Beginner i'm looking for another flash any recommendations?

chris malcolm said:
It's not your flash which maxes out at 1/200th sec. It's your camera. The flash duration is very much shorter. The 1/200th sec is the minimum shutter duration your camera can provide which has an interval in the middle at which the shutter is fully open and during which the flash can fire. That's a limitation of your camera's shutter design. Iris-type shutters, rarely found in DSLRs, can flash sync at much higher speeds. Whether that 1/200th sec limitation of your camera matters for motion freezing depends on how much proportion of the image exposure comes from the ambient (non-flash) light. For water drop photography it's easy enough to make the ambient light contribution negligible.
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not necaseraly my camera can do flash up to 1/4000sec it IS my current flash that can Not go faster than 1/200sec heres my current flash whitch claims to do 1/20000sec witch is rubbish the max it goes upto is 1/200sec
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Neewer®-Speedlite-Display-Digital-Standard/dp/B010XCEABO/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1515425771&sr=8-2-spons&keywords=neewer+flash&psc=1&smid=A38J244B2A95GX
fell free to take a look at it but is well... $h!t to be honest.
not sure if there's some misunderstanding but my camera's shutter speed does go up to 1/4000sec
 
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Where about are you located Alex?
This is a dead easy concept f2f but we’re struggling to get it over in written English.
 
There is no misunderstanding... you have been talking about using HSS for something it is not meant for...

Daft question but how are you timing the flash duration of your current flash? It looks like it has quite a long duration of 1/200th sec at full power but this will reduce as you lower the power and will be roughly the quoted 1/20000th at minimum power i.e. 1/128.

The trade of to getting short flash duration is less power, no matter how powerful the speedlight there is always that proviso.

Frankly there is no way that you will get a short enough flash duration to freeze your paintball and have enough power to effectively light it with a single speedlight...
 
im located in south Wales, UK

i know there's no way to freeze a paintball with my current flash that's why im looking for a faster flash. then someone mentioned hss and i got confused from there.
 
ill be completely honest i don't know much about hss other than some basics that's why getting confused. i know about shutter duration and that stuff but hss. I'm clueless?
 
Alex Pritchard said:
ill be completely honest i don't know much about hss other than some basics that's why getting confused. i know about shutter duration and that stuff but hss. I'm clueless?
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Right, so you know about shutter duration.
Flash sync speed is the fastest shutter speed at which the whole sensor is visible. On your camera that’s 1/200. At the point that the sensor is clear of any shutter curtain, the flash fires (very quickly) before the 2nd curtain appears in the frame.
With HSS the flash begins to pulse just before the first curtain starts to move, and continues pulsing till the slit of between shutter curtains has cleared the frame. This really wastes lots of flash power as most of the light is hitting the shutter curtains not the sensor. So the flash duration (and therefore the flash exposure) at or below sync speed is actually shorter (faster) than with HSS. Does that make sense?

More on higher power in a bit.
 
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Phil V said:
Right, so you know about shutter duration.
Flash sync speed is the fastest shutter speed at which the whole sensor is visible. On your camera that’s 1/200. At the point that the sensor is clear of any shutter curtain, the flash fires (very quickly) before the 2nd curtain appears in the frame.
With HSS the flash begins to pulse just before the first curtain starts to move, and continues pulsing till the slit of between shutter curtains has cleared the frame. This really wastes lots of flash power as most of the light is hitting the shutter curtains not the sensor. So the flash duration (and therefore the flash exposure) at or below sync speed is actually shorter (faster) than with HSS. Does that make sense?

More on higher power in a bit.
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YES!!! perfectly worded and understood this also explains why im sometimes seeing black on half of my image.
thanks!!
 
As Phil has just explained (I I wrote earlier) you are confusing max Shutter speed and max Flash Sync speed.
Your CAMERA can only use normal flash at a max of 1/200, but when it does with your existing flash the flash pulse can be as short as 1/2000.

HSS is a work around for this, but you get much less usable power from your flash when doing so

In case a diagram helps make the explanation of max sync speed and HSS, the following link to a Max Flash synch speed tutorial has a diagram of what happens re shutter curtains and flash pulses part way down;

https://neilvn.com/tangents/maximum-flash-sync-speed/
 
Faldrax said:
As Phil has just explained (I I wrote earlier) you are confusing max Shutter speed and max Flash Sync speed.
Your CAMERA can only use normal flash at a max of 1/200, but when it does with your existing flash the flash pulse can be as short as 1/2000.

HSS is a work around for this, but you get much less usable power from your flash when doing so

In case a diagram helps make the explanation of max sync speed and HSS, the following link to a Max Flash synch speed tutorial has a diagram of what happens re shutter curtains and flash pulses part way down;

https://neilvn.com/tangents/maximum-flash-sync-speed/
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yeah! those diagrams helped and it was realy well worded to!
 
gerry s said:
I think a second hand 580 and an ste-2 would really help you..... not that I’ve got one of each that I don’t use any more....

:)
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well.. if you offering

u know...
:)

CQ: what do you use now?

canon 580?
 
