Help with HHS and TTL when doing outdoor portraiture

C

Cass2017

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Yesterday afternoon I went down to my local park and set up my camera on a tripod and with one off camera flash (which has ttl & hss) with a shoot through umbrella. I was shooting in manual mode on my camera wide open (1.8) as i wanted to loose the background, what I noticed though was that the results were okay shooting in ttl but could be a lot better, moving the light source around helped a little as well!!, so my question is could I get better results using TTL & maybe use flash compensation or is manual flash better route for HSS in broad day light? after a take my shots & I look back on my camera screen its tricky to see how well I am balancing ambient light and flash until I look back in Lightroom and see some shadows on my face. Is full power the way to go in these circumstances outdoors?
 
TTL and Manual are two different ways of achieving the same thing. Light won't look any different wether it's used in TTL or manual.

It'd help massively if you could show the results you got, but using a flash in broad day light (especially if it was sunny) you may not have enough power from the flash.
 
Hope this helps
 

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Yesterday afternoon I went down to my local park and set up my camera on a tripod and with one off camera flash (which has ttl & hss) with a shoot through umbrella. I was shooting in manual mode on my camera wide open (1.8) as i wanted to loose the background, what I noticed though was that the results were okay shooting in ttl but could be a lot better, moving the light source around helped a little as well!!, so my question is could I get better results using TTL & maybe use flash compensation or is manual flash better route for HSS in broad day light? after a take my shots & I look back on my camera screen its tricky to see how well I am balancing ambient light and flash until I look back in Lightroom and see some shadows on my face. Is full power the way to go in these circumstances outdoors?

Sorry but shadows are what define shape, I see nothing wrong with the image.

Best control is manual as framing changes for example will affect the TTl input.

Mike
 
It also depends on what your actually trying to achieve, if its just for a bit of fill flash to blow out shadows TTL can work ok, if your trying to over power the sun I would be in manual, having said that you won't be over powering the sun in bright sunlight with a speedlight you will need something more powerful.
 
Just to add if its a normal photoshoot you will be better off using manual as you will have more time to play around and get the results, however if your shooting a wedding were time is of the essence that's were TTL can be a godsend when used correctly.
 
Hope this helps

Welcome to TP :)

Exposure is fine, flash/ambient balance nicely judged (y) Light could be higher (or subject lower) and more to the front. Check for reflections in glasses but should be fine.

Manual vs TTL, just different ways of doing the same thing. Big advantage of TTL is speed, mainly for moving subjects. Distance has a big effect on flash exposure and TTL automatically adjusts for that. The downside of TTL is the camera's metering can get thrown if the composition changes, or the subject changes from dark to light clothes etc. Flash metering is more sensitive to this so unless you actually need TTL, manual is usually the favoured option.

HSS uses a lot of power (basically because most of the light is wasted) and speedlights struggle in bright sun. Using a shoot-through umbrella won't help, as half of the light bounces straight out of the back and is lost ;)
 
I did learn very quickly that I am not keen on shoot- through umbrellas, I think it blew over within minutes of putting it up due to no sand bag & as you said you loose light all over the place. I am sure if I was more experienced I could make it work.
 
From my, although limited experience I've learned that softboxes are more efficient outputwise than umbrellas and also, which may not apply to you that the flash have more output in manual than in ttl with hss
 
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From my, although limited experience I've learned that softboxes are more efficient outputwise than umbrellas and also, which may not apply to you that the flash have more output in manual than in ttl with hss
Your somewhat correct when saying manual will have more output than TTL, however the only reason that is is because you set it like that, beyond any doubt manual is far better because well its manual, which means you have absolute full control which you never have in TTL and are relying on surrounding light conditions for it to work properly, as I said previously if you have the time manual every time.
 
Just to be clear, there is no difference between the potential max power output in TTL or manual.

It's hard to generalise between umbrellas and softboxes as far as brightness is concerned - lots of variables, obviously. But broadly speaking, a white umbrella will give similar exposures to a softbox of the same size, providing the flash gun is set up carefully and is not blasting too much light around the edges. A silver umbrella might be a bit brighter, and giving slightly harder shadows. Shoot-through umbrellas are a lot less bright, because a) the light is spread over about 180 degrees, and b) half the light is bounced out of the back. How much of that light finds its way back to the subject depends on the environment.
 
Right, let's talk about basics..
Lighting is the creation of the right shadows in the right places. For most subjects and most situations, the light needs to be fairly high, because that's what we're used to seeing because most light comes either from the sky or from room lighting, which is high. Your light could have done with being higher, but the shot is OK.
Outdoors, light can be added for a couple of main reasons, either to create lighting, so that the flash dominates the scene, or to add to the existing lighting, which is what you've done here and which is all that can be done in sunlight if you're using a low powered flash.
When you're overpowering the sun to create your own light, the position of the flash becomes even more critical, and the type of light shaper used, and the distance it's used at, is very important too - but you only used flash to add to the existing light and the light shaper, in this case an umbrella, wasn't really needed. And, as Richard has pointed out, a shoot through umbrella is a total waste of time when used outdoors. Putting a shoot through umbrella on the flash for outdoors fill, or fitting a softbox of similar size, just wastes flash power that you haven't got to start with, becasue they spread the light over a much laarger area.

