Adventures in High Speed Sync

Just back from a weekend in Chicago where I shot the river being dyed green and the St. Patrick's Day parade. I changed things up a little this time around, relying more on the cameras to make exposure decisions; a little bit outside my comfort zone!

For gear, I kept it (relatively) simple - Canon 5D and 1D Mark IIn bodies, 17-40 f4 and 70-200 f4 lenses and one 580EXII flash with TTL cable. I knew that I'd want to get wide shots of the river dyeing and close-ups of the boats, so the lenses were in the right ranges. Looking back, an even longer zoom would have been useful, but I don't need one enough to have bought one!

Normally, Chicago is cold and overcast in March for the river dyeing. This means one has to bundle up against the cold, but the lighting is soft and even - perfect for shooting the river. This year, however, Chicago was sunny and warm - great for being outside, but the harsh sunlight cast shadows across the river. The Mark IIn made short work of this, however. Instead of my usual Manual exposure mode, I switched it to Aperture Priority at f4 (and ISO 200 for a faster shutter speed) and AI Servo mode for focusing. The camera was in its element, capturing perfectly exposed and in-focus shots in both sunlight and shade at 8 frames per second. It was almost too easy!



For the parade shots, I wanted to use the flash to single out people and their outfits and under-expose the ambient. In bright sunlight, that means high shutter speeds and a fill flash with High Speed Sync. High Speed Sync lets you shoot flash above the usual sync speed. It comes at the cost of 1 to 2 stops of light as it uses pulses of light instead of a single flash, but the 580 EX II has enough power for most situations. I put the flash on the TTL cord so I could aim it at the subject and set the exposure in Manual mode to under-expose the sky by about 2 stops. This ended up being about 1/2000th at f4 (ISO 100). Shooting at 17mm meant the flash would only cover a portion of the frame, which is what I wanted. In fact, I zoomed in the flash a little, to 50mm, which made the flash coverage even smaller but gained a little more output. I shot into the sun, using it as a rim light and filling in the shadow with flash.


My friend James had a similar idea, it seems. He and shot the parade on Greenville Ave in Dallas. In his photos, he kept his 580 EXII on the hotshoe with a Sto-fen Omnibounce and shot in Aperture Priority mode at f2. He set exposure compensation at -1EV which underexposed the ambient and made the flash-filled subject stand out. The softened flash blended well with the soft ambient - he had the benefit of cloud cover for his shots! At f2, focus can be tricky, but the background will blur nicely and James used this to great advantage, particularly in his close-up portraits.

Interestingly, if James had been shooting Nikon, this setting wouldn't have given him the same results. Nikon couples the ambient and flash exposures, so a -1EV setting in aperture-priority mode would under-expose both the ambient AND the flash exposure. To get the flash to fill in a correct exposure, a +1EV flash exposure compensation would have been needed. This changes with the new Nikon D4; the exposures are separate in the new flagship body.


High Speed sync can only be achieved using proprietary flashes and can be quite an investment, but for getting great results in a short amount of time, it can be invaluable. Photographer Nick Fancher shows this off very well in this video, an inspiring look at speedy workflow and a must-see for high speed sync shooters.

The rest of my Chicago photos are here.


more later soon

Waiting on my Lytro

Back in September 2011, I started reading about Lytro, a company making a plenoptic or "light field" camera. The camera captures images in an entirely different way to conventional cameras. Instead of capturing the light on one focused plane on the camera's sensor, the light field camera uses a mico-lens array to capture 11 million light rays at every distance. This allows for refocusing of the image after the fact and a much faster capture time as the focusing step is removed.

In October, the company invited the public to pre-order one of these cameras - the first consumer light field camera. I weighed up the pros and cons of ordering one of these and after a little self-deliberation, I decided to take the plunge. I did so because I think that a technology like this, that could revolutionize the way we take photos, should be supported. While the advances of a second iteration of any product usually come as a result of the investment of early adopters' purchases, I wanted to be on the ground floor of this technology! I wanted to be one of the first plenoptic camera photographers! Why not?

Months later, the vague "February/March" shipping date for the new cameras is here and I eagerly await its arrival. The company recently sent an email stating that the cameras should start shipping later this month. Another batch (presumably only to fulfill pre-orders) will ship in April/May, which makes it sound like it might be June before these will be widely available. That's assuming there's a demand, of course. By then, I plan on having a detailed review of the camera on this blog and a healthy collection of photos taken with the camera.

Nest Of Scorpions 2011

I recently headed out to the desert in California with some friends and took some time to take photos of the great sunsets out there. Of course, I brought some flashes and thought I'd share how a simple one-flash setup can make for some good-looking shots!



In this first shot, I got the exposure right for the sunset in the background. It was slightly underexposed to bring out the colors in the sky, but it made the foreground completely black. Not to worry, I brought a Vivitar 285 flash (my favorite!) and a 43" silver reflective umbrella with me.





