Today was my outdoor shoot with the lovely Alice.
It was a test shoot to try out a few ideas out in the field. A mix of motion and dance themes, some art nude and a picnic shoot.
All of these whether or not they included motion all consisted of creative use of flash, mixed with daylight. Some 80% Sunlight 20% flash, up to 20% Sunlight 80% flash.
This was made easier because of my light meter. The Sekonic L-758D has a neat trick, in that as well as showing the shutter speed and aperture it shows the percentage of daylight to flash. Neat trick and very helpful.
Balancing the light can be difficult in very bright conditions. Studio Flash tends to only sync to between 1/80 – 1/250 second depending on make and model.
You also have to consider the camera flash sync speed. This is where medium format has the advantage over 35mm SLR. With their leaf shutters built into the lens they will sync easily to 1/500 second. Most modern SLR’s are limited to 1/125 to 1/250.
You could resort to your modern camera flash gun, these often have a high speed sync mode, letting you use up to 1/4000 second, but your camera flash has little power compared to a studio flash and your batteries would quickly die.
As you can see in the above photo, I have also tried to be a little creative with my post processing, giving a stylised feel to the shot.
Altogether a great day.
