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High Speed Sync Q&A

Lesson 7 from: Speedlights 101

Mark Wallace

High Speed Sync Q&A

Lesson 7 from: Speedlights 101

Mark Wallace

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Lesson Info

7. High Speed Sync Q&A

Lesson Info

High Speed Sync Q&A

If you're shooting high speed sink in with a shutter speed of under two hundred, does it, so it depends on what will happen is if you drop below your sink speed, it just acts normal, so it just works like it normally would. So there's just cut over on your camera that says, ok, normal flash, normal flash. Oh, now, do the bursts of light. Yeah, so it sinks it. Singh speaking slower acts normal above that it x differently. I did find the questions from nikon, rick, anyone to know if it was still overheat if you were under no. Yeah, so as soon as you get back down there, it's going to start working as it normally does. So one of the things that we're doing on the pocket wizards, those meanies in flex is one of the things that they do that's pretty amazing, as they have something called optimized, high speed sync it's one of those reasons people buy those, and so what it does is it gives you more light output per burst, so they've optimized each one of those little bursts, and you can tell...

those two little radios at what point you wanted to zip over to high speed sink, so some cameras were able to shoot at sing speeds that are faster than the published you know, so instead of two hundred you might need to get to fifty or three hundred in the pocket lizard, if you know that about your camera, you can say, you know what? Don't go too high speed sing until you get two, three hundred of those that's one of the advantages of a system like that is you can start dying in in so a question from being be king photo does uh, no, just be king photo does its part of the question does the shutters when you're in aperture priority mo, does the shutter speed change when the exposure when exposure compensation is change? Yes, so that we have that s o down here in our feet we have shut her and we have, uh, aperture and so in aperture party mode, we're sitting our s o sensitivity. We're sitting are aperture and then the cameras setting the shutter speed for proper exposure. And so then when you say I want mohr light using exposure compensation, it changes the shutter if you want less light changes to shutter says that shutters what's changing with exposure compensation that the answer is yes, I think so. Another question from sam cox when shooting an amateur priority mode at a low f stop wide aperture, does exposure compensation sometimes become limited by flashing speed? Yes yes that's what high speed think is all about so let's do this let's do a high speed sync thing in aperture party mode to demonstrate that exact thing and we thought of this before hand we have this big bright light right behind your head so we might fry your hair so we're going to d'oh is we're going to demonstrate this so um sarah let's have you come right over here and stand right here perfect and then john turn that thing on so we have a one thousand what really bright light in fact we're going to have you back up even more ok so I was shooting into a extremely bright light here um and what we're gonna do is show you the problems that you have in if you don't have high speed sink so I have is my flash is set to just normal ttcl there's no exposure compensation I have my camera set to aperture priority mood and I've said it to two point eight which is a really wide aperture for shallow depth of field okay I'm going to try to shoot this and we're being blinded by this light that's coming into the lens in fact it's so bright it's really hard for me to focus so I'm gonna focus really fast take a picture and what we have here is a shot it's at one hundred sixty eighth of a second so this will show up here so it is over exposed everything is over exposed we need a faster shutter speed than what we have so we have one hundred sixty of the second at two point eight we need to change that so I mean even to move you back even further so we have more of this light blasting in here they're so still a two point eight were to try to focus on where we go and it's telling me I have issues I have issues to hundreds of a second two hundredth of a second so this is going to show up here when it does you'll see I added more of this light back here at two hundredth of a second I can't get this challenge with the fuel have too much light and I know we're really exaggerating, so what I'm going to do is turn on high speed sink so I'm going to show you how to turn on high speed sync for having done that yet yes, can I ask you from am larson what is the what is the power that the flashes are on right now while you're doing it's on t I don't know it's just automatically going thank you right now I'm letting the ninja figure it out right? So yes, we're just letting the pre flash go so let me show you how to turn on high speed sync because I showed you what it was I didn't tell you how to turn up can I can owners there is a button right here that you push once and you get a little flash with an h high speed sync nikon owners it's different so what we'll do is we'll take our night covering put on live you we go and there's a there's a difference in um getting turned it off just for saying there is a difference and I got lines it there's a difference in the theology of canon and nikon and how they control their flashes nikon likes to control a lot of the flash functionality from the camera body instead of the flash itself cannon tries to control a lot of it from the flash instead of the camera body in the last couple of generations of camera body since the seventy for cannon really that has changed and so now a lot of canon cameras actually allow you to do custom functions in a bunch of stuff that we'll get to from the camera body instead of having to look up your manual and figure out what custom function five is and what