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  | 11 August 2012 06:06 |
| Nick_Edinburgh Photographer  Location United Kingdom Edinburgh Edinburgh | Excuse my stupidity, but I can't see a good solution. I was shooting last weekend in bright sunlight, using fairly powerful portable flash to overpower the ambient light. But at the same time I'd like to be opening up the aperture fully, for max bokeh. The problem of course is that even on the lowest ISO it's going to be over-exposed. Is there any solution, other than using an ND filter? BTW, I was using Nikon D800 with f1.8 85mm lens, with Ranger Quadra lights. -- Oh, and I'm sure this has been answered a thousand times before, but how the heck do you include an example image from disk in a new topic posting like this? |
 | 11 August 2012 06:20 |
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| RedChecker Photographer  Location United Kingdom Buckinghamshire Stoke Mandeville | California Sunbounce do a rather clever piece of equipment called a Sun-Scrim which you could use between the model and background: http://www.sunbounce.com/sun-scrim-20-x-20-screen-no-moire-black Additionaly you can use their Sun-Cage to remove ambient light around the model: http://www.sunbounce.com/cage-fabric-no-frames Failing that, get yourself a MF body with leaf-shutter lenses. The latest Mamiya has built-in Profoto Air-Sync which when used with Profoto flash they are good for up to 1/1600th at ISO 50 IIRC |
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| If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit | ||
 | 11 August 2012 06:33 |
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| Hugh Photographer  Location United Kingdom Dyfed Aberystwyth | Cheaper options... 1) shoot film in a MF body with a leaf shutter lens - syncs up to 1/500. Yashicamat 124G for £100 or there's a very nice Bronica ETRSi setup listed in the for sale forum here at the moment for a little more. 2) Experiment with a compact - something like a Canon G11 - effortless fill-in flash - bokeh isn't so good, but you could help it along in Photoshop. |
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| It's not Fine Art just because it's in Black and White. | ||
| 11 August 2012 06:35 |
| mattharper Photographer  Location United Kingdom Devon Paignton | The only way I can see of overcoming this is with High Speed Synch flash, which I doubt you can achieve with portable flash units. My green hedge in the garden is well lit by sun now and at f2 on 100 ISO, the camera says it needs to shoot at 1/2000th of a second. My best advice would be ditch the flash and try using a reflector to light subject. You have said it was bright sunlight. This way, you can use whatever shutter speed you like. The issue you might have then is bright light in the subject's face and they may be fighting not to squint so positioning the reflector(s) is important. If necessary, two reflectors, but you will no doubt need an assistant. With the products Redchecker recommends, you would need two or three assistants and a bloody good bank balance. Shooting on location brings enough problems without having to set up a cage or scrim, not to mention the money. I think my Lastolite reflector was about £70, but you can actually make your own. Sometimes, it isn't about throwing money at a problem, there are other ways. |
| 11 August 2012 06:40 |
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| RedChecker Photographer Location United Kingdom Buckinghamshire Stoke Mandeville | If you can afford Pocket Wizard's TTL flash trigger system they have a feature called Hypersync which can work in two ways with large/studio flash units: 1 - you can fine tune your normal sync speed to be increased by up to a stop (depending on camera, flash used etc.) 2 - you can use Hypersync to take a 'slice' of the flash duration from the flash, admittedly this is not using the full amount of flash power but when your shutter speed is in the thousandths of a second it may just do the trick. |
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| If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit | ||
| 11 August 2012 07:00 |
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| Hugh Photographer Location United Kingdom Dyfed Aberystwyth | Buy a D70s just for outdoor flash use. I'd get one if I shot nikon. Shuter syncs at all speeds because it switches off the chip instead of narrowing the shutter aperture for faster speeds. http://strobist.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/q-controlling-sun-when-using-flash.html http://strobist.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/control-your-world-with-ultra-high-sync.html http://strobist.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/nikons-d7000-sync-dial-goes-to-eleven.html |
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| It's not Fine Art just because it's in Black and White. | ||
| 11 August 2012 07:00 |
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| Hugh Photographer  Location United Kingdom Dyfed Aberystwyth | Buy a D70s just for outdoor flash use. I'd get one if I shot nikon. Shuter syncs at all speeds because it switches off the chip instead of narrowing the shutter aperture for faster speeds. http://strobist.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/q-controlling-sun-when-using-flash.html http://strobist.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/control-your-world-with-ultra-high-sync.html http://strobist.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/nikons-d7000-sync-dial-goes-to-eleven.html |
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| It's not Fine Art just because it's in Black and White. | ||
| 11 August 2012 07:00 |
| Nick_Edinburgh Photographer  Location United Kingdom Edinburgh Edinburgh | Thanks! That's all really helpful food for thought to consider my options. Just as an afterthought, to those of bigger brains who understand such things... I can kind of naively understand why it's a fundamental technical challenge for camera manufacturers to push the high end of ISO without too much noise. (There just ain't enough photons hitting the sensor to work with.) But I find it harder to see why they can't more easily push the low end further. Do the sensors themselves have a basic physical limit to how much light they can cope with before the signal degrades in some other way? |
| 11 August 2012 07:04 |
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| RedChecker Photographer  Location United Kingdom Buckinghamshire Stoke Mandeville |  Quote from Nick_EdinburghBut I find it harder to see why they can't more easily push the low end further. I'd like to know this also. Plenty of times I'd have given an arm and a leg for an ISO of 25 or 12 |
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| If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit | ||
| 11 August 2012 07:14 |
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| BrazenDivas Photographer  Location United Kingdom Highland Inverness | Quote from Hugh Buy a D70s just for outdoor flash use. I'd get one if I shot nikon. Shuter syncs at all speeds because it switches off the chip instead of narrowing the shutter aperture for faster speeds. Does this apply to the slightly earlier D70 Hugh? |
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| "A technically perfect photograph can be the worlds most boring picture" Andreas Feininger | ||
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