Tips on Olympus High Speed Sync Flash

These are some notes on using 'High Speed Sync' with your Olympus camera.

1. It was originally designed as a way to give you fill flash in bright conditions, not for use as a main light but the tech has developed into a more mainstream tool for overpowering/filling bright ambient light with fast apertures
2. In order to use it for portraits during bright daylight you’re going to need a powerful strobe or a group of strobes to get enough power to make it work. One small on camera flash isn't really enough power for a lot of situations.
3. When you turn on HSS you immediately lose about 1 stop of power from your flash power. So if you want the max amount of light from your strobe you have to stick with normal sync speeds.
4. Generally speaking, following the sunny/16 rule you’re going to be needing about 4-5 extra stops of light to over power the sun, maybe more if you’re also modifying the light with a soft box or umbrella.
5. As you add shutter speeds you also lose some power becuase in HSS the flash is more like a constant light rather than flash. The more time you have the shutter open the more light can get in.
6. Both aperture and SS are affected in the exposure in HSS just like if you were using a video light unlike with normal flash synch where the shutter speed does not affect the flash output.
7. You can immediately gain 2 stops (4x) power from your light by moving it 50% closer to the subject. This would probably be my first move if I could get away with it in terms of composition.
8. Overpowering the sun isn’t really a great look for many photographs, 99% of the time I don’t like it because it looks unnatural, I prefer to just use my flash as fill light until late in the day when the ambient light is much easier to overpower. This technique works even better when you’re firing from shade at a shaded subject with a bright background.
9. The upsides to HSS is that with today’s modern flashes it’s almost always readily available. It’s quick to use and doesn’t require extra gear unless you need to bring a big strobe.
10. The alternative is using and ND filter to bring down both the flash and the ambient and then use the power of the strobe to overcome it. This adds glass to the optical path, creates a more cumbersome workflow and costs more but gives you even more flexibility in exposure because you don’t lose any flash efficiency AND you can also vary the ISO to make the camera side more flexible.
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Видео Tips on Olympus High Speed Sync Flash канала Joseph Ellis