that means so you can do different things so again the differences between cameras on dh things are different so to turn on heist the sink on a nikon what we'll do is you have to do that from the can't the body itself so we'll go teo bracketing and flash and then we're going to go to flash sing speed and then what this does is this sets the sink speed of your flash so on a nikon you khun say where you want that sink speed to start which is pretty cool so you tell the camera where the sink speed is this is something you can't do with a cannon to my knowledge there's this thing here called auto f p and so that in canon speak I mean in nikon speak is high speed sink so if you want to turn on high speeds thank you just select this and hit ok and what will happen is any time you roll over two hundred fiftieth of a second it will automatically go to high speed sync and when you hit two hundred fiftieth of slower it automatically goes back to normal so to turn on high speed sync on an icon you do it in the camera body and the nice thing about this nikon owners glowed again turn it on one's always on and it's smart enough to know when to go when to not go so ok that's a turn that on so now back to our demo back to our demo we've turned on high speed sync now let's blast me with light house back your hair on fire yet no ok lots of light so now we have high speed sync on still a two point eight still letting the t l figured out in other words, the auto stuff, the pre flash, the ninja it's going so I'm going to focus right on our on sarah, which is really difficult with you have light coming, blasting and like this someone should lock it it's so bright I can't even focus so he's going to go to manual focus, here we go, all right, you can hear that that was a really fast shutter speed, and so this will pop up and we'll compare these so this is the one that we had this is eight hundredth of a second can be sure the one right before that so eight hundredth of a second, the one before that, which was a two hundredth of a second, you can see that sarah is different now what we can do is we can also still do exposure compensation, so I'll do that by negative to to really dial and even more so I've got my focus going here. Bam o now look at this. What I did is I went to twenty five hundredth of a second by saying exposed to stop slower and we've almost eliminated this, but look what happened. Sarah now is also under exposed why? Because high speed sync is sucking out so much of the power of the flash it's having a hard time competing with that and so this is something that what we would do is maybe take our flash off camera to get a closer we may be used multiple flashes could do all kinds of stuff that we're not there yet this is, you know, the the part of this that's fun is seeing all of the issues that everybody sees and then figuring out what causes them so what's causing this is our high speed sync is sucking so much power from the flash that is having a hard time keeping up. So let's, try this let's take the flash exposure compensation. So let me show you how to do flash exposure compensation on I can, and I'm just pushing it on the back here, this little set button and rolling it up, I'm gonna go plus three pushing, okay? And I'm telling the ninja guy, take what you think is right and add three stops of power three times as much, like actually more than that, but, uh, more light, ok, so we're going to see if we can get more out of this flash, so I've got it blasting and we can get a lot more out of the flash la lots more, okay, so what happened? We have to go back in time to something in the back in time is can we show that first picture where we had sarah under exposed so what is happening here? Let's see if there's anybody that can guess what? Having an all this tell you remember the tl is stupid remember that the wall thing we talked about that this is the white right and what it's doing is it's saying it all needs to be gray and so it's taking this and it's averaging that in its under exposing this it's dumb so we have to do is say no no that's not right but I just did this intentionally just added way way too much light to say yeah we can get more like even in high speed sync but we had to figure out what the proper exposure compensation is to get this right imagine doing this at a wedding we only have one shot, right? So what this means is yet the practice a lot toe learn how your gear operates. Start understanding the distances between your flash and the subject on dh how that that operates so let's let's, just try this little bit so instead of plus three want to bring this down a little bit to about one and a third something like that's just a little bit more like not like the bow billion watts more like here and I'll take a shot, okay, this is still a little bit too much for my taste, but you'll see this next shot. We've taken that flash exposure down quite a bit. Okay, so we can dial that in, um, you know, this is not a scenario that I shoot a lot model close to a giant light and a studio. But if I did this on a daily basis, I think I could figure out that I need to be about a stop brighter in that kind of a thing on you. Get the point so high speed sync allows us to shoot it twenty five hundredth of a second of two point eight. You still dialling our exposure in control? All of that stuff, which is pretty fun. So john let's stop blaming us all let's. See what the questions are on that did that help for you guys here in the audience? Is that clarify some things? What questions do you have getting this? Nothing yet, not what I want. Okay. All right, what do we know? Yes, right. Okay. Um, so from do not hold mark is there a difference between the flash x closure switch on the flash and they flash exposures? Switch on the camera. Yes. So the difference is this the flash exposure compensations, which on the camera, depending on your camera, normally it can go either to stops or three stops and so on a cannon specifically when you go flash exposure more or less