The line drive at 1/400 = blurry seeds flying everywhere.

GANG LIGHT – Part 2: Just how fast a shutter speed do you need to freeze the seeds flying from a pumpkin that your teenage son is trying to drive over the left field fence? Also, how do you create beautiful light on a dreary, flat light afternoon in a way that let’s you shoot at a really fast shutter speed?

Fortunately, I had a dozen Canon 580EX II Speedlites and an arsenal of RadioPoppers (all on loan from their manufacturers) so that I could try to answer these important questions. As you’ll see below, the answer to the shutter speed question is “really, really fast.” The lighting question takes a bit longer to answer.

The base hit at 1/3200 = still a bit of blur if you look really close.

Freezing Supersonic Seeds

Back in the days when I got my first SLR (hint: Nixon had just resigned), the top shutter speed on most cameras was 1/500″.  In comparison, some 30+ years later, the shutter speeds on prosumer DSLRs seem supersonic. You’d think that anything north of 1/2000″ would be fast enough to freeze pumpkin shrapnel. Turns out that pumpkin seeds are supersonic too.

I shot at a variety of speeds — all in full-stop increments from 1/400″ [1/800", 1/1600"...] When I hit 1/3200″, based on a super-chimp of the camera’s LCD, I was sure we had stopped space and time. Back in the studio, with the benefit of Lightroom and a large monitor, I discovered otherwise. Turns out that the magic didn’t happen until 1/6400″.

The home run at 1/6400" = seeds frozen in space.

Left: 1/3200" Right 1/6400" - an important difference in sharpness

My hero shot for the afternoon. Details shown above.

Lighting The Bash With High-Speed Sync

High-speed sync, as I’ve explained elsewhere, changes the way that a Speedlite fires. Rather than one big burst, the camera tells the strobe(s) to fire a continuous series of pulses. The idea behind this technology is that the strobe turns into a continuous light source for the brief duration of the exposure. To get this instantaneous recycle, the power of the flash is greatly reduced.  With high-speed sync, you can use virtually any shutter speed on your camera. [Confused? Then click on the link above and read that article before continuing.]

The downfall of high-speed sync is that it significantly reduces the power coming from the strobe. This means a couple of things: 1. you have to move the lights really close to the subject and 2. you need multiple lights.

As I wrote in the piece on Ben Willmore (here), my friends at Canon USA and RadioPopper loaned me an arsenal of Speedlites and Poppers (radio triggers). The lessons I learned with this shoot continue to erode my thoughts about the lunacy of having so many small strobes at hand. In fact, given that the second-generation of Poppers has been launched (details here) and the pesky fiber optic is a thing of the past, setting up so many lights will not be a big deal in the near future.

The Gang Light Rail - 12 Canon 580 EX IIs triggered by RadioPopper P1s

For the pumpkin smash-a-thon, I bolted a dozen Canon Speedlites onto a 7′ piece of red oak. The Gang Light Rail was held aloft by a couple of C-stands. I stood under the rail with the master Speedlite atop my camera. Given that I was close enough to get splattered with pumpkin guts every time, I don’t believe that the strobes could have been fired by traditional eTTL using the infrared receivers on the remote units. They’d have to be able to see my master unit. The geometry just wasn’t there so that all twelve units could see my master.

The pumpkin smash only deepened my affection for RadioPoppers. I was able to move in and out, left and right, without any concern for the position of my master unit in relation to the remote lights. Given that in some shots I was literally a couple of inches from my son’s swing radius, it was very nice not to have to worry about maintaining the line-of-sight between the remotes and the master.

I also have to say that I love the quality of light coming off my Gang Light Rail. The soft quality is created because the width of the lights along the rail wraps the light around my subject. Each strobe unit is a key and fill light at the same time.

You can also change the weather with high-speed sync. Did you notice the difference between the rail shot and my pumpkin shots? The rail shot was made with my camera choosing the shutter speed based on the ambient light. For the pumpkin shots, my manually-set shutter speed was 5-stops below ambient. The light grey sky turned into a storm-filled sky.

I Can’t Think Of Another Way To Light This Shot

Given the camera gear that I have on hand (Canon 5D) I have to live within the limitations of the focal plane shutter. [Again, read my earlier article on high-speed sync to understand why the type of shutter makes a difference with sync speed.]

