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?
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.