HELP - Portable lighting for events and portraits

mike weeks said:
You know what they say Phil, if anybody can, Canon con :) I have 6 different Nikon cameras available to use and all have 1/250 flash sync

Mike
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I've had Canons that do, but Canon do like to keep clear water between it's consumer and pro cameras. So the 6d was given a shutterbox that's slower than an asthmatic snail and a brand new terrible AF system just to keep the pros away. It'd have been cheaper to use the 5dII shutter and the 60d focus system.
 
mike weeks said:
Df as well :)

Mike
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Not Df as well - that's 1/200sec (for full power flash)

Phil V said:
1/3 of a stop?

I've got a 6d with the slowest sync speed I've experienced for years. :(
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Yes, 6D is a very lame 1/180sec. With Canon, it's still only 1/200sec with all the 5D-series cameras and you need a 1DX to get 1/250sec, but then you have a very fast machine with minimal lag that makes the most of this of strobisty stuff. It makes a real difference - notice the cameras that flash manufacturers use for their high speed demos ;)
 
Mattpitts74 said:
If money were no object I'd go for the Profoto, but as always money is a consideration, and all the Profoto modifiers look pretty expensive too. but I take your point about repair and availability. I'm guessing that buying from PixaPro and the like at least is better than buying via eBay or Amazon?
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Yup that's pretty much it, even if you can justify the cost you also need to factor in all the additional costs that occur (like modifiers etc), I know one person who spent all their money buying Profoto then couldn't afford to get it all repaired when it broke down and ended up buying Chinese in the end anyway, net result is they lost a lot of money in the process.

Don't buy from eBay if you're concerned about warranties, they'll cover you to make sure you get a working product but after that you're completely in the hands of the seller and almost all of them won't care about support. Amazon has always offered me good warranty support but I'd treat the Amazon Marketplace much like eBay. I'm not saying they're bad but I am saying it's best to play to their strengths (e.g. you can save a lot on eBay with second hand etc).

I've only bought a few things from Pixapro so can't say how their support is but it's always going to be easier to deal with a company that has offices in the UK (half the reason Lencarta makes so much sense but they're a more well known quantity around here).
 
sk66 said:
Not sure which part you are questioning.
1/250 is 1/4 stop faster than 1/200... it doesn't increase the flash power as such, it increases the flash ratio.

FWIW, all of the Nikon D8xx series have 1/320 X-sync :p.
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My favourite cameras sync at 1/160 :)

I thought that was clear from the post.
 
sk66 said:
Not sure which part you are questioning.
1/250 is 1/4 stop faster than 1/200... it doesn't increase the flash power as such, it increases the flash ratio.
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I wondered about that when I wrote 1/3rd stop faster! But the fractions are progressive, check the shutter speed dial - set at one-third stop increments, it runs 1/200sec, 1/250sec, 1/320sec, 1/400sec etc. It makes more sense if you convert to milliseconds.

FWIW, all of the Nikon D8xx series have 1/320 X-sync :p.
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But not at full flash power ;) Quite a few cameras will run a notch quicker on shutter speed than stated with IGBT units if you turn the power down, and have a fast trigger (that will also allow you to run above x-sync) or use the co-ax sync port. At half power flash, my Canon 7D (normal x-sync 1/250sec) will run a clean 1/320sec, and 1/400sec with only a mm or so of shutter clipping at the bottom of the frame. 5D2 will do 1/250sec with a similar amount of clipping from 1/4 power. Kinda doable, but not ideal.
 
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HoppyUK said:
I wondered about that when I wrote 1/3rd stop faster! But the fractions are progressive, check the shutter speed dial - set at one-third stop increments, it runs 1/200sec, 1/250sec, 1/320sec, 1/400sec etc. It makes more sense if you convert to milliseconds.
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I assumed it was just "rounding." Like f/5.6-f/11, or 1/60-1/125 (whole stop scale) and 1/180-350-750 (full stops on the half stop scale). It makes "more sense" as milliseconds; .005/.004/.003, and .0025 is 1/2 of .005 but breaks the chain. At this point it doesn't make complete sense to me. :confused:
Interestingly ISO and SS follow the same scale steps/numbers...
HoppyUK said:
But not at full flash power ;)
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IIR the D800 manual mentioned the possibility of gradation at 1/320, it's not in the D810 manual. It's not at reduced power as that would exacerbate the issue. And the Auto FP at 1/320* (and 1/250*, both are available settings) means it will switch to HSS automatically ABOVE the x-sync setting. I'm pretty sure 1/320* is full power with a risk of gradation and if you don't want take that risk use 1/250* instead.
 
