Lencarta SF300 and HSS

roc1

roc1

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Hi guys

I'm using a Sony A9 with a Lencarta wavesync 2.4 trigger/receiver along with their SF300 lights.

I want to play around using an f stop around f2.0 for some shallow dof portraits, is this possible to achieve HSS with the above set up? Lencarta say the SF300's are capable of HSS, but I can't work it out!

If it's not possible any advice on a set up that would work would be great.

Many thanks.
 
I have a wavesync 2.4 with my lencarta atom and it won't do hss.
The mach 2 c does but it's for canon.
I think an x1-s or xpro-s should work.
I have an x1-s and it does hss with a7ii and my godox flash with a built in receiver. As your studio flash has a built in receiver it should also work.
 
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Well, when I was with Lencarta the SF300 didn't do HSS but it's possible that it may do, with one of the new generation of triggers that's now available. Lencarta has grown enormously in recent years and and it's possible that the person who told you that it will do HSS doesn't know as much as s/he thinks they do - I suggest that you ring Alex at Lencarta, who will be able to give you a definitive answer.

But you don't need to reduce the effective power by using HSS anyway. Just set the power to somewhere near minimum and set your ISO to it's lowest. If that still isn't enough then fit a neutral density filter to your lens, a 0.9 (3 stop) one is probably the best, it's what I've always used myself.
 
Garry Edwards said:
Well, when I was with Lencarta the SF300 didn't do HSS but it's possible that it may do, with one of the new generation of triggers that's now available. Lencarta has grown enormously in recent years and and it's possible that the person who told you that it will do HSS doesn't know as much as s/he thinks they do - I suggest that you ring Alex at Lencarta, who will be able to give you a definitive answer.

But you don't need to reduce the effective power by using HSS anyway. Just set the power to somewhere near minimum and set your ISO to it's lowest. If that still isn't enough then fit a neutral density filter to your lens, a 0.9 (3 stop) one is probably the best, it's what I've always used myself.
Click to expand...
Thanks Garry much appreciated I'll try that, and if no joy I'll ask them what trigger will do the job.
 
Garry Edwards said:
Well, when I was with Lencarta the SF300 didn't do HSS but it's possible that it may do, with one of the new generation of triggers that's now available. Lencarta has grown enormously in recent years and and it's possible that the person who told you that it will do HSS doesn't know as much as s/he thinks they do - I suggest that you ring Alex at Lencarta, who will be able to give you a definitive answer.

But you don't need to reduce the effective power by using HSS anyway. Just set the power to somewhere near minimum and set your ISO to it's lowest. If that still isn't enough then fit a neutral density filter to your lens, a 0.9 (3 stop) one is probably the best, it's what I've always used myself.
Click to expand...
It does say in the manual for the sf300 that the limiting factor with sync speed is the camera, not the light, so perhaps with the newer trigger it will do hss.
As you say though, best to give them a call to be sure before buying anything.
 
SF300 has a decent modelling light. That's often enough by itself for low f/numbers if you push the ISO up a bit.
 
as an update it seems by putting lamp on full power, iso 100 with ss at 1/1000 or there abouts, and f1.8 I'm achieving what I wanted without banding etc.
 
Hadn’t realised we were discussing the Superfast.
it’s not really suitable for long tail sync as it’s designed to flash fast. And as Garry says there’s no true HSS either.
 
No the SuperFast lights will not do HSS - even with a HSS capable trigger and receiver. There is no real technical (hardware) reason for this: the lights are IGBT, and they will happily mimic slower pulses from other lights (say a speed-light at 10Hz, or a florescent tube starting up), and the receiver hardware is swappable. I have tried getting them to mimic an SB900 speed-light in HSS (by aiming the speed-light at min power at the slave cell on the SF600) and this doesn't work. I have tested my SF600's with the new 2.4GHz receiver and the X-Pro 1 trigger, and corresponding receiver module and this doesn't work either.

Back when those lights were current, Godox had two trigger/controller protocols, and the only common function they supported was basic triggering. The triggers at the time could be swapped from one protocol to the other by some key-press combination at power-on which I've long since forgotten, and the receivers were the same units. The studio heads used one system, and the portable lights used the other. You can tell which one your trigger is on by the scale it uses: the portable lights used fractions of full power (1/32, 1/16 1/8 etc) and the studio heads had a scale from 5 to 10. The triggers would always trigger both, and I routinely mix in my Safari II (which uses the fractional scale) in the studio using the old 433Mhz triggers which are set to use the 5-10 scale (I just have to adjust the power on the Safari pack).

