Original subtitles

All right?

We're going to talk about high speed sync.

And before we get into the high speed sync part of it, I'm going to go and

explain a little bit about capacitors versus

the

high speed, or how strobes kind of work.

Now,

I don't know, I may have a little bit of this portion of this on the

joelgrames academy under the craft.

When I talk about lighty,

I do have, I believe, a complete news section on the high speed sinking part

that I added later after I built out the academy.

So I believe this is brand new information for some of you.

Well, for some of you, you may not have the Joel grands academy part.

And so this is all brand new.

there might be a little bit of repetition here at the very beginning.

But I believe I go into a complete brand news section I built out for

Photoshop world when I went and did a class on high speed sync.

So

this could be good information for you.

If you want a little bit of a question as to what how strobes work and how

high speed sync works, let's get into it, because I think this is kind of fun.

So in the end, light is light.

So, you know,

this is what happens is we get caught up in, and we say,

well, like, for example, I get emails, people say, I saw you behind the

Scenes, and you are using a go dogs

all right?

And I thought you'd be more like a pro photo guy, right?

pro photos are like, 34 or five times a cost, whatever.

And so people think, well, if you pay 5000 dollars for a light, or 4000

dollar, whatever it comes out to, it's got to be better than a 500 dollar.

Light that's what we think.

And there are some things you get what you know, you pay for.

But I think when it comes down to it, light as light,

are pro photos, better than I say in the inn.

Quality y is better than godocks.

I would say, yes.

Do you need a pro photo?

You don't need a pro photo.

if you have unlimited

funds, maybe you're living off a trust fund.

You have a rich dad.

I don't know, I'm joking here,

and you can buy whatever you want.

You, maybe you just go out and say, okay, I want to buy a whole truck full of

pro photos.

But for most of us,

we watch every penny we have.

And so

I used einstein's for a while before that, the palsy, buff, white light

means and whatever.

Over the years.

I've used a number of different strobes.

They weren't always the most expensive.

When it comes to lenses, glass

cameras, things like that, I tend to buy the best I can.

But with light, light is light.

Modifiers are modifiers.

Yes, you get what you pay for.

When it comes to modifier.

I explained, I think some of that

when earlier,

you get, pay the construction and the ability to tear something down and put

it back together, the speed of it.

So you can get a really inexpensive modifier, but it doesn't last, and it's

very difficult to set up and tear down.

So, but when it comes to light,

yes,

it's

not always true.

You get what you pay for.

There's some great products out there with

not

super high end price tags.

So

when I say, look,

don't get swayed by,

I would say the hype.

So we usually have

a couple different, or two primary types of strokes.

You have capacitor driven,

that are,

build up a charge and then discharge it through a flash tube.

You have diaristra technology, or igb t, which I don't know what that means,

but anyways, it's dirstructure technology.

The einstein's were that.

Speed lights are that.

And so what happens is you discharge, you push the button, and the flash goes

off, and it discharges, and i'll show you a minute, and there's a bell curve.

And so the light goes to peek up to this highest output.

And then with a diatherister technology, you can cut that

output, of that discharge in the middle of its

discharging process.

And so it shortens the tea time down.

So I think I've got an illustration here.

In a minute it comes up.

when you buy a strobe,

the packs that we had on the grounds back in the 80s, the 90s, they were all

capacor driven, big, heavy duty strobes, and

they were like boom.

And a lot of those strobes had very little op options.

So you had bank a, bank, b, bank c.

So you put there's, 2000 Watts, but only really 1000 Watts come out of each

bank or whatever.

And you had to flip switches.

And it was really complicated.

Today, we got the technologies amazing.

And then I remember, like I said, the speed lights were very small, didn't

put out a lot of power, but they had some capabilities that were pretty amazing,

but they just didn't put out of power.

So that was kind of confusing, or difficult to work with.

When you use, when you talk about flash duration,

that's the bell curve.

And the

flash goes and discharges.

And when it

stops,

the

flash duration,

generally, for a capacitor,

well depends

between capacitor and thyrister.

They usually fall within a 1300th of a second to a 112000th

of a second.

Some strobes go a little slower, some goal up, some little faster.

To depend on specialists that might specialize in

freezing a bullet or something.