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sk66 said:
I assumed it was just "rounding." Like f/5.6-f/11, or 1/60-1/125 (whole stop scale) and 1/180-350-750 (full stops on the half stop scale). It makes "more sense" as milliseconds; .005/.004/.003, and .0025 is 1/2 of .005 but breaks the chain. At this point it doesn't make complete sense to me. :confused:
Interestingly ISO and SS follow the same scale steps/numbers...
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I know what you mean. And a 1.4x telecon gives a 50% increase in field magnification...

IIR the D800 manual mentioned the possibility of gradation at 1/320, it's not in the D810 manual. It's not at reduced power as that would exacerbate the issue. And the Auto FP at 1/320* (and 1/250*, both are available settings) means it will switch to HSS automatically ABOVE the x-sync setting. I'm pretty sure 1/320* is full power with a risk of gradation and if you don't want take that risk use 1/250* instead.
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Nikon's 1/320sec x-sync is a bit of a cheat. At the faster setting the dwell period while the shutter is fully open is naturally reduced, but there's still just enough time to squeeze in a shorter duration flash pulse and deliver even exposure from top to bottom. Shorter flash duration is achieved by simply reducing flash power so the IGBT chops off the fading tail of the pulse. Or you can still shoot at full power, but with darkening gradation at the bottom of the frame as the shutter begins to close over the fading tail.
 
HoppyUK said:
......They must have a cut-off time to distinguish between flash and ambient light, but 1/1000sec at t.5, if taken literally, would throw up errors with the majority of flash units.
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The 758 allows you to dial in 1/4000th (for exposure calculation purposes) when measuring ambient but it drops to 1/1000th as soon as flash measurement is selected.
 
HoppyUK said:
Nikon's 1/320sec x-sync is a bit of a cheat. At the faster setting the dwell period while the shutter is fully open is naturally reduced, but there's still just enough time to squeeze in a shorter duration flash pulse and deliver even exposure from top to bottom. Shorter flash duration is achieved by simply reducing flash power so the IGBT chops off the fading tail of the pulse. Or you can still shoot at full power, but with darkening gradation at the bottom of the frame as the shutter begins to close over the fading tail.
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Are you saying 1/320 is a kind of optimized HSS? Like two pulses optimally timed to the shutter?
 
Canon Bob said:
The 758 allows you to dial in 1/4000th (for exposure calculation purposes) when measuring ambient but it drops to 1/1000th as soon as flash measurement is selected.
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Cheers Bob, though that would seem to ask more questions than it answers :)

sk66 said:
Are you saying 1/320 is a kind of optimized HSS? Like two pulses optimally timed to the shutter?
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No, nothing like that. It's just exploiting a little bit of sync speed headroom where it can.

I'm guessing that it's a feature not found on all Nikons because it's only applied when a particular shutter mech easily reaches 1/250sec x-sync, and with a bit to spare. There's not enough to give a clean 1/320sec at full power, but reducing the flash duration by cutting off the tail just squeezes in a shorter lower power pulse that has minimal effect on total brightness and with the upside of a slightly faster x-sync speed. There may be a slight tweak to the timing as well but in theory I don't think that's necessary and it would add complexity to what is essentially quite a simple 'bonus' feature.
 
HoppyUK said:
Cheers Bob, though that would seem to ask more questions than it answers :)
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I suspect that the sampling time is still longer but a scaling factor is applied for the purposes of displaying the result at the higher speed.
 
Correction to post #35 where I said:

"You cannot meter either HSS or tail-hypersync as most of the light is wasted and effective exposure varies by the shape of the flash output curve, the sync timing off-set and camera model. You have a to take a photo. A completely new kind of meter would need to mimic that."

This is not completely true, I can only blame brain fade. It's not possible to measure tail-hypersync exposure with a conventional meter, but you can measure HSS exposure at least in theory. It is after all, just continuous light of constant brightness for the very brief period while the shutter completes its cycle. Apologies.

