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Thursday, April 21, 2011

Filed under: Market Served •Extreme •Sports •Products •Lighting •Technique •

Elinchrom Ranger High Speed Sync w/ Pocket Wizard

Tom Bol | 04/21

Achieve sync speeds over 1/2000 using an Elinchrom Ranger and Pocket Wizard Hypersync

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High speed sync is critical for the action sports shooter.  If you want to freeze action and use flash, your options are limited.  One choice is you could use high speed sync using speedlights and shoot at 1/2000 or faster, but the power output and effective flash range is greatly reduced unless you use multiple speedlights.  Another option is using studio strobe packs/heads and underexposing the daylight so that the main light illuminating your subject is the flash.  As long as the flash duration is fast, your moving subject should be sharp.  But what if you don’t want to underexpose the daylight 2-3 stops?  Of what if you want to shoot at a wide open aperture like F2.8 on a sunny day and use strobe.  Your shutter speed would be much faster than the standard 1/250 most cameras allow as their fastest sync speed.  Now everything has changed.  Using Pocket Wizard Hypersync technology, shutter sync speeds of 1/2000 and faster are possible using studio flashes.

I’m an Elinchrom Ranger user.  For years these battery powered packs have served me well in rugged remote location in harsh weather.  To use the Hypersync technology with a Ranger, you need three things: a Pocket Wizard Flex Mini TT1 or TT5, a ST4 receiver and the Elinchrom EL-19374 to attach the ST4 into the pack. Another important element; use the slower ‘S’ head instead of the faster ‘A’ head.  The slower head has a longer flash duration which allows faster sync speeds.  The Pocket Wizard website directs you on tutorials on calibrating the flash sync using Hypersync.  Sync speeds vary from camera to camera, flash pack model and head used.  I found using my Nikon D300s I was able to sync easily to 1/2500 and all the way up to 1/8000!  The image here was shot at 1/2500 at F7.1 at ISO 200, 1 Elinchrom Ranger used with a Freelite S head, standard reflector.  Now I can freeze the action and use wide open apertures! 

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Use gels on your flash for special effects.

Tom Bol | 05/11- 05:35 AM

Adding gels to your flash and changing white balance creates unique images.

I like to follow this principle.  “The more skills you have, the better your chances for success.”  I used to use this principle as a climbing instructor when teaching students rope systems.  Inevitably on some climb something wouldn’t go right, maybe a simple thing like getting a rope stuck.  The more rescue and climbing systems you knew, the better your chances of having a solution to fix the problem.
The same is true for photographers.  Every photographer has a story about a ‘photo shoot gone bad.’  Strobes don’t fire, talent doesn’t show up, permits aren’t in order.  What separates one photographer from another is how they deal with these situations.  Clients like photographers who have solutions, not problems.  Knowing more technical skills behind the camera also helps.  And one of my favorite things to do is add gels to flash to spice things up.

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Creative Use of High Speed Sync

Tom Bol | 04/29- 10:11 AM

Use high speed sync to add mood to your shot.

When most people think of high speed sync, they think fast shutter speeds and freezing the action.  True, shooting at 1/8000 with flash is going to freeze the action no matter what the main light source is illuminating the subject.  But what about other uses of high speed sync and flash.  Until the release of the Pocket Wizard Flex system and Hypersync (see my last post), I was often frustrated shooting in bright sun.  I needed an aperture of F16 to get the right exposure at 1/200, my fastest sync speed using my Elinchrom Rangers.  What if I wanted to use a wide open aperture like F2.8 to get soft focus and blur out the background?  The answer is use high speed sync for selective focus shots in bright, sunny conditions.  Maybe high speed sync should be called ‘soft focus sync.’

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