There might be a flash out there that does that.

So you're in a range that is pretty wide.

And if you're going to freeze action of someone jumping up and down,

free

spinning,

you need about 16000th of a second to free somebody.

I know that because I've shot a lot of athletes jump in the air.

You can test that by swinging your arm really fast and fire and off.

And then if you see a ghosting, you know that your flash duration isn't

fast enough.

Now, when it comes to high speed sink,

I'm able to use my shutter speed

as a way of freezing action.

So if I put my shutter on 16 thousands of a second, get all my parameters,

correctly, fire it, and I swing an arm or jump in the air, it'll be frozen.

You have a dancer jumping in the air.

that's another benefit of high speed sinking, we'll talk about that in a

minute, is it allows me to freeze action with my shutter speed.

But most capaca driven strobes, you have a flash duration

that will freeze your shutter or you freeze your subject.

But you have to be within a closed environment of lights.

You can't have full sunlight.

You can do it in the studio.

So here's a guy jumping, and it's composite.

So I put him in a background that looks like he's outdoors, but he's really

shot in a studio.

And so I had to work around that for many years.

Here I shot just a test,

put a black background up, and I had a model swing and freeze her hair, and I

shut it at 18000

a second, just as a test.

So if I shot that at 1300th of a second, that probably a ghosting blur,

which could be kind of cool,

but that's not what I want.

So here's the where the graft is.

So if you look at figure number three here,

the flash goes off and then tapers down.

And there's a teattime from the beginning to the end.

it's in a very fast

fraction of a second.

But

when it comes to freezing action, that would be considered a long

dirt flash duration.

And figure number four, second, one down.

That's showing where you can cut the power in half.

The technology of dierister technology, where you

actually

turn it off in the middle of its arcing

down, arcing

discharge.

And in figure

five, which a third went down, that's a 110000th

of a second with just a sliver of the flash peaking and then being cut off.

So you can see, that's

been around for a while.

Paul c buff, with the einsteins,

brought it into a studio strobe,

which was brilliant.

And again, I used that

for years, freezing athletes in studio.

So here's

some brands.

I'm obviously a cannon guy, being a can explore of light.

if you have another

speed light that fits your brand of camera,

amazing technology,

they're very durable.

When I say this, you don't want to drop it, bounce it on the concrete.

But generally, if you drop to speed, light it's going to probably work.

If you take a studio stroke drop, it

probably it's not going to work

they're a little more durable.

And even the go docs 8600

in a pretty solid case.

I have not dropped one yet, but the pro photo are pretty solid too,

but you're still not as, not as durable as a speed light.

So that's one advantage of a speed, like we'll talk about that in a minute.

So which drove is right for you?

So that's the question that I always ask people, say, I want to buy a car.

What kind of car should I buy?

I'm like, well, do you have horses you need to haul?

Hay,

yeah, ok.

You need a pickup truck.

You don't need a convertible

to haul your hay in.

So when it comes to strobes, you've got to find out what your end result is.

And so

I would say, as a general rule, today,

what I would recommend is something like the godox 8600, or something that has

high speed sync studiostrope, high speed sink, has a battery on the back.

That's where everything's going.

And the price point around five is 67, hundreds, somewhere around there, not

7000 dollars.

And you can buy a kit of em.

I usually buy three

at maybe four, just to have a 4th, because if I do my three edge lighting

and we're talking about the one light master class here.

But if a client, I just did a whole week shooting for Edison power in LA.

And I had

four lights.

Most of the time I used one, but on occasion I had a step of background

light.

I don't think I ever used more than two.

Maybe once I use three lights.

But you've got to be prepared if you're shooting commercially.

But usually most of the stuff I did last week was one light.

So that's what we're talking about,

one like master class here.

So one light is a great,

great

place to start.

So

again,

think about looking at images

and then look at them and say, is that a one light, two light, free light, whatever.

And you'll probably drawn to a certain look, like, if you like to edgy, look

why I do a lot of.

For sports, then you'll need more than one light.

But for beauty fashion portraits, you can get away with one light, but you

are the artist.

You have an end result that you have to get to.

But here's a question I always have to ask myself.