I've added a correction to the original post.
 
HoppyUK said:
No, nothing like that. It's just exploiting a little bit of sync speed headroom where it can.
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Shortening the flash pulse is not going to have any effect on shutter travel time. Shortening the duration/reducing the power makes no sense to me... It makes more sense to me that the "reduced power" is simply extending into tail sync where SS's affect power and higher SS's reduce it.
I highly doubt that there's anything "that smart" about it.

But if you've tested it, I'll take your word for it...
 
sk66 said:
Shortening the flash pulse is not going to have any effect on shutter travel time. Shortening the duration/reducing the power makes no sense to me... It makes more sense to me that the "reduced power" is simply extending into tail sync where SS's affect power and higher SS's reduce it.
I highly doubt that there's anything "that smart" about it.

But if you've tested it, I'll take your word for it...
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I'll try to explain. In round numbers, and milliseconds is easier.

1/250sec is 4.0ms and a very fast shutter curtain may take 2.0ms to travel from top to bottom of the frame. Therefore the sensor is fully uncovered for the remainder of the time, ie 2.0ms (1/500sec) which is just long enough for a speedlight to dump about 90% of its output for a nice even exposure all over the frame.

Raise the shutter speed to 1/320sec (3.125ms) and the sensor is only fully uncovered for 1.125ms (1/888sec) and that is too short for a full power t.1 dump so you'll get good exposure over most of the frame but at the bottom of the image there will be some progressive darkening as the second shutter curtain closes over the fading tail of the flash pulse. But if you reduce the flash power and cut the flash duration to 1/888sec or less, then the whole frame will be exposed evenly (but at reduced brightness).

That's the basic principle though you can only push it so far. At 1/500sec (2.0ms) for example, the second shutter curtain has to start moving the very instant the first curtain reaches the bottom of the frame, so the whole sensor is never fully uncovered at all. If the flash is fired there will be a black band across the bottom (the shadow of the second curtain closing) characteristic of using too fast x-sync speed.

Edit: This Nikon 1/320sec x-sync trick only works with IGBT-controlled flash units, eg speedlights. It cannot work with voltage-controlled studio heads because reducing power doesn't shorten the flash duration - they lower the brightness/intensity instead.
 
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Phil V said:
If I had money to invest, or was starting from scratch, I'd go to Pixapro and get an AD600, and an AD360II then some Godox speedlights so everything works seamlessly together.
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This is what I have basically done now, I sold my Nikon SB900s and my Pocket wizards TT1 and TT5s and started to invest in the Godox system, started with a V860II to see how it performed and I'm well pleased with it, great lithium battery, built in receiver, so no more faffing with AAs and receivers on flashs, I'm happy with the results I got with it, just as good as Nikon and the price is also excellent for what your getting, the X1 trigger is around £30 as opposed to £140 for a TT5, I'm now about to pull the trigger on a PIXAPRO HYBRID360 ITTL (AD360II) from Essential photo who give you the 2 year warranty and are UK based, I was hoping Lencarta would be selling these but that doesn't look like happening so has to be Essential, eventually I want my whole setup to be Godox based as the interaction capabilities they all have seem very good indeed.
 
TG. said:
This is what I have basically done now, I sold my Nikon SB900s and my Pocket wizards TT1 and TT5s and started to invest in the Godox system, started with a V860II to see how it performed and I'm well pleased with it, great lithium battery, built in receiver, so no more faffing with AAs and receivers on flashs, I'm happy with the results I got with it, just as good as Nikon and the price is also excellent for what your getting, the X1 trigger is around £30 as opposed to £140 for a TT5, I'm now about to pull the trigger on a PIXAPRO HYBRID360 ITTL (AD360II) from Essential photo who give you the 2 year warranty and are UK based, I was hoping Lencarta would be selling these but that doesn't look like happening so has to be Essential, eventually I want my whole setup to be Godox based as the interaction capabilities they all have seem very good indeed.
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Lencarta will in fact have them soon
 
HoppyUK said:
I'll try to explain. In round numbers, and milliseconds is easier.
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Makes some sense... but to get a typical speedlight's t.1 above 1.125ms would leave about 1/2 power max. I suppose that would be unnoticeable if a) 1/2 power or less was required in manual mode, or b) TTL metering/auto settings accounted for it... I've always left my D8xx cameras set at 1/320* and never noticed a drop in power. But on camera speedlight work is the realm of TTL/semi auto settings, at least for me.

