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Friday, April 29, 2011

Filed under: Market Served •Extreme •Nature •Sports •Stock •Travel •Products •Lighting •Technique •

Creative Use of High Speed Sync

Tom Bol | 04/29

Use high speed sync to add mood to your shot.

image

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.’

Take the image used here.  I was shooting a fly fisherman the other day around noon, and the sun was very bright.  To create mood in the image, I decided to use my 45mm PC-E tilt shift lens.  This lens allows me to swing the lens plane left or right and really create out of focus areas.  I tried the image without flash, but it just didn’t have much pop with available light.  I decided the best approach was to add flash, so I set up my Ranger with sports reflector about 40 feet away.  To trigger the flash and use high speed sync, I used a Pocket Wizard Flex MiniTT1 and ST4 receiver on the Ranger.  Since this allowed me to use any shutter speed I wanted, I was able to shoot at F2.8.  I used a shutter speed of 1/8000 and an ISO of 320.  Using F2.8 and the tilt shift lens allowed me to throw things way out of focus, and the flash brought some life to the fisherman.

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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.

image

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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