Swapping the plug-in receivers on the SuperFasts to the new 2.4Ghz ones, I can trigger the lights with the X-Pro but I can't control the power, as the X-Pro uses the other protocol. It works flawlessly with the Safari II and the new receiver and I can control the power, turn the modelling lamp on and off, and turn the light on and off (something you couldn't do even with the original controllers). I had hoped when Godox added support for the 5-10 scale on the X-Pro trigger that it would allow output control, however it doesn't, and as the receiver modules are the same for all lights, I think it's something in the light itself. I think that's also the reason why the SuperFasts will not do HSS - even though everything else in the chain is capable - it's something in the way the light implements the control protocol internally, that they just couldn't engineer out with firmware in new the receiver.

As for tail-sync - as Phil says, they are a bit fast even on full power to do this effectively, however it is just about acceptable in some situations
https://owenlloydphotography.com/?p=1657

The newer SuperFast Pro (QT-II) lights will do HSS

Apart from ND filters (on the lens or on the light) another option for wide apertures is to just shoot using the modeling lights. This was shot using the modelling lights with a standard reflector with grid as key, and strip softboxes with grids for the edge lights.
https://flic.kr/p/SGYeBR
View: https://www.flickr.com/photos/owenlloyd/33281470323/in/dateposted-public/
it won't work for everything - and I certainly don't recommend mixing LED and incandescent modelling bulbs, or even incandescent modelling bulbs of varying output, if colour accuracy is important to you, however it can be very effective - better sometimes if you want hard light, as the sources are typically smaller than a flash tube.
 
Scooter said:
No the SuperFast lights will not do HSS - even with a HSS capable trigger and receiver. There is no real technical (hardware) reason for this: the lights are IGBT, and they will happily mimic slower pulses from other lights (say a speed-light at 10Hz, or a florescent tube starting up), and the receiver hardware is swappable. I have tried getting them to mimic an SB900 speed-light in HSS (by aiming the speed-light at min power at the slave cell on the SF600) and this doesn't work. I have tested my SF600's with the new 2.4GHz receiver and the X-Pro 1 trigger, and corresponding receiver module and this doesn't work either.

Back when those lights were current, Godox had two trigger/controller protocols, and the only common function they supported was basic triggering. The triggers at the time could be swapped from one protocol to the other by some key-press combination at power-on which I've long since forgotten, and the receivers were the same units. The studio heads used one system, and the portable lights used the other. You can tell which one your trigger is on by the scale it uses: the portable lights used fractions of full power (1/32, 1/16 1/8 etc) and the studio heads had a scale from 5 to 10. The triggers would always trigger both, and I routinely mix in my Safari II (which uses the fractional scale) in the studio using the old 433Mhz triggers which are set to use the 5-10 scale (I just have to adjust the power on the Safari pack).

Swapping the plug-in receivers on the SuperFasts to the new 2.4Ghz ones, I can trigger the lights with the X-Pro but I can't control the power, as the X-Pro uses the other protocol. It works flawlessly with the Safari II and the new receiver and I can control the power, turn the modelling lamp on and off, and turn the light on and off (something you couldn't do even with the original controllers). I had hoped when Godox added support for the 5-10 scale on the X-Pro trigger that it would allow output control, however it doesn't, and as the receiver modules are the same for all lights, I think it's something in the light itself. I think that's also the reason why the SuperFasts will not do HSS - even though everything else in the chain is capable - it's something in the way the light implements the control protocol internally, that they just couldn't engineer out with firmware in new the receiver.

As for tail-sync - as Phil says, they are a bit fast even on full power to do this effectively, however it is just about acceptable in some situations
https://owenlloydphotography.com/?p=1657

The newer SuperFast Pro (QT-II) lights will do HSS

Apart from ND filters (on the lens or on the light) another option for wide apertures is to just shoot using the modeling lights. This was shot using the modelling lights with a standard reflector with grid as key, and strip softboxes with grids for the edge lights.
https://flic.kr/p/SGYeBR
View: https://www.flickr.com/photos/owenlloyd/33281470323/in/dateposted-public/
it won't work for everything - and I certainly don't recommend mixing LED and incandescent modelling bulbs, or even incandescent modelling bulbs of varying output, if colour accuracy is important to you, however it can be very effective - better sometimes if you want hard light, as the sources are typically smaller than a flash tube.
Click to expand...
Thanks Owen much appreciated! Think I will inevitably invest in a HSS lamp and transmitter this year.
 
roc1 said:
Thanks Owen much appreciated! Think I will inevitably invest in a HSS lamp and transmitter this year.
Click to expand...
My own view of HSS is that it's more of a marketing feature than a real-world benefit, especially in the studio. It's basically just a series of tiny flashes so close together that they form a continuous light, a by-product of IGBT technology, and I can't really think of any lighting situation in which it will be the only or even the best solution.