And when someone asks me, what stroke should I buy?

I always say,

are you going to be going outdoors with it?

And then, how much gear do you want to carry?

As I get older.

My superman skills are getting weaker and weaker.

And so

I used to carry stuff like I was part gorilla.

I'm now letting.

My assistants carry more.

And I do work out.

I try to stay in shape.

But I tell you what,

these cases get so heavy now it's like picking them up, put them in my suv,

starting to go, oh my gosh.

But how much power do you need?

So if you go in outdoors, you're going to need a fair amount of power.

If you shoot early morning and late light, you don't need as much power.

High new knee, lots of power.

So it really comes down to what kind of need you might have.

And that might help you make a decision on

what light to buy.

Now, the prose for speed light, are there?

Lightweight,

durable,

built in wireless controls.

I can actually control my speed light, even the ones that are off the camera,

right on the back of my camera.

Incredible.

That's a new technology

ettl, which I never use, but you can use that if you're doing weddings,

it's, whatever.

They have the high speed capability, they have optical zoom built into

the flash.

Or you can go wider, or narrower, beam, rear, curtain, sink, etc there's a

whole bunch of things on speed lights you can do that are incredible.

And I already mentioned you can control them now.

And they have aaa, battery, a, w.

Batteries.

If you're so inclined, I usually have a battery pack that goes to my speed

light if I'm going to be doing some serious shooting.

And so what are the cons?

Let's go to the cons,

limited power, and they're kind of pricy.

So you spend about 450

Bucks or so, almost the same cost as me getting a go, docs, a d 600 or Einstein.

So you get this little t thing, and it's still kind of pricey.

Now you can buy an off brand,

third party little speed lights,

Ying yangs or something.

There's always a name I can't even pronounce, that you can buy that are

speedlight knock offs.

Now here's what i'll tell you about that.

So,

because I've had people buy them on.

My brother, who is dabbling in photography a little bit, he's bought

some of those cheap ones.

If you drop one of those, it will shatter in 1000 pieces, pretty much

guaranteed, it will not hold up on an impact that's.

Number one,

also, they don't always have all the bells.

And whistles that a standard speed light that's proprietary to your

camera.

That's usually been thought out pretty well.

They

some don't do high speed sink,

but some do.

You give them a fraction of the cost.

But if you're going to shoot for a client, or you're going to go on a

project, six countries

shooting, like I did for a department of labor, and I went to six countries,

I took my speed lights, and I use them all the time.

Nonstop, never stop working.

I bounce them around a little bit and never missed a beat.

You take some knock offs, you're going to be having some problems.

So is it worth it for you?

Now, if you're just starting out with photography, and you say, look, I'm

just going to play around a little bit, buy the knock offs.

But I guarantee, if you're going to be shooting to make a with your camera, I

would say, stay away from them.

Today, we have more

supporting products for speed lights.

So I'm not trying to win you over to speed lights.

I'm trying to give you an option here of what you can do.

You can stack up

speed lights, like they called westcot as a triple threat.

We can put three into one modifier I've done that quite a bit, actually.

And I have a kit that I have set up that if I have to go and gun and run

and go,

like I'm going to Brazil on Thursday,

I might take my speed lights,

and not by big strobes, and when I get there and probably doing a demo it's

for cannon, so they'll have a bunch of speed lights for me.

So maybe I'm not to pack them up.

But the fact is that if I want to travel super, super lightweight,

and I still need a little bit of power, I might stack three of mine into one modifier.

And so westcott has some great products that you can do that with, even their

Apollo orb stuff.

You can set it up and then put the triple thread on there and get three

lights into one and make a pretty punchy little snap.

There's a little rabbit box that you can very lightweight

have it.

The umbrella mounts some good stuff.

And then magmad,

that has some really cool things too

that you can put on your speed light to do some

modifications.

We have some battery packs that'll help us get a quicker recycle time

and

a longer

battery life.

So there's the can in 600 er

e xrts.

I think that new one just came out.

And with the version two, I probably need to update this

a few little, extra little features.

So here's the controller over there.

Pretty amazing where we're at today let's talk about monolights, or we call

the studio monolight monolite.

Meeting.

That's all built into 11 unit,

not a pack on the floor.

