also use something else.

Manipulate the sun/ambient light

We talked about this technique a few times in the blog and during digital classroom episodes.
Dragging the shutter.
What I do outside to get the look I like :

  1. First I make sure my cameras EVF is in emulation mode
  2. I will set my camera to “manual” mode and the shutterspeed to 1/125 (when shooting without HSS) and the lowest ISO.
  3. Now I will look through the display and adjust the aperture till I think the scene looks like I want.
  4. Now I will set it ONE stop darker.
  5. Take the Aperture you see in camera for the look you like
  6. Use a lightmeter to meter the strobe at the aperture you liked
  7. start shooting with a shutter speed of 1/60 but with the set aperture

You might wonder why I shoot at 1/60
It’s very easy to explain luckily.
When shooting without HSS I can not shoot faster than 1/125 (sometimes 1/200) this means when I shoot with strobes and I think the background should be darker I have to adjust my strobes, or when I want to experiment I end up with different apertures, meaning different looks due to depth of field. This breaks the total look of a series and can sometimes work and sometimes not.

By adjusting the strobes one stop higher than I thought was perfect and lowering the shutter speed by 1 stop I’m getting the exact result I liked at the start with an added bonus. When I want the background darker I can raise my shutter speed to 1/125 or sometimes 1/200 and get a much darker background, but because I’m shooting with strobes I can also go as a low as 1/30 and sometimes even 1/15th this gives me a nice dynamic range to work with without breaking the look of the shot.

 

The weather

I’m nog just using this technique to adjust the look of the shot, but also to be able to react to changing lighting on location.
And in this case for story telling.
The following series was shot within 5 minutes, so the lighting didn’t really change, however because the umbrella was breaking down I decided to raise the shutter speed and make the whole scene look darker the more the umbrella broke down.

As you can see in the next series, changing the look of a scene by the shutter speed is fast and easy and has a huge impact on the photo. I love to use it.

Let’s first take a look at the gear used :

Annewiek is holding the lightstand on which the Geekoto GT200 is mounted with a large reflector aimed at the model.

And that’s all actually.
So let’s take a look at the results.

Model/Styling : Nadine
Sunglasses : Sparks

www.fotografie-workshops.nl for the Dutch workshops
www.frankdoorhof.com/shop for my gear

Break the 1/125 rule with Sony now….

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You all probably saw my review from the new Elinchrom Skyport and HS heads by now I hope, an amazing system and I can’t wait for the Sony version to be released. But…. if you’re like me and don’t want to wait for the Sony version and want to play with the creative options right now there is another solution that does almost the same. I have to say it’s not as versatile as the skyport and it will only trigger your strobe but it does it all the way up to 1/8000 of a second.

 
The Odin system from Phottix
For my small flash system I use the Phottix Odin system, and because I also owned it before the Mitros+ I also had some older receivers from Phottix. Now these 2 is all you need actually.

 

Just connect the Odin to your Sony camera and select HSS (High Speed Sync).
Now you can adjust the shutter speed on your Sony all the way up to 1/8000, if you don’t you’ll be stuck at 1/250.

 

Now just connect the Odin receiver to your strobe (it works for any strobe but we used a D-lite4 to test) and you’re all set. You can now shoot up to app 1/400 without any light loss on the D-Lite4 and up to 1/8000 with considerable light loss (which is normal because….well it’s how the system works, cutting the strobe and using the TTL pre-flash so it will never be full power), this is the same with the Skyport and it’s something you will have to get used to, using a light meter for example will be impossible for the simple reason that every strobe will react differently and even the power output will have some impact on the results.

 

Let’s fine tune it
At first you will loose a lot of light and this is due to the standard timing which we have to adjust (same as on the Skyports). To do this press the MODE and + Key for about 5 seconds and raise the ODS setting to 5. You’re image will be all black, now slowly start lowering that number until the black bars disappear.ODIN_ODS_Buttons_c640

ODIN_ODS_00_b600
We ended up with 1/8000 on F2.8 ISO400 which was very similar to what we achieved with the new skyport on the D-Lite4.
Now don’t think this is a better solution than the skyport because it’s not. The Skyport is better trigger because you can control your strobes, read the output, work very easily with the Elinchrom system etc. but if you already own an Odin or if you don’t use Elinchrom or Profoto strobes and you still want to break that 1/128 barrier, this is actually a pretty cool way.

 

Now waiting for the new skyport is not that hard anymore 😀
This is actually an option that was already inside the Odin transmitters and receivers but I never looked into it until someone on my blog gave me the idea and I tested it and much to my surprise and joy it works like a charm.

 

Now there are a few things you have to take into account
This will not work with most high-end strobes, the faster the flash duration the less the light output will be, the slower the strobe the better the results, this is also why Elinchrom released special HS heads that accommodate this perfectly. But if you have strobes that are in the budget range you will have a blast and actually do stuff that the more expensive strobes can’t…..

 

Again if you’re using the Elinchrom system it’s wise to wait for the Skyport to be released for Sony, or buy the present Canon/Nikon versions, in the end you will be saving money (the odin and receivers are more expensive than the Skyport and you need more receivers (one for every strobe)) but if you’re on another system this is actually a very solid and incredibly cool addition, plus the Odin system is a real good performer so maybe it’s time to change your current triggers for the Odin and double them for your small flash system.

 

 

And because video does more than words 😀

Outside with small flash using the sun

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One of the things that I love to do is including the sun in the frame.
Often photographers are afraid to do this, for…. well I don’t know.
During the small flash workshop we always try to do one set outside to create something that a lot of people think is not possible with the small flash system, a day to night scene.

 

The nice thing about small flash is that there is an option where you can use something called “HSS” High Speed Sync.
With this option you can shoot on higher shutter speeds than with studio strobes (which are almost always limited to 1/125), meaning it gets easier to “push away” the ambient light.

 

By adding two strobes together you get 1 stop more of power plus recycling etc. is much faster.
The following shots were done with this technique during the small flash workshop.

Nadine buiten Oktober 31 2014 28 - October 31 2014

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Fast shutter speeds with strobes…..

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I get this question a lot so a little post about it:

“Frank can I sync up to 1/8000 with xxxxx on Elinchrom (or any other brand)”

Marie fotoflits ELC Maart 8 2014 (35 of 56)-Edit
1. No you can’t and it will never happen.
Simple reason 1/8000 is the shutter speed and even if it was possible with a mirror less/leafshutter lens the flash duration is not 1/8000 so even with the new ELC you would be “stuck” at app 1/5000 and that’s not even true because there is a raise of the strobe so think more about 1/3000-1/4000 without loss of power.

 
2. No you can’t.
I know PW is doing a so called hyper sync but this will often only work with the slow strobes, like D-lites, S heads etc. and yes you can sync much higher but you will loose some output, but they are pretty unique with that feature and it has a lot of “things” that you have to make sure off, like camera brand, strobes, settings etc.

 

3. In short.
the limitation is NOT the strobes, it’s the camera and the way it operates. In the camera there is a shutter curtain which travels across the sensor, this is the black bar you see when shooting too fast.

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