Many comments on the Willmore piece, both here and on Strobist, suggested that I was a fool to use a dozen Speedlites instead of a big (expensive) studio pack to turn noon to night. I’m called a fool all the time. If I’m going to earn the title, I’d at least like to get it for the right reasons.

So, I’d like to preempt those same comments here and say again “I’m a Canon shooter. I have a focal-plane shutter.” Sure, I could bring in a big (expensive), bi-tube studio pack and fire it off at a low-power setting – which would give me an ultra-fast burst of light. But… there’s that focal-plane sync speed barrier. With my 5D, my sync speed is 1/160″ (the manual may say different, but I’ve fired this camera over 100K times, and my sync speed is 1/160″). So anytime I shoot with a studio pack, the fastest I can shoot is 1/160″ – if I want to illuminate the whole frame with flash. [David Ziser has a very interesting piece about shooting at faster speeds - but the pumpkin shots don't have the composition that David's technique requires.]

Let’s do the photo-math. The hero shot above was made at 1/6400″ at f/5.6. There are five and a third stops of shutter speed between 1/6400″ and my sync speed of 1/160″. So, to light with a big (expensive) bi-tube, studio strobe, I’d have to shoot at 1/160″ because that’s the sync speed for my 5D. To keep the ambient light (the sunlit background) exposure the same, I’d have to stop down five and a third stops from f/5.6 to f/40-something. Funny. I don’t have a lens that goes past f/32. Further, the edges of the frame and the background are better in soft-focus. So, how to shoot at a relatively wide aperture if my fastest shutter speed is 1/160″?

I guess I could throw on my Singh-Ray Vari-ND filter and dial in a ton of neutral density to make the studio pack work at a wide aperture at 1/160″. Maybe. Have you ever looked through a Vari-ND dialed down 6 or so stops? It’s almost impossible to see through. It’s not something that I’d want on the end of my lens when I’m dancing a couple of inches outside the arc of a pumpkin-spattering bat.

Like I said above, the lunacy of having so many Speedlites on a shoot is melting away.

More Gang Light Adventures

Part 1: I Shot Ben Willmore, 12 Speedlite Ring Light

More to come…

GANG LIGHT – Part 1: Shooter with crazy red hair, plays with 12 Canon 580 EX II Speedlites and 8-feet of red oak to build a high-powered “ring” light, then fires it with a dozen RadioPoppers in high-speed sync mode at a best-selling Photoshop author.

I shot Ben Willmore on the street in broad daylight today. There were several innocent bystanders watching. The sun was high in the sky and coming in straight over Ben’s shoulders. I centered my favorite lens right on his eye and BANG! I had him in 1/8000 of a second.

Shortly before the “incident”, Ben and I met up in San Luis Obispo on day 3 of Joe McNally’s location lighting workshop at The Lepp Institute. Joe was kind (or crazy) enough to ask me to come down for a quick talk to the 16 students in his workshop about my experiences with RadioPoppers.

Ben is also a frequent instructor a Lepp — as well as a perennial favorite at Photoshop World. You may know Ben from his many books on Photoshop. [If you're looking for a crash course in stepping up from CS3 to CS4, check out his Photoshop CS4: Up To Speed. It always gets me through the upgrade.] You may know Ben for his Digital Mastery DVDs. Yes that Ben… the guy who drives around the country and writes about his life on the road in WhereIsBen.com. If you don’t already, you should also get to know Ben through his innovative photography – which dissolves the boundary between camera and computer.

Ganging Up A Dozen Canon Speedlites

Thanks to generous equipment loans from Canon USA and RadioPopper, I’ve been playing with 15 Speedlites this week. Why? To see what I can do with more pocket strobes than even a guy like McNally should be allowed to carry.

Turns out you can stop a motocross rider flying through the air at 40 m.p.h. with enough sharpness so that you can see the individual links on the motorcycle’s chain — look for that Gang Light post soon.

You can also attract crazy looks from guys who should know better when you pull out a 2′-square wood frame that has a dozen Speedlites bolted to it. Ben’s certainly a curious and intelligent fellow. The first thing he did was ask me to put my head in the center of the lights so that he could take my photo. Actually, I think he was checking to see if my head would explode from so many strobes going off at once before he stepped in front of the rig. [Update: See the evidence here on Ben's blog.]