HSS and TTL are the latest gadgets that everyone seems to think that they can't live without.. Both have their uses but it's my guess that hardly anyone actually needs either, let alone both, and the fact that you've spent a lot of extra money to have them on your flashgun doesn't mean that you have to use them...
HSS is basically just a continuous light, made up of a lot of tiny flashes joined together, it eats power but it does allow you to use a much faster shutter speed, which can be essential if you're photographing a fast moving subject, which yhou weren't. But using a fast shutter speed does allow you to use a large aperture to blur the background, which you did do, although of course you could have done that simply by fitting a neutral density filter over your camera lens.

TTL just measures the flash, and adjusts its power to balance it to the ambient light. Good for wedding photographers or for people who can't do the very simplest mental arithmetic and who can't estimate distance between flash and subject, Generally speaking, mental arithmatic works better simply because if, say, the guide number of the flash is 50 (m) , you want to shoot at f/11 to get the required depth of field and you've decided to have the sunlight twice as bright as your flash, and know that your subject is too far away to use f/11, then you can think of something else - like using a different aperture or moving closer. TTL will do that caculation for you but it can't make decisions for you and it can't force you to find a better way of doing it so, my advice is to learn how to use the flash manually, but to use TTL for shots that really matter until you've got to grips with estimating distance and doing simple sums so readily that you don't even have to think about it - when I first because a trainee photographer, electronic flash had just come into being but it was pretty useless, so we used flash bulbs. Shooting on Kodachrome meant that every exposure had to be perfect, and it always was, we just took the guide numbere, which from memory was 40 with the bulbs for colour photography and with Kodachrome, so at 10' that was f/4, at 8' it was f/5 and at 15' it was too far away:)

So, what I'm really saying is this: Think about what you want to achieve, think about the position of the light, the pose, the other things that really matter, don't obsess about gadgets that you don't even need.
 
HSS and TTL are the latest gadgets that everyone seems to think that they can't live without.

Whilst I agree in principle with what Garry says these are not the latest gadgets, HSS was patented about 40 years ago by Nikon, TTL appeared on Olympus I believe about the same time.

So not new but it is the explosion of good priced high powered flashes that feature both coupled with digital that means it is far more readily available to non professionals that means their use has become much more popular.

Of course for Garry it has been all downhill since he stopped being able to buy his favourite magnesium powder.
 
Whilst I agree in principle with what Garry says these are not the latest gadgets, HSS was patented about 40 years ago by Nikon, TTL appeared on Olympus I believe about the same time.

So not new but it is the explosion of good priced high powered flashes that feature both coupled with digital that means it is far more readily available to non professionals that means their use has become much more popular.

Of course for Garry it has been all downhill since he stopped being able to buy his favourite magnesium powder.
Wrong again Mike, HSS was developed by Zeiss and came to market in 1953 - that's 64 years ago. And nobody bought the Olympus cameras that could use TTL I do take your point about these gadgets not being new as such, but they are new to the vast majority of amateur photographers, and they are now affordable too, which makes everyone think that they actually need to have them.
A bit like my clever smartphone, it can do everything in theory but all that a phone actually needs to do well is to make and receive phone calls, it has all of these apps that I don't want, don't know how to use and which run the battery down. Of course if I was 15 years old instead of 71 then I might find a use for the gadgets, but it would still be crap at making and receiving phone calls...

Nah, those of us who did a photography degree when doing it required an actual understanding of photography had to do A levels in both chemistry and physics to get accepted, so you've got it wrong again - if I wanted flash powder (which in fact is magnesium combined with black powder) then I wouldn't have had to buy it, I knew how to make it:)

P.S. You know all about black powder Mike, when you joined the army they were still using it...
 
Wrong again Mike, HSS was developed by Zeiss and came to market in 1953 - that's 64 years ago.

No Garry not wrong, I said they had a patent from that time, not that they invented it. Earlier cameras such as the Nikon F had a setting to use a special bulb called a Flat-Peak Bulb (so that is even earlier in Nikon's history) that had a longer slower flatter burn and although things are now electronic it is why Nikon cameras do not have an HSS setting, they have an Auto-FP setting, it is not until about 2002 though that Nikon had a patent for HSS TTL

The other difference is that when you were a boy Garry a centurion was a rank, when I was a boy it was a tank ;)

Mike
 
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No Garry not wrong, I said they had a patent from that time, not that they invented it. Earlier cameras such as the Nikon F had a setting to use a special bulb called a Flat-Peak Bulb (so that is even earlier in Nikon's history) that had a longer slower flatter burn and although things are now electronic it is why Nikon cameras do not have an HSS setting, they have an Auto-FP setting, it is not until about 2002 though that Nikon had a patent for HSS TTL

The other difference is that when you were a boy Garry a centurion was a rank, when I was a boy it was a tank ;)