I always assumed that IGBT control reduced the power by (essentially) cutting off the tail of the curve. I.e. the curve itself is characteristic of only capacitor discharge rate and bulb heating/cooling rate. But, for the above to work, that can't be the case... I think... logically I can't see a difference between a capacitor cutting off the light as opposed to the second curtain cutting it off.

Good thing none of this really matters in a practical sense!
 
sk66 said:
Makes some sense... but to get a typical speedlight's t.1 above 1.125ms would leave about 1/2 power max. I suppose that would be unnoticeable if a) 1/2 power or less was required in manual mode, or b) TTL metering/auto settings accounted for it... I've always left my D8xx cameras set at 1/320* and never noticed a drop in power. But on camera speedlight work is the realm of TTL/semi auto settings, at least for me.

I always assumed that IGBT control reduced the power by (essentially) cutting off the tail of the curve. I.e. the curve itself is characteristic of only capacitor discharge rate and bulb heating/cooling rate. But, for the above to work, that can't be the case... I think... logically I can't see a difference between a capacitor cutting off the light as opposed to the second curtain cutting it off.

Good thing none of this really matters in a practical sense!
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The numbers I quoted were to illustrate the general principle. They're probably not far off, and your estimate of 1.25ms t.1 at half power is about right too. But your D800 has this feature - give it a try and see what you get.

Yes, IGBT works by cutting off the tail sharply, and if you overlay oscilloscope traces at different power settings, the rise and fall is identical before IGBT intervenes. And this is all that's happening here. There's a big difference between IGBT cutting off the flash (that is projected over the entire sensor area simultaneously) and the shutter cutting it off as it travels down the frame. I know you have all the facts here Steven, you just need to string them together right :)
 
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HoppyUK said:
There's a big difference between IGBT cutting off the flash (that is projected over the entire sensor area simultaneously) and the shutter cutting it off as it travels down the frame.
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If the curve shape and timing is the same, then the only difference I can see is the prevention of gradation where the second curtain starts to close a little early; at a cost of ~ 1stop of power. But I'm pretty certain that in testing I had found a slight bit of gradation, maybe 1/3 stop. But I'm not certain any more... I guess sometime I'll have to try it again and see.
 
sk66 said:
If the curve shape and timing is the same, then the only difference I can see is the prevention of gradation where the second curtain starts to close a little early; at a cost of ~ 1stop of power. But I'm pretty certain that in testing I had found a slight bit of gradation, maybe 1/3 stop. But I'm not certain any more...
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Something like that, as I said in post #52. The way Nikon puts it, it's a useful feature when you need both a faster shutter speed and even flash exposure, and despite the reduction in maximum power, the loss of brightness is less than switching to high speed sync.

I guess sometime I'll have to try it again and see.
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Sounds like a plan :)
 
TG. said:
How soon Garry ? are we talking weeks or months ? and any idea of a price please.
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It will be a few weeks. There are some other brand new flash heads (and some other new products) arriving on Monday, which I will be photographing on Tuesday and Wednesday and they will find their way onto the Lencarta website soon after, but the AD600 didn't make that consignment and although, as I'm now retired, I don't have full details, they won't be far behind them.

As for price, I don't have figures but they will be very competitive.
 
Garry Edwards said:
It will be a few weeks. There are some other brand new flash heads (and some other new products) arriving on Monday, which I will be photographing on Tuesday and Wednesday and they will find their way onto the Lencarta website soon after, but the AD600 didn't make that consignment and although, as I'm now retired, I don't have full details, they won't be far behind them.

As for price, I don't have figures but they will be very competitive.
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I'm rather hoping that my missing honeycomb grid is in that consignment. :)

Edit. Just turned up. :)
 
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Graham W said:
I'm rather hoping that my missing honeycomb grid is in that consignment. :)

Edit. Just turned up. :)
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That will have been in a different delivery that arrived on Friday, they must have sent it out straight away - you can see how efficient things are now that I've gone:)
 
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