Turning Noon Into Night With High-Speed Sync

Ambient exposure at 1/160

High-speed sync at 1/8000

PixSylarians know that I’m a huge fan of RadioPoppers (proof here and here). It’s also well-known that I’m very fond of shooting in high-speed sync (proof here). If you’re not yet a full-blooded PixSylarian, RadioPoppers give me eTTL control of my Canon Speedlites without the hassle of a line-of-sight connection. High-Speed sync is the flash mode where my Speedlights fire in incredibly rapid bursts rather than as one big flash so that I can shoot at speeds way beyond my camera’s sync speed (1/160 on my 5D).

To make the opening shot, I did four things:

• activated the high-speed sync setting on the master Speedlite parked atop my camera – the RadioPoppers then worked it out so that all 12 remote units were also in high-speed sync mode.
• set my shutter speed to 1/8000 – to  totally kill the sunlight and turn noon to night. Even at the widest aperture on my lens (f/2.8), at 1/8000 there was no daylight to speak of as far as the camera’s sensor was concerned.
• set the Speedlites to maximum power – I used Manual for this rather than ETTL. Again, the Poppers did the talking for me. I went to Manual because in eTTL the range of Flash Exposure Compensation is capped at +2EV and I wanted more.
• adjusted my aperture until I liked the amount of flash exposure coming through.

More Gang Light stories:

Part 2: Smashing Pumpkins – 12 Speedlites on a Straight Rail

I had the great fortune to catch up with Kevin King – the inventor of the RadioPopper – over the Thanksgiving holiday. If you’re a PixSylarian, you know that I’m a huge fan of the Poppers. Kevin is an amazing guy who was naive enough not to believe the negativity of a legion of engineers. The story of the development of the original Popper is proof that sometimes it’s more important to be creative than to have a head full of knowledge. More on that later…

Kevin gave me a sneak peak at the new generation of RadioPoppers. They are, in a word, amazing. This is not a one-generation step. It’s at least a double-jump. The fiber-optic is gone! The design is compact and elegant. The new system will fire TTL-flash and non-TTL (like studio strobes) simultaneously. Every Popper complaint, workaround and mod will become obsolete with the new generation.

Click here, right now, to read the details of what’s been going on in Popperland. Then, mark your calendars for Friday, December 12, 3:00pm Pacific. That’s when the new models will be unveiled on RadioPopper.com.

The new RadioPoppers will ship in early January. Fear not if you need Poppers for holiday shoots. You can order the original P1 now and get 100% of your purchase price applied towards the new models. Yes, for a month or so, you’ll still have to jury-rig the fiber-optic with black Gaffer tape. Do so with a smile knowing that the future of wireless-TTL is close at hand and very bright indeed.

High-speed sync enables daylight flash at wide apertures by changing the way the flash fires.

According to the 1931 song, only “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon day sun.” Thanks to high-speed sync, flash photographers can now be added to the list. High-speed sync enables shutter speeds way beyond the norm for flash photography. It also opens up a new realm of creative opportunity.  Many shooters are intimidated by high-speed sync. In reality, it’s really easy to use if you have the right gear (say a Canon DSLR and a 580EX or a Nikon DLSR and an SB800).

Flash Photography Basics

I think of the amount of the flash as the duration of the flash. A speedlite ["speedlight" in Nikonese] firing at full power emits a longer burst of light than it does when firing at quarter power. When measured in a tiny slice of time, say a microsecond (one millionth of a second), the actual brightness coming out of the flash per microsecond is the same. At full power, the flash is just illuminating for more microseconds than it does at quarter power. [Note to uber-geeks: yes I know that it takes a few microseconds for the flash to reach full intensity and after peak intensity it falls off for a few microseconds, but let's not be too uber.] Looking at this backwards, if you want to freeze motion with flash, then use a high-powered strobe set to a low power setting.

The amount of flash can be controlled by the photographer, by the flash or by the camera. In manual mode, the photographer dials the amount of the flash up and down. [I do this often. To find out when and why, you'll have to wait for a future article. High-speed sync is way cooler than manual.] Some camera-mounted flash units have photo-sensors that will control the duration by measuring the amount of light coming back from the subject. [I think of this as "almost-matic" technology and never use it.] Today’s digital cameras have truly automatic technology in which the camera and the flash talk during the exposure. We refer to this as TTL – Through The Lens – flash. e-TTL in Canonese and i-TTL in Nikonese.

Sync speed is the fastest shutter speed that you can use during flash photography without “screwing up” the shot. If you use a faster shutter speed, a portion of your frame will not be illuminated by the flash. Ever have a flash photo with a dark band along one side? You shot faster than you sync speed. Of course, one shooter’s screw up is another shooter’s creative technique. Check out this video by David Ziser for an alternative look at purposefully  shooting faster than your sync speed.

