Hello fellow photographers! Im wondering if anyone more experienced in lighting could give me some input on this topic. I have been shooting for 15+ plus years, I have always preferred and enjoyed natural light, I have shot with strobes and speedlights when i was doing more media work and the people i was photographing were still. I have started focusing on children, newborns and family and for the most part i use the natural light in my home studio. I recently had a cakesmash session and right before the the clients arrived the lighting completely changed and the sun was just way too strong and shining in a weird position where i had my set up, so i rolled my roller blind down and pulled out my speedlight and put it in an umbrella, now my issue and inquiry here is, when i shoot with the speedlight my aperture needs to be at 1/160 other wise i get the black bottom bar, the subject is a 1 year old who doesn’t stop moving, although i got enough good shots because i over shot, there were so many blurry images where his face wasn’t sharp at all. My settings were 1/160, 2.2 and around 200 - 300 iso, my speedlight was on ETTL and on high speed. My question is, how do you get the image sharp shooting 1/160? Especially when the subject is always moving around. Does anyone have any lighting recommendations for photographing children?
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Black bar means shutter is too fast for the flash and you need to enable HIgh Speed Sync.
When you are at 2.8 your depth of field is narrow. At 10 feet away, your range is 9.5 to 10.6 for what will be in focus. That is only 1ft. Shooting at 5.6 puts it at 2ft.
I think you had a compound issue. Increase your f-stop and ISO. Drop your shutter speed, because the flash will stop do a good job of freezing the motion. Increase your flash power fill the frame.
Hmm
By blurry you mean out of focus or motion blur? I’m gonna assume it’s depth of focus that’s missing here.
2.2 seems a bit shallow for a moving target, I’d close to about 5.6, bump the iso up one stop and the flash should go up a stop or a stop and a half. That’ll give you enough depth to work with.
Method #1:
Enable HSS on your flash and increase the speed beyond 1/160.
Method #2:
Keep the speed at 1/160. Close the aperture down until you block out most of the ambient light. A test shot without flash may look pretty dim or totally black. The darker, the less motion blur you’ll get. Add your flash(es) to light your scene almost exclusively. Flashes fire very rapidly, freezing anything that is registered by the camera sensor. You need strong flashes, because they need to overcome your stopped-down aperture. Also, a single flash may not be enough to light the whole scene in a pleasing way. You probably need multiple of them, and light shapers to go with them.
This is the way. Piping in to add that what’s happening is that you’re exposing for ambient light at a slow shutter. Because your adjustments for ambient would also normally pick up the subject, you’re getting motion blur. Stationary objects stay stationary, moving objects are blurred and also flashed.
1/160 should be in a normal sync range, though?
What autofocus mode were you using, assuming AI servo? Aperture seems a bit too open to me, but most of my subjects aren’t moving.
If you’re seeing motion blur with a speedlight, it’s because your ambient light is too much. The speedlights flash duration will be much quicker than 1/160th and freeze motion on it’s own. You need to let the speedlight expose your subject, not the ambient light. If that’s done properly, you’ll get motion freezing when shooting lower shutter speeds like 1/80th or even lower.
I almost always do manual flash power, and always always when using them off-camera so I can really dial in my exposure for the flashed subject and ambient light. I only use ETTL when shooting in lighting conditions that change frequently.
High speed sync on your speedlight should allow you to shoot faster than 1/160th provided your lights are properly communicating with your camera, but sounds like that’s not the case, and it does affect power output, so you should turn it off since you aren’t making use of it.
If your speed light has high speed sync, you should be able to go to a higher shutter speed than 1/160, a lot higher actually. Look up how to use high speed sync for your speed light model. Should be in the manual. If your speed light is off camera, then your wireless trigger must also be capable of hss.
Ever done a photo shoot with two nude women? How to handle that?
Need advice? How do i achieve this in the first place and then execute it well.
I don’t see this as a shutter speed issue as other posters mention. Every lens stopped down to f2.x or more will have very shallow depth of field. So some part of the photo is likely sharp but not the eyes which is the target for portraits. Especially with a subject that won’t hold still try stopping down to at least 5.6 and set your light for the same.
You should also review how to use high speed shutter with flash. Does your camera support HSS? If so, 1\160th isn’t in high speed zone… that would be anything over the the fastest default shutter your camera is designed to use, usually around 250th or lower. The band means that you have settings in conflict which results in the shutter over the sensor for part of the flash duration. Easily fixed.
You want a high-speed sync flash so you can use shutter speeds faster than 1/160. If you get a black bar when you set faster than 1/160, the “high speed” that your flash claims to have is not compatible with your camera. That setting is brand dependent, just like ETTL.
Do yourself a favor and invest in some more (serious) flash equipment when you want to focus on doing more photography with kids.
The thing is kids are kids and you should try to give them the space and time they need to feel comfortable during the shooting. This will lead to authentic moments.
Now how do you catch em? With 1/250 and f 8-11. every photo will be best quality with this setup.
1/160 is too slow for it, 2.2 is too blurry for it.