usually you're limited to about two stops unless you're on a d siri's then you can go three stops on the flash itself normally you can go all the way to three stops and so sometimes when you need to flash to give a little bit more you can't get there because if you use the on camera dial you're only going to stops so if you use the one on the flash itself you can get they're all the way to three on the nikon similar saying depending on the night can you have the flash exposure compensation on a lot on icons it doesn't even exist a lot of icons that it's on lee on the flash so on a nikon what you do is you have again you just used the dial right here you can push that and you can dial it up down just like on the cannon to change your flash exposure compensation on some night concert a lot of night cons there is no flash exposure compensation dial you have to do it on the flash itself and again different icons have and don't different cannons have and don't that's why I said at the beginning many variables I just wanted to let you know a couple comments bernard custer said that you rock mark oh yeah iraq you're opting and also just great explanation about mike on cannon so wanted to thank you for that um let's see so many questions question about non camera branded speed lights from dale from england I don't know if you want to get into that right now, but do they do it a decent job? But is it worth getting the camera ground speed light instead? Yes and that that is a really great question, so let me talk to that um if you have a nikon camera and you have a nikon flash or you have a cannon camera and cannon flash or sony camera and a sony flash, what happens there's more going on than just the output of the light there's a lot of stuff that we haven't gotten to yet and so if you have like a visitar or a oh there's a million different brands of quantum and other flashes, they don't do a lot of things that your brand impaired flashes do specifically they don't communicate things like color temperature of the flash they might not zoom um and match the angle of view of your camera they might not automatically since the sensor size in your camera they might not allow you to do things like spot meandering and setting exposures in your camera like the d siri's cannons there's a bunch of things, so my recommendation is unless you have a good reason also auto focus that's another thing that may not happen correctly and a lot of lenses canyonlands cannon body camera flash that all works together as a system, same with mike on sony, olympus the works and so if you bounce from canon teo the guitar or whatever, you probably are dropping out a bunch of that stuff that you don't even know you're gonna get the benefit of. So, um, I think that unless you have a really good reason, you should stick with your brand so can get a candidate and I couldn't get a night gone olympus getting olympus way. You do have a quantum here that we're gonna be showing you because it's spectacular, but it doesn't do a lot of things that it could do, all right? And I just want to say, lois, j there you go with the olympus, she says, why does olympus cameras always get left out? I'll tell you why I think what we have, I don't know thousands of people, thousands of people watch now I'm guessing less than a hundred having olympics camera, so they haven't olympus we'll say hello and if not sorry a question from mario, abc, can you go and remind us the difference between t t l t l and e t o yes, teo through the lens metering tio nikon version of through the lens monitoring the gto is cannons version of through the lens monitoring and it has to do with the system and how the camera uses matrix metering evaluative metering order the meeting moods are so basically through the lens metering says my camera and my flash depending on what brand it is can actually meet her through the lens tio specifically with canada's tl too which is better not only visit meter but it conveys information about color temperature the lens that you're using the sensor size that you're using and all kinds of different autofocus that stuff so that's built in so basically I tl is nikon tl is cannon normal t tl is from days past I think that's teo teo teo I'm using those sort of interchange bleed there's not a word but we'll go there you'll make it a work I just made it a word in order okay zero sonic o would like to know so if you add two stops of the exposure on the on the candid camera and plus three explosion on the flash you get a massive total of what plus exposure they're two different exposures you get two more stops ambien and you get three more stops of flesh you don't add those two together because remember they're two different things if I say hello to you I haven't said hello to kenya they're two different things but why wouldn't you say hello to me? I did say howdy okay um so high speed saying jimmy rooney says I don't understand the need to switch tow high speed sync and why the camera won't go above two hundred what is changing so what changing is that? Those shutters the shutters we show you the first curtain in the second curtain if you don't go to high speed sync, what will happen is the second curtain is blocking the light coming from the flash so maybe you missed the animations you might have to rewind and go back and watch the re watch but um that's what's happening if you don't turn on high speed sync, you're gonna have the shutter blocking some of the flash so remember when we did the little drama the shutter was completely open the flash came on and went off and came through there if things were out of sync, what will happen is when the first curtain opens and the second curtain iss is closed you know so it's faster than that's the first curtain opens up, but the second curtains is covering part of the sensor. When the flash fires, you'll only get a slit of light illuminating that so we actually we have some manual flashes and I think maybe during lunch will bring one up and we'll show you well actually fool