High shutter speed in bright sunlight

August 10, 2014  •  Leave a Comment

As a photographer, we always want to shoot in the golden hour, where the sun is golden and the light is soft.  In reality, we shoot at any hour our clients want and we are always challenged by the bright light.  Most people think that shooting in the bright sunlight makes for a great picture and in reality the sun washes out the color and we have to deal with shadows.   

Example of a speedlight in full sunlight off camera flash using PocketWizard TTL on a sunny day.  1/1000 at f / 3.5Iowa%20Field

Example of a speedlight in full sunlight off camera flash using PocketWizard TTL on a sunny day.  1/1000 at f / 3.5

During a hot spell I decided to try my Einstein (by Paul Buff) in the high noon sun and see if I can get some great shots.  The setup was my camera, Speedlight EX600, Einstein, PocketWizard TT1, and a  MC-2.    I recently did a firmware upgrade from PocketWizard so that I can test out Hyper Sync and High Speed Sync .

Einstein shot at full power, 1/8000 sec at f/2.8   Full%20Sun%20Photography

Einstein shot at full power, 1/8000 sec at f/2.8   

We like photographing short depth of field, usually at f/2.8 and because of that, our shutter speeds needs to be set high which usually limits what we can do with our strobes.  I decided to push the Einstein so in this picture I shot at 1/8000 at f/2.8 @ 70mm.  This picture I thought turned out great.

Einstein shot at 1/8000 sec at f/2.8, note the bright light on the right side of the photo. W95A4901

Einstein shot at 1/8000 sec at f/2.8, note the bright light on the right side of the photo. 

However in a wide angle shot, you can see that there's a bright spot occurring in the photo which did not give me the results I wanted.  There could be two reasons why the bright light occurred; the beauty dish kicking out a lot light which needs a snoot.  The second reason for the banding may be that I need to fine tune the TTL1.  I believe that I need to adjust the tracking in on the pocket wizard.   

I think based on my results I will be using the Einstein a lot for outdoor portraits, engagement sessions and weddings.  All pictures are straight out of the camera without any adjustments.


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