Hi there,
I have a what I thought would be a simple question, but can find a simple answer on Google.
Some friends will have a party for Halloween, half indoor, half outdoor. Ans they asked me to take some pictures, since I’m the photographer. The thing is, it’s not really the kind of photos I make. And I have a little knowledge about using flash.
So here’s my gear :
- Canon R6ii
- 35mm 1.8
- 24mm 1.8
- Godox V860
I’m a little familiar with the concept of ambient light using a flash, but here’s my question : If I don’t want to crank up my Iso for ambient light, how slow I can go with my shutter speed ? People will probably dance and drink, so without flash, with good light conditions, I would probably go between 1/250 and 1/500. But with a flash, considering that it’s supposed to freeze the subject, how slow can I set the shutter speed ?
Thanks for your help
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I’m not that experienced with flash either, but I have an R7. What ive done with decent results in similar situation is:
- Leave it in TTL mode
- Keep ISO relatively low
- Set Shutter to the normal sync speed (not HSS)
- Map flash exposure compensation to one of your buttons for easy usage.
- Adjust flash exposure compensation as needed for the results you want.
Thanks for you advices.
But, I don’t think I can assign flash exposure compensation to one button. I tried yesterday, but I was only able to map flash settings, which is quite cumbersome.
If you’re not familiar with slow sync flash, then this party might not be the best opportunity to practice if you’re after successful shots. I’d personally either use ambient light if sufficient, and flash if not. Once you’re happy you have enough good images, maybe you could try slow sync then.
Ambiant light will defintely not be enough.
I still have three evenings for practicing, so I will.Thanks for your advice :)
This is great advice. Get the basic shots to cover the event. Then experiment and learn. And maybe it works and you get some gems.
with flash photography, shutter speed doesn’t matter that much. If you want to use shutter speed faster than 1/200, or 1/250 for most cameras, make sure you have high speed sync on. your flash will pretty much fire at the same speed all the time (about 1/1000th of a second), and high speed sync just means your flash will try to sync up with your camera’s shutter speed, by using very fast burst of light, so you don’t end up with black lines on your shot.
so regardless of what shutter speed you use, your subject will be lit and frozen, and like you said, using slower shutter speed will introduce more ambient light into your scene, and may even create a cool blur around your subject.
when you use flash, only thing that really impacts your exposure a lot is your aperture.
This is largely good advice. But shutter speed affects ambient light with flash. For the reason you said. The flash goes off at 1/1000th and then a slower shutter speed can allow additional ambient light to expose the background more.
Try it out, it’s a fun trick. Take a picture of something in your poorly lit house but like have a kitchen light or something on further away. Start at 1/250, then lower the shutter as far as you can one 1/2 stop at a time and watch as the kitchen gets brighter but your subject stays the same since your aperture hasn’t changed.
This is relevant for OP because he can either kill the background at 1/250 or show it at 1/60. But the action and people directly in front of the camera will be largely the same with the flash.
This comes up, especially with temperature imbalances. You can kill ugly lights with faster shutter speed. Slower shutter speeds means you often get two light temperatures, which can look ugly.
Correct, I will just add few words. High speed sync uses more battery and is usually not that powerful. Some use them in opposite way, instead of nd filters, so in very sunny day, trying to get portrait with f/1.8 with 1/4000s. For halloween party I would not go for this settings, I would probably want to have some ambient lights involved, but froze the action with non hss. What is freezing the action is not the shutter speed. That works for continuous, ambient light. What freezes action is duration of the flash beeing burned. And these times are usually much much shorter, than sync speed, also depends on power of the flash. Full power burns usually longer, than 1/4 power. It may be 1/1000s vs 1/8000s. So. Turn off the flash first, expose for ambient light first. Then turn flash on and play with flash power. Now shutter speed and aputure will affect ambient light, aputure will also affect flash, but shutter speed will NOT affect flash. Have fun :)
this is a much better answer than mine! ♥️
I was aware bout HSS, but not about slow sync.
