In this video
I'll show you how standard flash
compares to the high-speed sync flash
when shooting portraits on location.
Hello I'm Gavin Hoey
and you're watching AdoramaTV
brought to you by Adorama
the camera store that's got everything
for us photographers
and today you join me on location
because I'm going to tell you why
high-speed sync might just be
the best thing for your location portraits.
Now my location today
is the Gatwick Aviation Museum
right next to Gatwick Airport,
you may hear a few planes.
A fantastic location,
but even more fantastically
I've got Kerry as my model
and as you can see Kerry
is all ready to go as an aviator
which kind of fits in
with the theme of this shoot.
So my idea is really simple.
I want to take the ambient light
and under expose it
by a stop, stop and a half, two stops
to really get some drama from the sky
and the background.
Now in order to do that
I can play with my three things
of the exposure triangle
my shutter speed, ISO and aperture.
ISO really simple,
the Olympus E-M1 Mark II
has a native ISO of 200
that's where I'll be.
The shutter speed,
I'm going to use flash
to light Kerry,
so I would be with the flash sync speed
of 1/250 of a second normally
and that leaves me the aperture,
so let's see if we use those two
settings what aperture I get
and my camera is going to tell me correct
exposure -2. It is currently at f/16.
Now if I take a picture of Kerrie at f/16,
1/250, 200 ISO
without the flash,
not surprisingly,
I get a darkish background
and a very dark Kerrie,
well that makes sense,
so we're going to light Kerrie with the flash.
So let's get the flash turned on.
Let's get a flash meter
and we'll see how much light
actually reaches Kerrie.
So I'm shooting at f/16.
That's how much light I need
from this flash.
Okay f/16 so the flash
reads the same as the camera f/16,
let's take that shot
and that works really well.
Kerrie is correctly exposed by the flash.
The background is how I want it
but because we're shooting
with quite a small aperture
I'm getting a lot of depth of field
and that background is just too sharp.
This is where high-speed sync
really comes to the rescue.
If you don't want a really sharp background
you need to have a different
aperture number but
I can't go over 1/250 of a second
unless you turn on high-speed sync.
So let's turn that on
and now I can actually
increase my shutter speed
all the way up
to 1/8000 of a second.
Now that is five stops different,
I can open up my aperture.
Let's go f/2.8.
Now again I can actually take a shot
at f/2.8 without flash
1/8000 of a second,
so I'm still getting my underexposed
background with those settings.
I can turn the flash on
but I can't use the meter anymore.
One of the downsides of high-speed sync
is flash meters whether
what I've got won't work,
so we need to do trial and error,
so let's turn on the flash
and we'll set it somewhere,
lets go for about half power
and we'll test that
and that looks just a little bit underexposed
so I can increase the flash
up to its full power
and we'll do one more shot
and it looks fantastic!
Nice light on Kerry,
great-looking underexposed backgrounds
but more importantly
the background is soft
and out-of-focus.
So what's going on?
How can the flash suddenly go beyond
the flash sync speed and what is that?
So to understand that
we need to look inside your camera.
So inside your camera is a
curtain that covers the sensor.
When you press the shutter,
that rises, exposes a sensor
to the flash
at the end of your shutter speed
a second curtain
shuts the sensor off to light
and that's 1/250 of a second
or slower usually for the whole
sensor to be exposed when the flash fires.
If you go beyond that
part of the sensor
is covered by the second curtain
when the flash fires, that's where high
speed sync comes in,
because it pulses the light
as the two curtains move
across your sensor
effectively filling in the sensor
as the curtains go.
It's an incredibly complicated thing to understand
but you don't have to
because it just works.
So whilst this sounds
absolutely fantastic and it is,
there are some downsides
you need to be aware of
and the first one is,
you lose power from your light.
Which is why I'm using the Flashpoint Explore 600,
which is a very powerful flash
perfect for high speed sync on location.
Next thing is all that flashing means
that you will drain the battery
quite quickly as well,
so do make sure we have a fresh battery
in there. Then there's a
fact that I can't use my favorite flash meter
with this it just doesn't register
the pulses as one single flash.
There are meters out there that will
this isn't one of them
and finally high-speed sync
is unique to every camera manufacturer.
So you need to make sure you get the
right trigger and flash combination.
So for example on my Olympus system,
Micro Four Thirds system,
I'm using the Flash point Zoom-Mini O,
O for Olympus.
There are other triggers
for Canon and Nikon
and Sony and so on,
but make sure you get the right one
for your system okay.
That's the basics.
Let's do a few shots like this
and see what great pictures
we can get.
So Kerry are you ready?
Okay lets take some pictures
Well there we go.
We got some great shots
here at the Aviation Museum.
Kerry did a wonderful job
and the high-speed sync
made all of the difference.
Now remember high-speed sync
isn't your only options for doing this,
you could use ND filters for example
or do something obvious
like come back when the light levels
are less bright at the beginning
and the end of the day.
Now if you've enjoyed this video
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I'm Gavin Hoey thanks for watching.