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I have a few 600 ExRt and an ste-3 now only because I find the radio as opposed to the optical more useful to me. If you generally have line of sight there isn’t a great deal of difference.
 
Though you can get a shutterspeed at 1/4000 sec that is often not enough to freeze objects travelling at high velosity e.g bullits, exploding bulbs/balloons and maybe also your paintball. Take my example a little further you may need a shutterspeed of 1/10000 1/20000 or even faster. No matter how slow your shutterspeed a very short flash burst can have that duration giving you exposure times of 1/20000 at your flash sync speed. Or you may want to photograph a pendulum or something else moving showing it multiple times at different positions in your pic like e.g Joe Mcnally ballet picture
 
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Alex Pritchard said:
YES!!! perfectly worded and understood this also explains why im sometimes seeing black on half of my image.
thanks!!
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So - out in the daylight...
Lets take Sunny 16 as a known rule, so at ISO100 F16 1/125 (ish - should be 1/100 but full stops is easier) you get a perfect exposure in bright sunlight.

That's ISO100 F5.6 1/500; at normal flash distances your speedlight will struggle to do more than add a touch of fill to the foreground shadow. to overpower the sun you need about 6 times the power of a speedlight.

If you're controlling the conditions, shooting in a barn or at dusk, a speedlight will freeze a paintball, but go outside in sunlight and you've nowhere near enough power. That brings us onto how your reactions are possibly going to catch that moving projectile, the usual technique is to use some sort of trigger trap.

This photography lark is surprisingly complicated, unless you grasp the fact that it's just physics, then it's surprisingly simple.
 
Phil V said:
So - out in the daylight...
Lets take Sunny 16 as a known rule, so at ISO100 F16 1/125 (ish - should be 1/100 but full stops is easier) you get a perfect exposure in bright sunlight.

That's ISO100 F5.6 1/500; at normal flash distances your speedlight will struggle to do more than add a touch of fill to the foreground shadow. to overpower the sun you need about 6 times the power of a speedlight.

If you're controlling the conditions, shooting in a barn or at dusk, a speedlight will freeze a paintball, but go outside in sunlight and you've nowhere near enough power. That brings us onto how your reactions are possibly going to catch that moving projectile, the usual technique is to use some sort of trigger trap.

This photography lark is surprisingly complicated unless you grasp the fact that it's just physics, then it's surprisingly simple.
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yep. ill try to just time a shot ill count back from 3 and someone in a controlled environment eg a barn (good idea) and ill shoot at the same time i predict its posable but i also predict it will take at least 90 shots or less if i cant do that ill get a sound trigger trap or make one w/ a raspberry pie or something.
whatever the case it will be a lot of experimenting and playing with settings, reflectors, ambient light, etc...
 
Alex, don't spend a bean until you fully understand how all this works. It sounds like you're getting there but it is confusing, sometimes apparently contradictory, and there are similar terms used to describe very different functions. Google is your friend ;)

It could be that you'll buy another flash and it'll be no better than the one you've got for water droplets. And you may need to spend a lot more to do the paintball thing. TBH, it'd probably be a good idea to have a go at water droplets with your current gear first, so you get to know what's possible and where the limitations lie, and move forward from there.
 
HoppyUK said:
Alex, don't spend a bean until you fully understand how all this works. It sounds like you're getting there but it is confusing, sometimes apparently contradictory, and there are similar terms used to describe very different functions. Google is your friend ;)

It could be that you'll buy another flash and it'll be no better than the one you've got for water droplets. And you may need to spend a lot more to do the paintball thing. TBH, it'd probably be a good idea to have a go at water droplets with your current gear first, so you get to know what's possible and where the limitations lie, and move forward from there.
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that sounds like a smart idea. google's your friend unless you use edge ;) ill get everything setup so i know what i need (glass mat etc...) and ill do the water droplet stuff tomorrow after school... (i hate school) and then ill find out where i need different gear or lighting angles etc...
 
here's the outcome of a quick session of photography. a lot to improve on, I know. but its only a test of lighting. what do you think of the lighting? the flash is on the background bouncing of a reflector there's also a led. light at 2 o'clock and a led panel at 6 o'clock.
 

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I am sure you are aware the lighting does need work... I am just trying to understand your lighting strategy here, I fully get the speed light lighting the background, apart from providing light for you to see what you are doing what is the point of the 2 LED's.

If it were me with limited flash resources then I would probably have just lit the background from directly behind and a little lower than the glass, then used black flags to define the shape of the glass if needed... Hope that makes sense.

Maybe provide some more tech specs such as exposure etc.
 
PhilH04 said:
I am sure you are aware the lighting does need work... I am just trying to understand your lighting strategy here, I fully get the speed light lighting the background, apart from providing light for you to see what you are doing what is the point of the 2 LED's.

If it were me with limited flash resources then I would probably have just lit the background from directly behind and a little lower than the glass, then used black flags to define the shape of the glass if needed... Hope that makes sense.

Maybe provide some more tech specs such as exposure etc.
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yeah makes sense. settings- iso 100, 1/200sec, and f1.5 canon 50mm lens and using a remote trigger because I'm standing away from my camera to drop water
 
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