So the head is built into the

actual part that distributes the power to the head.

So there's medium to lightweight.

they've gotten lighter than they were back when I was starting out, compared

to what I used to carry and ship.

Oh my goodness.

They're fairly durable, but not as durable as speed lights, but they're

fairly durable.

They have some new wireless controls

the godox has.

there's some new strobes coming out.

I'm testing one right now.

By the time this comes to you, I will be probably promoting that light.

I can't say who right now, but it's coming literally in, I think, a week or two.

And it's a really cool light.

It does all this stuff, ettl, high speed sync masking options.

So what is that?

Well, I think I have one picture that I might show you, but basically what it

does is it allows you can take a static image.

So let's say you have a bicycle and you have a sweep on a sweep, you

say, let's say you take two lights, and you light the background pure white,

and then you have one light, or maybe multiple lights,

lighting a bicycle.

And then you say, you're going to use it for a product, and you're going to

drop into a background.

You can now program your strobes to trigger.

The back ones trigger every time, but the front ones trigger every other

time.

So what happens is you go pop, and then they all go off, pop, and then only the

background goes off.

So

if you have your light set upright, your bicycle will be a complete pure black

knockout.

And then you just go and drop it into anything.

Now you can do it with people,

and I've been doing that, I mean, testing it.

And so I can't let the cat out of the bag yet.

But I've got some really cool things I'm doing with that masking option,

where you have

a light strobe

coming off and

alternating.

So

that's all not a tutorial, but I'm just introducing it to you.

You can troll your lights

from your camera.

And now this new one I'm testing will actually sync up with cannon

speed lights, and it'll show up in the back of your camera.

So you can actually control your lights up and down by using your monitor on

your camera.

Incredible.

The battery is connected now, most of them are connected to the strobe,

and you have tons of power to

overpower the sun.

Hey,

I jumped ahead

of myself.

I didn't realize it is in here.

Here's that masking technique.

I can't believe I got this in here.

Oh, I'm so excited.

So I'm strobing

setup to allow me to do some really cool stuff.

So that's fun.

And again, I can explain that more down the road.

The cons,

well, if you get three or four strobes into a case with his successories, it

gets a little bit heavy, so it's not as lightweight as say, three or four speed

lights in a case.

The cost can get up there depend on the manufacturer.

So I already touched on that.

I would recommend going out and buying what you can afford.

So that comes with any piece of equipment.

And I have a wife that watches everything I do in terms of

my spending.

And so I have to

have to present my case to her and say, look, honey, I need a new light.

And she goes, do you need a little night, or do you want a new light?

That's art of the land it's, usually it's a lens I'm trying to win her over with.

And so she knows it's my business, and I have to run a business, but I have to

also watch what I spend and how much money I spend.

And so I'm sure you do too.

Most of us are in that camp.

So all right,

let's talk about balancing strobes.

With the outdoors,

there are four

variables that control the control exposure.

So we have aperture shutterspeed iso, and we have

the Nd filter.

So the aperture is your app, stop

shutter speed is the time

iso's a sensitivity of film, or the sensor.

And Nd filter is what blocks light coming into the lens.

So these are your four variables that allow you to control your exposure,

onto your camera, onto your sensor, or

your final image.

Now, for a long time, I didn't have end filter on there, because I didn't

really think about it.

Now that video comes along and use Nd filters all the time of video to give

you control, your use of your shutter speed and how much light you have, all

this stuff.

And my kids are using the video with Nd filters.

And then I got to think, and I started using Nd filters.

Oh, about seven years ago, with strobing outdoors.

Again, I can't say I was the first to do it, but I was pretty much right on

the forefront of doing that.

And then now we got the high speed seeking.

I don't use it as much, but Nd filter is a variable that you can use to

control how much light comes into your camera.

So if you look at aperture, your aperture is tied to your strobe, your

shutter speed is tied to your ambient.

And iso, and Nd filters cover both.

Now, this is important to understand.

Now, this might sound like a lot of information for some of you, because I

know you're like me, I'm not the most technical person.

I mean, I can get technical, but I like to make it simple.

And I don't want to over complicate it technically.

But

you have to understand

the parameters in which you are working with to control your light.