The type of shutter in your camera (or lens) establishes the sync speed. View cameras (remember them?) and most medium-format cameras use lenses that have built-in leaf shutters with metal blades that open instantaneously from the center of the lens. Leaf shutters can synchronize with a flash at any shutter speed [technically, any shutter speed that is longer than the duration of the flash].

Single-Lens-Reflex cameras (film and digital) have shutters in which two curtains move across the focal plane. The interval between the curtains is the shutter speed. Essentially the exposure is a slit moving across the focal plane. For normal sync, SLRs must fire the flash after the first curtain is fully open and before the second curtain has started to close. Most DSLRs have sync speeds in the range of 1/125 to 1/250. At faster shutter speeds, there is no point when the entire sensor is exposed all at once – so normal sync is not possible.

Slow shutter speed = wide curtain gap, normal sync fine

Fast shutter speed = narrow curtain gap, must use high-speed sync

There are also cameras with electronic shutters that enable faster sync speeds (typically up to 1/500). Theoretically, electronic shutters can sync at any speed – but currently there are limitations caused by sensors over-heating… someday this will be really handy technology.

How High-Speed Sync Works

High-speed sync only works with dedicated TTL systems. The camera has to be able to talk to the flash. Further, you have to enable high-speed sync on the flash (Canon) or in the camera (Nikon).

With standard sync, the shutter has to be completely open when the flash fires. So, the camera fires the flash at the instant that the first curtain is fully open (“1st-curtain sync”) or at the instant just before the second curtain begins to close (2nd-curtain sync”). If you’ve ever seen a flash photograph taken at a really slow shutter speed where headlights of a car trail, that’s 2nd-curtain sync. [My cameras are always set to 2nd-curtain sync.]

With high-speed sync, the camera actually changes the way the flash fires. Rather than a single, strong burst, it tells the flash to send out an ultra-fast series of low-power, strobe pulses. Because the strobe pulses are so close together, the light appears to be continuous. So for the duration that the narrow curtain slit is traveling across the sensor, the flash is “always” on.

Canon’s Japan site has a useful diagram here. Fear not, it’s in English.

The upside of high-speed sync is that I can use virtually any shutter speed. The downside is that the output of the flash is greatly reduced. I often have to use several speedlites to get enough light when shooting at high-speed.

Freedom of Aperture With High-Speed Sync

High-speed sync gives me more creative freedom (aka: wider apertures). This is the main reason that I use it. Let’s say that I’ve been commissioned to shoot a portrait of a rising music star and that the only time she’s available is for 20 minutes at noon. Given that the sun is straight overhead, I’ll have to fill her face somehow. If I use a shiny reflector, she’ll squint and probably complain. So, I want to use a fill flash (or two) pushed through a white umbrella to soften the shadows.

With regular sync, the fastest I can shoot on my Canon 5D is 1/160. [Yes, I know the Canon specs say 1/200. But, in my part of the universe, it's really 1/160.] So, under the blazing sun, at 1/160, my widest aperture for a good exposure is f/13. That’s way too much depth-of-field for my portrait style. One option, would be to slap on my Singh-Ray Vari-ND filter and dial in several stops of neutral density. But, then I can’t see the magical expressions on my subject. The better choice is to turn on the high-speed sync on my 580EX (literally a quick button push). Now I can (almost) pick the aperture that I want to use. The reality was that there was too much sun. At 1/8000, the widest aperture I could get was f/5.6 – still, much better than f/13.

Taming The Sun With High-Speed Sync

Another benefit of high-speed sync is that you can overpower the sun with a small speedlite or two. In the photo above, you’ll note that the sky and background (basically, everything lit by the sun) is underexposed. Why? Two reasons. I wanted to make my subject the dominant element (aka: the brightest part of the picture). I also wanted to reduce the competition between the geometry of her arms and the geometry of the lattice. How? I set my overall exposure at -2 EV and my flash exposure at +2 EV. That’s about all the thought I put into it. I let the digital gnomes in my camera do the calculations.

In the following shot, you’ll see the underexposed daylight at left and the effect of the high-speed sync at right.

At left: Daylight only. At right: Canon flash at high-speed sync.