There is a lot of things to try.Thanks for your answer :)
It depends on how strong is the flash compared to the environment. If there’s no ambient light at all you can do 30 seconds. The stronger the ambient light, the more you will see the blurred version of the photo imaged without the flash, on top of the frozen image from the flash.
Yes, your explanation makes sense.
So I’ll have to try to find the sweet spot.Thank you :)
How slow? you can use a very slow shutter speed to create some interesting effects. It’s called “dragging the shutter”.
Otherwise I’d stick with somewhere between 1/60 and whatever your sync speed is (probably 1/200?).
I mean, slow enough before it gives uncontrolled results.
So 1/60 would be fine.
Thank you !
You can go as slow as you want for some fun effects, I did a series of self portraits earlier this year some of them with long exposure and flash combined. Shooting at 1/5s for all the motion blur and a splash of light from the flash stopping movement in the same shot. link (Should be the right pic, 7 of 10 if it isn’t)
In low light conditions with low ISO the speed of the flash is what’s stopping the movement, not the shutter speed. A flash setting of 1/1 is the equivalent of 1/250 shutter without ambient light, 1/2 is the equivalent of 1/919. This article in the section THE FLASH – PHOTOS AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT explains more.
Thank you !
I will look to it.
That camera has a sync speed of 1/250th of a second. You can use HighSpeed Sync (HSS) to go faster, but it makes your flash less and less powerful in effect as you go faster.
If you’re in pitch darkness and shoot 1/250 or 1/20sec with a powerful flash on low iso you will find that they look exactly the same, as the 1/20sec exposure without flash would of been pitch black.
When you see photos of things like water droplets/shattering glass etc, completely frozen in time Often are taken with exposures several seconds long, in a dark room with a flash triggered by a sound sensor. So the only thing exposing is the flash, getting you really frozen images with no motion blur
I’ll try that tonight.
And will visit my friend’s place to do some experiementations.Thanks for your answer :)
… Godox V860 …
Hopefully the II or the III version; the I version is more of a PITA.
I’m a little familiar with the concept of ambient light using a flash,
Just to refresh. Every flash photograph has two sources of illumination, and two different levels of exposure you combe in one shot.
The ambient (all the light that isn’t from the flash) exposure is controlled by iso, aperture, and shutter speed. This you should know. :)
The flash exposure is controlled by iso, aperture, power, and flash-to-subject distance.
Flash and ambient can combine where they overlap, so it’s not always as simple as flash = subject and ambient = background, but it primarily works out that way.
but here’s my question : If I don’t want to crank up my Iso for ambient light, how slow I can go with my shutter speed ?
It depends on how much motion blur you’re willing to have register in the ambient, either from subject motion or from camera shake blur. You can do a thing called “slow sync flash”: combine a very slow shutter speed with a flash burst to “burn-in” or freeze your subject.
The more you balance towards ambient, the harder it’s going to be to freeze motion. The more you balance towards flash, the more you can use the flash burst to freeze motion. The basic flash pulse duration for the V860 II is 1/300s (full power) to 1/20,000s (1/128 power).
The limit is more at the other end in how fast you can go. While a V860 can do HSS with the R6, it’s a game of diminishing returns. In general, you lose about 75% of your power (-2EV) if you go to high-speed sync (HSS).
… But with a flash, considering that it’s supposed to freeze the subject,
It can only fully freeze the subject if there’s no ambient light in the image (aka “killing the ambient”). That is, if your iso, aperture, and shutter speed are set so that when you take a picture without flash, you get a black frame.
In the ambient, you can still get motion blur from a slower shutter speed. And going over 1/250s (your sync speed), you’ll lose 3/4 of your flash power.
I got the V860III.
Thanks for your long answer, That I’m gonna read many times to be sure to understand it 😁
1/125
Using direct flash, you can go as slow as you’d like (a second or two is common for me in some situations) providing that’s what balances the ambience to your needs. You’ll get shutter drag on that ambience but the subject lit by the flash will be sharp. Think typical nightclub photos and some nighttime street photography styles.