It's nice to have gadgets with extra features, but unless they're actually needed it can be hard to rationalise the cost.
 
Garry Edwards said:
My own view of HSS is that it's more of a marketing feature than a real-world benefit, especially in the studio. It's basically just a series of tiny flashes so close together that they form a continuous light, a by-product of IGBT technology, and I can't really think of any lighting situation in which it will be the only or even the best solution.

It's nice to have gadgets with extra features, but unless they're actually needed it can be hard to rationalise the cost.
Click to expand...

HSS is the best option with any subject where you need both flash and a high shutter speed, and there are plenty of those - eg outdoor action/sport, or want to shoot at say f/1.4 for shallow DoF. If you want a clean image in daylight with no ambient blurring, it's got to be either HSS or hypersync and of the two HSS is by far the best and easiest (provided the flash unit has sufficient power).

If the subject is not only moving but changing distance too, then the correct flash exposure will also be changing rapidly and that's where TTL can really score. In which case, only an IGBT flash can deliver both HSS with TTL control.
 
Garry Edwards said:
My own view of HSS is that it's more of a marketing feature than a real-world benefit, especially in the studio. It's basically just a series of tiny flashes so close together that they form a continuous light, a by-product of IGBT technology, and I can't really think of any lighting situation in which it will be the only or even the best solution.

It's nice to have gadgets with extra features, but unless they're actually needed it can be hard to rationalise the cost.
Click to expand...

I must admit - I don't really see the point of a mains powered studio head with HSS. If all the lighting is flash, that will freeze most motion for human subjects. There's no reason to have "ambient" or continuous light in a studio exposure unless I put it there, so if motion freezing is the aim, I'll just eliminate the continuous light by making sure it is too low to register in the image. In fact my internal definition of a "studio" now I think about it, is a room that can be made dark. I recently tested this in my small studio with a view to shooting it in a much larger studio with a very high ceiling: View: https://www.instagram.com/p/B6OXlNMA9hZ/
However, when I got the studio on the day of the shoot, it had big light leaks from skylights I didn't know about.

Outside, the one scenario where it looks to me to be the best solution is when you *need* a high shutter speed, and a large dose of artificial light. Ie you need to freeze motion, with a significant ambient component to the light, and also need to light it. HSS flash is a very compact way of providing powerful continuous light - ie one AD200 is easier than lugging an Arri 10k and a generator with you :p

All other scenarios that I see HSS being used for, do not actually *need* a high shutter speed at all - it's a just a by-product of a wide aperture, and that is easily reduced with an ND filter. HSS does provide a convenience in that you don't need to break out the filters, but that's about it. I can count of the fingers of one hand the times I've used HSS.
 
Agreed. In a studio context there's no use for HSS, but you still need an IGBT controlled flash unit to really freeze fast action. And with IGBT, both HSS and TTL come pretty much free so then you're golden. IGBT also offers the potential for better colour consistency and some manufactures are using it that way too, eg Godox and Profoto.*

I no longer have a studio unless you count the kitchen table (moved house) but I've just spent a couple of grand on a few Godox IGBT/HSS/TTL flash heads with battery power - the great outdoors is my new al fresco studio. I have also ditched my old studio flash heads and a whole bunch of speedlights that I used to cobble together for working outdoors (no more bluddy AA batteries!). The new Godox kit is better at everything, it can do far more and is way easier. If anyone's interested, I have Godox AD400-Pro x2, AD200-Pro, V1 speedlight, Flashpoint Mk2 trigger etc etc, and it's all pretty amazing :D

*IGBT control provides the option to sample any part of the flash pulse as it changes colour and brightness. By mixing and matching different samples, colour can be held consistently accurate throughout the power range. When used like this though, TTL control is lost and flash durations get longer.
 
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