Setting Up High-Speed Sync

On Canon 580-series or 430-series speedlites, your flash must be set to ETTL mode. Then push the H-button until you see the H-icon on the screen. You are now in high-speed sync mode. Frankly, I keep high-speed sync on all the time. I shoot in aperture-priority (AV) mode 99% of the time – meaning that I’m almost always more concerned about controlling depth-of-field than I am about stopping motion. There’s no harm in leaving high-speed sync on. When I dial to an aperture that enables a shutter speed of 1/200 or slower, the camera automatically operates the flash at normal-sync mode – meaning that the full power of my speedlite is available.

On Canon Speedlites: Mode must be ETTL, then push the H-button. That's it. High-speed sync is activated.

On Nikon systems, it’s called Auto FP High-Speed Sync. As I understand it, you activate it in your camera rather than on the flash. Nikon shooters are encouraged to add comments relating to the specifics for their cameras.

Watch High-Speed Sync In Action

Watch this video of Joe McNally shooting high-speed sync in the sand dunes of Dubai. Thanks to the Strobist, David Hobby, for putting it together and launching it on the web.

Why did Joe use so many speedlights? You’ve already learned that high-speed sync greatly reduces the output. So if you have one speedlite and want to double the output (get another stop of light) you have to add a second speedlite. Then if you want another stop of light beyond that produced by two speedlites, you have to add two more speedlites. If you want third stop of additional light, you have to add four to the (one plus one plus two). So for three stops, you went from one light to eight. [Stay tuned... I've decided to round up as many 580EXs as I can and start firing them off en masse for a future article on this most-confusing concept.]

Wireless, High-Speed Sync with RadioPoppers

The opening image was shot using three 580EXs, a 430EX and a mess of RadioPoppers. One 580 was camera mounted with the Popper transmitter. It acted as the Master, but did not fire during the shot. The other three speedlites were mounted ala McNally on a C-stand at camera right and zoomed out to 105mm so that the light was concentrated along the length of the subject.

The Poppers provided eTTL control without too many hiccups.  The biggest issue was making sure that the fiber optic was placed exactly over the sensor. Not a biggie after we figured it out. Using the Poppers enabled me to forget about maintaining a line-of-sight between my Master and Slave units. I could work with my subject without concern for where the rack of speedlites stood. In short, I think RadioPoppers are great. New technology, yes. Rather expensive, yes. A bit buggie, yes. Able to do something that no other gadget can, YES. More on the Poppers to come soon.

RadioPoppers + Canon 580EXs = Wireless, High-Speed Sync

As flashmasters Joe McNally and David Hobby have proven again and again, the first step to getting an amazing photo with your strobe is to uncouple it from your camera and move it to the side/back/top/bottom of your subject. Combine a unique flash angle with TTL flash control and you have a dynamic duo.

TTL (Through-The-Lens) metering of flash is one of the amazing windfalls of digital photography. Not only can your DSLR figure out where to focus and what shutter/aperture combo to use, it can tell your flash when to fire and for how long. Wireless TTL works by sending a series of pre-flash light pulses from the controlling unit atop the camera to the remote unit(s). Both Nikon’s i-TTL and Canon’s E-TTL provide wireless solutions that enable the camera to maintain control of the strobe(s) if… if there’s nothing between the camera and the strobe, if the strobe is not too far from the camera, if there’s not too much sunlight, if it’s not raining, if… Enter RadioPopper, destroyer of the IFs.

RadioPopper is that (likely-to-be-a) multi-million dollar idea that’s causing a whole legion of TTL shooters to chant “why didn’t I think of that”. (Kudos to inventor Kevin King for having the vision, guts and persistence to make RadioPopper a reality.) The RadioPopper P1 captures the pre-flash communication pulses on the commander/master unit, converts the message to a radio signal, sends it to the receiver(s) which then converts it back to a series of pulses that the remote strobe(s) can see. The fact that there’s a concrete wall between you and your strobe(s) is no longer a TTL-issue. Check out all the details on the RadioPopper site.

What Others Are Saying About RadioPoppers

PixSylated, the brother site to Photo-Resources.org, will soon be putting a team of Poppers to the test. If you can’t wait for that review, check out:

the blog of Thomas Graves, a Baltimore wedding photographer

quick impressions by the Strobist himself, David Hobby

the blog of Nathan Welton, a vagabond wedding photojournalist

the blog of Ed Pingol, a San Francisco shooter

the blog of Nick Carver, a Southern California nature / portrait shooter