In this video I tried three different flashes to find out if bigger really is
better when it comes to shooting portraits in harsh sunlight.
Hello I'm Gavin Hoey and watching AdoramaTV, brought to you by Adorama the
camera store that's got everything for us photographers and today you join me
on location and I'm joined by Iffy who's going to be my model for the shoot and the
shoot is quite a challenging one because we wanted to shoot up against the
stairs here, which are a great location.
However we've got here and the sun is full-on it's extremely bright.
I can't shoot with Iffy in the shade because if I do is going to end up
looking like a silhouette which is really weird
so I've got to work out how much flash power I need to overpower the ambient
and create a dramatic shot. Now I've got a bunch of different flashes to do it,
I'm using a manual flash so no TTL, no high-speed sync, nothing like that it's
simply a matter of putting my camera to its faster shutter speed for flash sync.
Which on the Olympus EM-5 Mark II is 320th of a second. Choosing an ISO that's nice
and low like a hundred ISO and working out what aperture I'm going to get. Let's
start without any flash first of all. Sorry about this Iffy, this is going to be
really bright. Ahh painful yeah. Okay and in manual mode if I take a meter reading
here I'm actually getting a meter reading of
f/5 in fact f/5.6 that's pretty good.
Let's see how it looks.
It looks kind of contrasty it’s not too bad but it's not
exactly brilliant. That's where the flash is going to come in. So the first flash
I'm going to try is just the the Streaklight lithium-ion zoom speed light and
this is a great little speedlight because it's quite powerful
in fact I'm going to put the power all the way up to maximum. Now how much light
is that going to produce honestly I don't know so let's get a meter reading.
Now I like using flash meters they give me confidence and control. All I've done
is set my meter to the same shutter speed 320th, ISO 100 and it will tell me the
aperture I need for correct exposure when I hold it underneath Iffy’s chin.
I'm getting f/8. So I'm getting one
stop more light out of this guy then from the ambient on its own.
That's pretty good I'm actually quite surprised about that I didn't think it'd
be that bright. All I need to do then is to dial in f/8, take the shots.
Here we go. Again that's perfect, same spot. That work really well. I’m quite
impressed with that. It’s perhaps not the most overpowering of the ambient light
I've ever seen but with one speed light that's quite good. What would happen
if I had a more powerful light?
Let's get this out the way, bring something bigger in. So this time I've got
the same light modifier it's still a Westcott Rapid Box duo but inside is
now my favourite flash, the Streetlight 360. 360 watt seconds of light that
should be pretty powerful in theory it should be a lot more powerful than the
speedlite. Well let's find out.
I've actually got it set to a quarter power at the moment and if I just get my
little light meter do the same light meter reading again. I'm getting f/11 at
quarter power. So that's already one-stop more than I was getting with the
Streaktlight speedlight at full power.
So let's try f/11. Same exposure, same shutter speed, same ISO. So let's see how
that goes.
Yeah and that's darker, the ambient light that sky is now considerably darker than
it was before but of course that's only at a quarter power.
What happens if I go all the way up to full power. Now in theory when you double
the light you add a stop and when you double it again you had another stop so
this should be what f/16, f/22 but is it,
let's find out. No it's f/18, I'll double check to be sure.
Yep still f/18 why isn't f/22? Well the harsh reality is although these things
in theory should happen in a nice linear steps, in reality that doesn't always
happen. That why having a flash meter is always such a good idea just a double
check everything.
Nonetheless that's still brighter so let's dial in f/18, same shutter speed,
same ISO. The ambient light should be much darker now.
Ok again look at the underside that's great for me.
Yeah that's terrific.
As you can see that looks completely different. Now we’ve really
overpowered the ambient. That blue sky has gone very, very deep blue. So my final
light is this guy here which is an Explorer 600 from Flashpoint. It's a
600-watt second light rather than 360 of the last one so it's almost a whole stop
brighter. Which should mean that it should be a hole stop brighter but
notice that I've had to change the softbox I don't have a Wescott softbox
that will fit this Bowens mounted flash. That might have a difference because
light modifiers well they modify light and they'll do it slightly more
efficiently or less efficiently, bigger or smaller than each other. So let's see
if I do get an extra stop here we go.
It's on full power but I'm still getting f/18. I'm still getting the same power
settings. Will the light spread be different?
Well let's take a picture and find out.
As you can see those two shots are very similar
even though the lights that make the shots and the modifiers are slightly
different. Yup they're always going to be slight variations but sometimes having a
more powerful flash doesn't always equal more light especially when the size of
the softbox or modifier you’re using increases in size too. So that's worth
remembering.
It's not just power there's more to it than that.
This really was a great
location and even though it's in full Sun on a really hot summer's day I think
we came up with some really good shots.
The flashes and the different modifiers they all played their part in creating
the final look. It's amazing how having a different flash will give me more
control over the light. It’s not always the case of bigger-is-better either which is
interesting lesson for everybody. So if you wanna see more videos for myself and
the other amazing presenters right here on AdoramaTV you know what you gotta do,
you gotta click on the subscribe button.
I'm Gavin Hoey thanks for watching.