the system so it doesn't know to go there and we'll show you what it looks like when you when you blow past sing speed, you can't do it with the flashes on the camera as we have them now because it doesn't allow it, but we can make intricate question from s w p um, they'd like to know should I be using evaluative or average metering in the flash settings on my cannon? There have been a lot of questions about how you're majoring. If your spot metering on a lot of canon cameras, it's jumps to value to me during as soon as you slide that flash on, so if you have it on any other mode, as soon as you put the flash on, it goes to a value of nikon that's called matrix metering. Eso the best thing to do for the best exposure is to use evaluative or matrix metering because it's the most advanced it's the currents, the latest we will show you on nikon flashes tomorrow there is something called t tl and there's something called tt e l f me are bl starring dj lbl, and it helps the camera to figure out, do you want me to meet her on this subject here, or you want me to meet her on the subject in the background and how to do all that stuff? So that's, really what meat oring changes is how the camera tells the flash to figure out what to eliminate best thing to do is to use evaluative because it's going to give you the best it's going to be the best results and really the thing is the media ring modes and how that works and doing spot majoring in flash exposure lock and doing some of these other things is so far beyond where we are right now if we jump to that place I think it's we're just going to melt our brains so we'll postpone that so judy be photography says ah ha is that why I can't use manual mode on my flash ball attached to the body I keep getting an air message when I try no there's something wrong something wrong? So uh is it what kind of camera? Well that we have to view that s o you shouldn't get in air message when you have your flash on your camera so uh in manual mode you should be able to put your camera on manu mode leave your flash on t tl you can control the ambient light manually and the flash will control the flash exposure automatically in separate those two so you should not get an error message you can check to see if the contacts or clean or maybe you have two different brands of flash that could cause it there's a bunch of different things not sure what's causing them but you should not get an air message okay a question from smoky, smoky islam key markets, flash duration always faster than shutter speed or is there a case when it's not? There are a lot of cases when it's not so shutter speeds can go up to about eight thousands of a second and if you have a flash that's a meeting a lot of light uh actually takes a long time for that light to actually come out of the flash sometimes it can take two hundredth of a second one hundred sixteenth of a second or sixty eighth of a second so some at times it can take longer than your your shutter speed so it varies and when you're looking for a flash there are big price differences in flash on dh so we'll find out that the higher priced flashes actually can have shorter flash durations and do a lot of other things as well. So there are significant values to spending the money and if if you're going to ask the question, which flash should I beilin answer it right now the most expensive one that matches your camera that's the that's the bottom line so if you have a can and I would wait, get the cannon six hundred e x, which hasn't shown up in the stores yet I don't think maybe has, um nikon getting sb nine ten olympus get the ellipsis murder you are one of that one is and yeah, so get get the one that's the high end one because you will use it for ten or fifteen or twenty years and they just work forever and so I actually have a bunch of flashes here that I bought years and years and years ago they still work great, but as we go through and start to show you the whole system auto focus the white balance that understanding the sensor size, the zoom stuff all that stuff we're going to get into this afternoon you will understand uh I really need that are least I really wanted yeah, it will really help you you know what? So we're going to go to shepherd priority mode next, however, it is eleven fifty five, eleven, fifty five means it time for lunch. So we're going to do is we are going to take a break for lunch and when we come back we're gonna continue this discussion because we still have the exposure triangle for ambient light you need to dial that and we have exposure triangle for shutter what we're discovering is that exposure triangle for shutter I mean not presented for flash uh, thanks for your triangle for flash it sort of changes based on the mode that we're in, so we've talked a lot about ambient aperture priority mode and how to dial that in and what exposure compensation does with aperture priority mode we need to dig deeper, though we need to really dig deeper into to how our shutter priority mode works to control ambient light and how the flash reacts to it that we really need to go to how manual mode works and how we can control both things. Because I think what you'll find is once we get to shut her priority mode and understand fully what's happening how that the two exposures air working in that mode and then finally land on aperture priority mode, those lightbulbs, we're going to keep going, right? Right? Right. So, really, what we're doing here is the concepts and the principles aren't changing. We have a new exposure triangle for ambient light. I also shudder aperture we have an exposure triangle for flash isso aperture output from the flash, they don't change, we're just going over them over them and over them and letting those very most change based on the ambient light distance from subject what camera were using, how we're using our flash to sort of just go through everything and as much detail as we can, because what we're finding is there are just hundreds and hundreds of variables.