With the flash on a stand just off to camera right, and set to half power, the foreground suddenly comes to life and you can see the people on the swing. The light from the silver umbrella has a great soft look to it. Also, the silver gives you a little more output than a shoot-through or a white reflective umbrella, which is useful when shooting outdoors. By balancing the two light sources - the sky and the flash, you can get a very natural shot that captures all of the colors that you would see if you were there.

Another trick I use is to gel the flash with either a CTO or CTS ("straw") gel and change the white balance on the camera to tungsten. (I use a full straw and set the white balance to 3000K a lot of times) This renders the sky a nice shiny blue and is a great look for shooting people.

Happy Belated 4th!

I hope everyone had a great time watching fireworks this weekend! I'm sure some great photos were taken and the folks over at American Color Imaging are counting on that. They're having a 25% off special from now till the end of July. It's the perfect time to order a nice big print on metal!

Google+

Like many people that use social networking sites to promote their businesses, I am very curious about Google+ and anxiously await my invitation to join!
In the meantime, here is a great article about how photo sharing looks and works on Google+.
It sounds promising!

Technique: Vans Warped Tour Pre-Party Shoot

Recently, I was asked to shoot an event for the Dallas Observer and I shot it in a way that I had been wanting to try for a while. I was shooting the Warped Tour Pre-Party and it involved shooting bands on stage and people in the crowd, so it meant that I would be moving around a lot. My go-to setup for shooting stages is two Vivitar 285s on either side of the stage. For shooting crowds, I've been using an on-camera Canon 580EX II through a ring flash adapter that triggers a handheld Canon 430EX II.
The 430EX acts as the main light with the ringflash as an on-axis fill. The nice thing about using the (expensive) Canon flashes is that exposure is controlled by the flashes and ratios between the flashes can be set on the 580EX. It allows for easily setting up different looks. I usually don't like relying on the flash/camera to determine exposure, but this setup works surprisingly well.

For this shoot, though, I really didn't want to bring light stands and four different flashes - too much gear. I knew I had to use flash, but I wanted to use as little gear as possible.

The setup I had been wanting to try was one I saw in the Bill Cunningham New York documentary. In the movie, Bill uses a single Vivitar 285 attached to the camera by a flash cord to shoot events. The 285 has a sensor on the front that can be used to automatically control the flash output. You set the aperture on the camera according to a calculator dial on the side of the flash and every exposure comes out close to that aperture. It's definitely low-tech, but the 285s have been used since the 70s (then with film cameras, obviously) to make some great photos. I ended up pulling out one of my 285s and after briefly testing this setup decided to try this out in the field.
I have sealed lead acid (SLA) battery packs for my 285s, which allows me to shoot thousands of uninterrupted flash photos and greatly improves recycle times. Coupled with a wireless flash trigger, my setup was complete. A sort of modern update for the single 285 setup.
The sensor on the front of the Vivitar 285 is surrounded by a dial that is used to control the flash output. There are manual settings that put out a set amount of light and don't use the sensor, and there are automatic settings that rely on reflected light hitting the sensor to determine when to shut off.
The automatic settings are chosen by color. I used the yellow setting, which uses the least amount of flash output, so I could use a nice wide aperture. At ISO 200, it outputs at f2.8. For my EF 24-70mm lens, this was a good setting, allowing me to shoot with the lens wide open. However, 24mm wasn't wide enough for me, so I switched to my EF 17-40mm lens. This lens only opens up to f4, so switching the camera to ISO 400 meant that the flash settings didn't have to change.
I would use the 285 handheld and point it to whatever I wanted to light up in the frame. The light from the 285 isn't wide enough to cover everything captured at 17mm, so it allowed me to light certain areas of the frame and not others. Trying to light everything in the frame means having to get creative. Fortunately, I like the selective lighting look that is necessary with this setup.

The setup was a complete success with very few exposure surprises. I would definitely suggest this simple setup if the single flash look is the look you're going for. The nice thing about using the 285s, other than the fact that they're relatively inexpensive, is that they can be used for up-close portraits, but are also powerful enough to light up entire rooms. This versatility made the pre-party shoot a breeze, as I was doing both of these things.

Here's an example of a shot where the 285 lit up the whole room.

Since the flash is handheld, it can be placed below the face to light up under the brim of a hat.

Here, only the subject on the right is lit by the flash

Shooting the crowd up close

This is the very recognizable 'single-flash-up-high' look

For shutter speeds, I usually stuck around 1/40 - 1/60. For a certain look and to allow more ambient light in to the photo, I would slow it down, sometimes as much as half a second. The 1/60 setting is a comfortable one, though, since this was the fastest that most film cameras could sync with the flash. It's the X-sync speed, so it brought back memories of when I only shot film.

This light and easy setup worked really well and is one I'll be using again in the future.

I don't know if anyone even reads these posts, but if you do and find it interesting or have learned anything, please let me know!

Lytro

If, like me, you've been waiting for the next 'big thing' to happen in photography, well, this might be it!