It's not that complicated.

So I would say to this to you, if you're sitting there going Joel, that

sounds really complicated,

you're going to have to take the time and maybe run this over this tutorial,

and maybe go to some other tutorials.

If there's some stuff out there, and you're going to have to get past the hurdle.

So here's what I would tell you, I am often learning something, and I look at

it and go, oh, my gosh.

That sounds so complicated.

And someone's trying to teach to me and say, go, oh, no, it's not.

I'm like, oh, my, got a headache.

Please don't fill my brain with any more information, right?

And so what I usually do when I get to that point, I say, ok, Joel,

is this important to learn?

Yes, it is.

All right.

Let's back up, rewind let's start over from the beginning, and let's build the

block slowly.

And then one day I go,

it's not that complicated.

Anybody can learn this, just

sometimes you got it back up and reset.

So

here's a situation where I overpowered the sun.

This is not a composite.

I'm strobbing, and the sun is actually coming from the right, my right, his

left.

I have a stroke.

What happened was, I had another stroke that did not go off.

It ran out of power when I did this.

And so technically I'm using the sun as kind of an edge light a little bit.

And then I have an edge light, and then overhead light.

once you understand your parameters.

You can do a shot like this, where I'm controlling

my environment and I'm building a dramatic shot, and I look like a rock

star.

I love it.

All right?

Three sync options that are available.

I hope you're still with me.

I say that because

I know that this might get a little long.

And so stop it.

Take a break.

Have a cup of coffee.

Come back.

Three sync options.

One is

standard sync,

that is limited, tune of a second, or 250, whatever, depending on your

camera.

High speed sync that's what we're going to explain.

That in a minute, the high burst of light going across your shutter

and hot sink.

And so there's not a lot of options out there.

Anymore on hots, there was preo light,

pure light.

Ultra dot com was a company building a hot sink.

And what that was is, that was a flash duration that was slower than your

shutter speed at 1200th of a second.

So it would go boo,

really slow, like 16th a second.

And in that case,

you could actually raise your shutter speed above your sink speed, and you

always had a

burst of light hitting your sensor as your shutterspeed would go across.

Not a bad technology, but not

it's not really

probably the best option to go with, it's kind of cool sometimes.

so sanar steak sync is you have to work within

your camera's sync speed,

but you have a flash duration, like I did in a studio, where I can freeze

action, high speed seeing, oh my gosh, lots of more app options.

And so those are typically your three standards.

Now, if I would say this to you, if you're still with me,

high speed sync and hot speed sync

are two ways of

having

a burst of light

that's longer than your

tune of a second shutter speed.

So

it's a big burst pop, and your shutters gone,

it's coming down of the slit.

And i'll show you in a minute how that works.

But it's always blasting light onto your sensor.

And

the high speed sink, where it's multiple flashy, so it's going to go,

pop up a papa, pop up across your sensor.

I'll explain it in a minute.

But

that is cheating the system, meaning that it's a work around your sink speed.

So think about that it's kind of like a continuous light.

So if I take a picture in a dark room,

my shutter speed has no effect on the exposure to my camera

or my tummato.

It doesn't change.

So if it's pure black

studio,

or really dim lighting, I can put it at,

let's say, tuned of a second and click.

If I take my flash sink off and take a picture, is pure black.

It's not the ambient.

Light around is not

affecting.

So if I go to 100 a second, it probably won't change anything.

Now if I go to two seconds, and I've got a couple of light, bulbs of it will

start to show up.

But if it's a black room, I can put it one second, it doesn't matter.

So in the old days, we used to do multiple pops in a black room, and

someone was jumping like an athlete jumping through the air, and it goes,

and you can see all these different exposures coming onto your film or

sensor.

It's kind of a cool thing.

But your shutter speed has no effect in a dark environment.

So when we talk about the

sunny sixteen rule,

and that is

sending your fstop at f 16, and your shutter speed matches your iso.

So if they have one another, I so set your shutterspeed 116,

you will overpower the sun to get

a blue sky, so to speak.

If there's blue, and

it's a way of learning your baseline

to setting up your strobe and being able to overpower the sun.

That's the standard,

the old school way of doing it.