Ratings and Reviews

Gary Hook
 

Mark's wealth of knowledge combined with his engaging and 'fun', experimental approach to teaching is a winner. I learned a great deal but what truly reinforces the learning is that he actually shows what he is talking about. He gets a question and quickly sets up the practical demo for the answer. Brilliant. Given that this session took place some time ago ( but by no means diminishishes the tremendous learning value) the lessons and knowledge are based techniques that will stand the test of time; however, if I was advising Mark on his teaching techniques, the main are a of 'focus' would be to be more effective with his demonstrations. He holds the back of the camera up, makes his point quickly and then moves on, just as the video is locking on. Great idea to talk about what button you are pushing, but when your fingers are obscuring the 'learning point' it diminishes the effectiveness of the demo. Overall great course which I will watch parts again and highly recommend it. Thank you PS Give both Kelsey and John and huge hug as they are all-stars making things happen!

Alexander Svishchenkov
 

Great! I'm so thankful to you, CreativeLive, for providing this great opportunity to learn an important subject of photography - Speedlights - from the professional Mark Wallace. He is such a good teacher and explains everything in real-life situations and on slides. As he fires his flash, I instantly see the resulting photo on my screen, so this is theory combined with practice. I'm in fact watching you from Belarus, and it's midnight, so I'm fighting with sleep, but I can't get myself away from the screen. this is my 1st CL experience. I'm very grateful for running a rewatch of the previous Day the following morning, so I woke up and saw what I'd missed. And it's totally free! Thank you so much for a true first-class education!

Aussie David
 

Truly a fabulous class. Mark has such a gift for taking a complex subject and making it so understandable and fun at the same time. Mark is easily one of the best instructors out there. Highly highly highly recommend this class.

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