Mike
Interesting, if of no relevance to this thread. I don't know what your source is, but Wikipedia (that well known source of misinformation) talks about flat peak bulbs, my own source is different because I actually used them, and they were called Focal Plane bulbs. They were very similar to the modern E27 modelling lamp in shape, long and thin, filled with magnesium foil which burned relatively slowly from bottom to top. Like the modern electronic flash HSS, they were blindingly bright but produced very little usable power, they cost far too much and although they didn't burn out flashguns they did set fire to a few buildings:)
 
There is the difference Garry, for me it is history to research, for you it is memories

Mike
Yes, you've summed it up nicely Mike - your theoretical knowledge -v- my actual knowledge:)
 
Wrong again Mike, HSS was developed by Zeiss and came to market in 1953 - that's 64 years ago. And nobody bought the Olympus cameras that could use TTL I do take your point about these gadgets not being new as such, but they are new to the vast majority of amateur photographers, and they are now affordable too, which makes everyone think that they actually need to have them.
A bit like my clever smartphone, it can do everything in theory but all that a phone actually needs to do well is to make and receive phone calls, it has all of these apps that I don't want, don't know how to use and which run the battery down. Of course if I was 15 years old instead of 71 then I might find a use for the gadgets, but it would still be crap at making and receiving phone calls...

Nah, those of us who did a photography degree when doing it required an actual understanding of photography had to do A levels in both chemistry and physics to get accepted, so you've got it wrong again - if I wanted flash powder (which in fact is magnesium combined with black powder) then I wouldn't have had to buy it, I knew how to make it:)

P.S. You know all about black powder Mike, when you joined the army they were still using it...

Very interesting. Zeiss in 1954, the era when they refused to abandon the compur shutter and go with focal plane shutters, partly the reason zeiss/voigtländer closed down camera production.
 
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Let's let you believe that, others have made that mistake before and I would rather be able to use current technologies than reminisce about ancient history

Mike
Mike - from my perspective, lightheated banter between two people who actually know each other (i.e. not just on forums) - don't take it personally.
I accept that you're very much into gadgets and innovation, and there's nothing wrong with that. So am I as it happens, it's just that I view new technology as just a part of my toolkit, to be used when necessary.
I have nothing whatever against you, nor do I in any way look down on you.
I have never served in the military and am definitely not a Walt - I think that with my attitude to authority I would have lasted about 5 minutes if I'd ever joined up - but I think that I must have learned something about the military mind from my father, who was a British Army Sniper with a lifetime of service (recalled to the colours after retirement, to fight again), and I have a lot of time for people who have the military attitude, i.e. the can do attitude that allows people to achieve whatever is achievable regardless of difficulties, limited resources, tiredness. In fact, one of the things that I did at Lencarta in the run up to my own retirement was to recruit my replacements, 3 are now military people.

So, if I take the p*** out of you sometimes, bear in mind that I would never say anything on a forum that I wouldn't say to your face, and that if I'm laughing at you it's really the "equipment nerd" aspect that I find funny, not the man.
Advantage Mike. Play on. :)
Nah, subject now closed:)
 
Just to be clear, there is no difference between the potential max power output in TTL or manual.

It's hard to generalise between umbrellas and softboxes as far as brightness is concerned - lots of variables, obviously. But broadly speaking, a white umbrella will give similar exposures to a softbox of the same size, providing the flash gun is set up carefully and is not blasting too much light around the edges. A silver umbrella might be a bit brighter, and giving slightly harder shadows. Shoot-through umbrellas are a lot less bright, because a) the light is spread over about 180 degrees, and b) half the light is bounced out of the back. How much of that light finds its way back to the subject depends on the environment.
Sorry for taking this up again.
I've found my 60cm octa is about 1 stop more efficient than a Shoot-through umbrella through placing the light where I need it instead of anywhere else. An reflective umbrella place itself somewhere in between maybe around 2/3 stops more effective than the Shoot-through. Stumbled upon this while trying to demonstrate hss for my sister and grapping the umbrella instead of the softbox just to find my speedlight underpowered.
 
Sorry for taking this up again.
I've found my 60cm octa is about 1 stop more efficient than a Shoot-through umbrella through placing the light where I need it instead of anywhere else. An reflective umbrella place itself somewhere in between maybe around 2/3 stops more effective than the Shoot-through. Stumbled upon this while trying to demonstrate hss for my sister and grapping the umbrella instead of the softbox just to find my speedlight underpowered.
The "efficiency" depends on many factors, including the positioning of reflective surfaces.
In fact, "efficiency" is often actually non-efficiency, caused by very poor diffusion on a softbox, which makes the softbox itself less efficient but which produces more efficiency in tems of delivered power.
Also, when it's a softbox used with a flashgun it isn't efficient anyway in the sense that the fixed flashgun reflector doesn't allow the light to bounce around off the walls of the softbox.

In theory, a reflective umbrella will always be more efficient (in terms of the amount of light delivered) than a shoot through umbrella, simply because about 40% of the light fired into a shoot through umbrella bounces back, and is wasted. In practice though, a shoot through can be placed as close as you like to the subject and a reflective one can't, so any theoretical efficiency gain from a reflective umbrella can be more than lost through the limitation of its inability to be placed close.
 
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