Once you understand the sunny sixteen rule, it's actually pretty simple.

Your options, aren't that

great?

And

so let me explain that.

And what I might do

is,

I just don't want to go too long here.

So

let's keep going.

Let's keep going.

I'll find a break, and then we'll break this into part one, part two, because I

know some of you are like, probably chopping at the bit to get to,

you know, we say, Joel, get to the point.

But I want to explain everything.

And part of being an instructor is very difficult, because I don't want to

leave you on behind.

Does that make sense?

Take the iso.

Let's, say, it's one to set your shutterspeed at 100th of a second, set

your aperture at 16, and that matches the output of the sun.

As a general rule, when the sun's up fairly high in the sky at sunset

sunrise, it's not going to be a sunny sixteen, but as a general rule when the

sun's in full.

So if I want to

have a variable change to my exposure in my background, I want to make it

darker or even lighter.

But let's say darker.

So my subject pops off the

frame, or it pops toward me.

Then I got to learn how to darken the background.

So

when I say this again,

you have to realize there's only a few variables

that you can adjust

to do that.

You've got to know what they are.

So

to

let's say, dark in the background, two stops, in this case it's a two stop

darker background.

Ok?

So now she pops off.

I only have two options.

In this case right now, I have two options, increase my shutter speed or

decrease my power output.

Or ins.

I increase my power output, increase my shutterspeat or increase my power output.

Those are my two options.

So let's look at a chart.

This will help a lot.

So

this is stannard strobes, by the way.

Folks, ok, take the sunny sixteen rule.

Start at 100 second.

At sixteen to dark in the background, I have option one.

I go from 100th a second to 200.

There's my ceiling.

I can't go above 200th a second.

That gives me a one stop

change.

Or

I go to 100th of a second, leave it there, and go to an f stop.

F 22 that's one stop darker that's a one stop variable.

Now, however, I'm going to have to

increase the power of my strobe to put out a f 22 light

of power.

So if your stroke can't do that, this is not an option for you, but it's

possible.

I do it all the time

to darken your background, two stops, which is, so, in this case of this girl,

Bryce

that's a lifestyle shot, and it's probably that background's pretty,

even, maybe one stop darker, ok.

But to darken two stops of that picture before a Bryce,

I have option number one, which is go to 41400th

a second.

Well, it happens that my camera can't do that.

So that option is out for me.

But now, in the old days, when I had a film camera, media format camera had a

sync speed of 1400th of a second.

Beautiful,

then we got rid of the medium format and went to digital,

single infreflex cameras.

And I went back to, tuned to the second sink speed.

And it really was frustrating.

Option two is to go to 21 of the second, which I can do,

and at f 22.

So that's a two stop jump.

And by the way, I did that for the workshop last workshop we had out here.

I did that and showed everyone

f 22 of a second,

and it had lots of top of the field,

but I had overpowered the sun and looked beautiful.

Option three is f 32.

Well, my camera doesn't have.

Most of my lenses don't go at 32.

Some do.

I think a few select lenses go to have 32.

If you have a medi format camera, it might go to have 32.

But then for most of us that's not an option.

So in reality,

on a standard strobe, I really only have one option with the camera setup

that I have an output

of f 22.

That's usually tune to the second, f 12.

So now that's why I say it's not so difficult.

When, for example, I had my ten attendees out here at my workshop, and

I said to them, we're going to do a standard strobe approach, non high

speed sink, and we're going to get f 22 power of my strobe.

And I'm, instead of at 22, fam

there's my shot.

I'm reaching the ceiling on both

my shutterspeed and how dark I can put the aperture.

And I know

from experience, that's going to give me one cool looking shot, right?

So it's not like I have to get out there and fiddle,

even make an exposure I mean, well, I have to get sure my strobe is putting

out at 22 light that's about the only variable I have to work on

and where I put the light.

So

if I had a high speed sink, then I can go now and set my aperture or my

shutterspeed at any shutter speed, which breaks

the

ceiling on the standard approach.

So let's look at

this, but let's take a break.

Let's take a break, because we'll call this part one, and then we'll go to

part two.

And i'll get into working with shallow dip field and

strobes.

And then we're going to get into the high speed sync part.

Hope, you should