Shooting Action with Strobes Using Hyper-Synch

Lars Sternberg at Stevens Pass. Shot at 1/3200th of a second

This post is going to be super heavy on camera nerdy tech jargon.  If you're not a dorky photographer, this might not make a lot of sense... but please keep reading and enjoy!

That disclaimer aside, I started working with Pocket Wizards to trigger my off camera strobes roughly 5 years ago. Last year, I was fortunate enough to get contacted by them to help in the Beta testing of their Flex TT5 and Mini TT1 units. I was super excited to start testing these as they promised the new ability to synch strobes above the normal 1/250th of a second shutter speed. For action shooters, this is a dream come true. The previous limitations of technology prevented photographers from shooting above 1/250th of a second. Instead, we had to rely on the flash duration of our strobes to freeze the action. Beyond just the ability to freeze action, it also prevented you from under exposing a scene to achieve a heavy dramatic look.



Although I've been working with the Flex and Mini units for over a year now, I was still having trouble achieving a proper hyper-synch. Occasionally they would work at speeds over 1/250th, but it wasn't always reliable. Fast forward though to last week and the game changed. With the release of Firmware Version 3.110, any issues I had previously had with the units disappeared. (There are some adjustments that need to be made in the Pocketwizard Utility in order to achieve accurate hyper synch. Below is a screen shot of how mine are set up for use with Elinchrom Ranger RX's).

I went out and shot with pro mountain biker, Lars Sternberg last week to put the Flex and Mini units to the test. The results were astounding! Shooting with a Nikon D800 and two Elinchrom Ranger RX packs (utilizing the S heads, NOT the A heads), I was able to get full synch at 1/1250th. A HUGE jump from 1/250th.

However, I was able to continue pushing synch speed higher with hardly any clipping. At 1/1600th I had very slight clipping at the base of the frame... and I mean hardly noticeable. As shutter speed was pushed higher, the clipping gradually grew, but very minimally. Even at 1/8000th of a second, the clipping was still very minimal (see reference files below).



I know some will look at the above and say that there is a bit of darkness at the tops of the frames that could be construed as shutter lag. However, it's affect is so minimal compared to normal shutter lag, that it can easily be compensated for by increasing the strobe's power or camera's f-stop by +1/2 a stop.

Additionally, with the huge file sizes being output by the D800 (36.2MP), the tiny clipping seen even at the fastest shutter speeds can easily be cropped out without losing the detail or size of the file.

A big thanks to the people at Pocket Wizard for working with me on the beta testing of these units. I'm excited to see the new possibilities that this will open for action shooters utilizing strobes. Hope this article helps some of you. Good luck and happy shooting.

1/3200th with no cropping of shutter lag at bottom of frame

Red Bull Kayaking Shoot: In 3D

To see the image in 3D, click HERE.

I just recently finished up a really fun shoot for Red Bull Energy Drink with professional kayaker Tao Berman. What made this shoot so incredible, wasn't just the sheer athleticism in front of the camera, but was the amount of creativity I was afforded. In organizing the shoot, Red Bull had essentially given me free reign to shoot this however I wanted.

For the last few months, I've been dying to try shooting something in 3D. Since I saw the James Cameron movie Avatar, I've wanted to test the 3D technology and see how it translated from video to still. When this shoot with Tao came before me, I knew this was the shoot to make it happen.

In doing my research for this shoot, I'd come across plenty of other 3D photos, but none of them were action or motion based. Everything I was coming across was static... whether a landscape, portrait or still life. Not finding any 3D (also called anaglyph) photos of sports left me really excited. This was going to be something relatively new, and it's always fun to be the guinea pig on new things as you never now what you're going to encounter or how it's going to turn out.

(A brief note: with new versions of Photoshop, it's now possible to create 3D images in post production with a single camera and manipulating the single resulting image. But that's not what I wanted to do here. With this shoot, I wanted to achieve a true 3D image, by shooting two cameras offset from one another. The advantage in using two cameras, is that the resulting 3D image has more depth and texture that it can draw out as it does not require photoshop to extrapolate and create new information.)

Given the inherent danger in running waterfalls, and not wanting to subject Tao to any more danger than necessary, we only had a few cracks at shooing this. With that in mind, we were running 3 cameras at all times, in order to ensure maximum coverage and guarantee differing angles and vantage points.

In the end, the shoot went off great. The resulting 3D image turned out better that I could have hoped. I'm excited to put this technology to use again on some more shoots in the near future... stay tuned.

If you'd like to see some of the other images from the shoot, you can see a small gallery HERE.

Final note: if you're interested in learning more of the details about how to shoot a true anaglyph/3D image, post a comment below. If enough people are interested, I'll follow up with a tutorial post later.

Facebook Surpasses Google as Most Visited Site in the US

Just in case we weren't aware of the importance of social media, here's some recent news that you can't ignore.

Last week, Facebook surpassed Google as the number one visited website online in the US. With a statistic of 7.07% of ALL website visits landing on Facebook, you can't deny the power that social media is now playing in our daily lives.

So, if you're not actively utilizing facebook, what could you be missing out on?

To read more, check out the link HERE.

Strobox iPhone Ap

I just heard about this from Strobist last night. (No, there's no connection to Strobist... just a coincidence.) The ap allows you to create lighting diagrams by placing various light sources in the field. A cute little drop down menu allows you to place models, soft boxes, umbrellas, strobes, etc... And when your diagram is complete, you have the ability to save or email your diagram.

Definitely a tech dork ap... but who am I kidding, I'm a bit of a dork, so I thought this was pretty cool. Beats drawing lighting diagrams on wadded up napkins or the back of my hand.

But to offer a critique of the ap, it could stand a few additional upgrades.

1.) The ability to scale the field of the diagram would be really nice. As it stands, the field is set at a certain size and does not allow the user to zoom out for larger scale scenarios.

2.) The field is set in a 2 dimensional view, and doesn't allow you to adjust the height and angle of light sources. A 3D option would be a nice addition.

3.) The ap does not allow you to make notes on a diagram, preventing you from inserting crucial data like light settings and exposure.

4.) The ap is set up for studio shooters, not location photographers. There is no sun on the drop down menu of lighting sources. If the user could edit the light sources themselves, it might make for an easy fix.

That's all I've got. I suggest checking it out... it's free! Here's a direct link to the ap store.