Godox / Atom 360 & HSS triggering in slave mode

[juggler]

Hopefully a simple question.. I still haven't been able to find any radio triggers for Olympus which can work with any IGBT lights in HSS mode. One solution would be to use an Olympus speedlite (FL-600R) which supports HSS and then trigger the the main light from that, possibly via a repeater like the Aokatec system.

So.. can the Godox / Atom 360 be triggered as a slave when working in HSS mode?

If not, is there another workable solution (other than buy a Canikon)?
I really want to do some motion-freezing outdoor flash work with dancers & acrobats.

thanks in advance

 

[HoppyUK]

I'm just wondering if HSS is the answer here. Outdoors in daylight, the flash needs to be very powerful to contribute anything significant and big power is one thing you don't get with HSS. It's very inefficient, wasting most of the light, more so at higher shutter speeds. In effect, you lose several stops of flash power.

Can you post a link from Flickr or somewhere that shows the kind of effect you're after?

 

[juggler]

I'm just wondering if HSS is the answer here. Outdoors in daylight, the flash needs to be very powerful to contribute anything significant and big power is one thing you don't get with HSS. It's very inefficient, wasting most of the light, more so at higher shutter speeds. In effect, you lose several stops of flash power.

Can you post a link from Flickr or somewhere that shows the kind of effect you're after?

Fair point.. this is roughly the idea. Some light in the sky, contrasty light to emphasise form, everything nice & sharp.
I'm assuming this was taken with HSS but it may have involved something considerably more powerful than the Godox 360.


Dancer : Jacqueline Yap by Poey YT, on Flickr

 

[HoppyUK]

I'll take a punt and say that's not HSS, but regular flash and carefully judged peak-of-the-action timing when the subject is almost stationary. There's another shot on the guy's website that clearly shows some ambient light blurring that you don't get with HSS. Waiting for dusk makes this kind of work 100x easier.

 

[juggler]

I'll take a punt and say that's not HSS, but regular flash and carefully judged peak-of-the-action timing when the subject is almost stationary. There's another shot on the guy's website that clearly shows some ambient light blurring that you don't get with HSS. Waiting for dusk makes this kind of work 100x easier.

Thanks for taking the time to reply. Working at dusk - or just before - is definitely part of the plan. I should have spent longer hunting for a more obnoxious example, though. I'd assumed peak-of-jump timing isn't possible where an acrobat is rotating, e.g. a parkour performer doing a somersault.

(I don't have a particular shoot in mind, however much of my work is with acrobats and performers and I want to have the ability to do something more dynamic than the carefully staged stuff I often produce).

 

[HoppyUK]

Here's a link I often post on questions like this. Dave Black shooting motocross outdoors in daylight with HSS - he has to use eight speedlites!

Personally I'd give a go with normal flash at max x-sync speed. Yes, there will be some ambient blurring around fast-moving hands and feet (where they appear over lighter areas of background, but won't show against dark) but that often doesn't detract from the image and often actually helps convey an impression of movement. If faces are good and clear, I think you'd still have something worthwhile. Try it on a practise shoot.

Taking the blurring thing a bit further, you could even make more of that with longer shutter speeds and second-curtain sync. Bear in mind that second-curtain sync only works at shutter speeds below 1/30sec.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNDAINwhTWU

 

[juggler]

Here's a link I often post on questions like this. Dave Black shooting motocross outdoors in daylight with HSS - he has to use eight speedlites!

Personally I'd give a go with normal flash at max x-sync speed. Yes, there will be some ambient blurring around fast-moving hands and feet (where they appear over lighter areas of background, but won't show against dark) but that often doesn't detract from the image and often actually helps convey an impression of movement. If faces are good and clear, I think you'd still have something worthwhile. Try it on a practise shoot.

Taking the blurring thing a bit further, you could even make more of that with longer shutter speeds and second-curtain sync. Bear in mind that second-curtain sync only works at shutter speeds below 1/30sec.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNDAINwhTWU

Thanks, will give it a try. Rear curtain sync could be an option. The problem is - admittedly - partly GAS: I want some affordable portable lighting that can do everything but there's clearly going to have to be a compromise somewhere.

As as aside, how do 8 speedlites compare power wise to the atom 360? I'm guessing that - with the right reflector - they're roughly equivalent to a pair of 360s?

 

[sk66]

Re: AD360 HSS. You need a TTL trigger on the camera as a minimum. It can be used as a "pass thru" for the FT-16 trigger/receiver, or it can be used along with its own receiver connected to the flash. How well it will work will depend on the trigger's timing delay and if it can be programmed to offset that.

But I agree w/ Hoppy. The best bet is to have lower ambient and a flash powerful enough to be using a reduced power setting. I don't know the effective SS's (T0.1) for the AD360, but I'm pretty sure that it could accomplish that example from about 10ft at 1/2 power w/ the standard diffuser. I would say that ~6 speedlights of 70ws is equivalent to 1 AD360 (very rough guestimate).

This was taken w/ an AD360 at 1/32 power from ~ 10ft (no diffusion). Granted, the T0.1 is probably a lot faster at 1/32 than it is at 1/2 power, but a hummingbird's wings are also moving a whole lot faster than almost anything else you might try to photograph.

SGK_3886-2.jpg by Steven Kersting, on Flickr

 

[HoppyUK]

Thanks, will give it a try. Rear curtain sync could be an option. The problem is - admittedly - partly GAS: I want some affordable portable lighting that can do everything but there's clearly going to have to be a compromise somewhere.

As as aside, how do 8 speedlites compare power wise to the atom 360? I'm guessing that - with the right reflector - they're roughly equivalent to a pair of 360s?

The Atom 360 is powerful, and lives up to its 360Ws billing. In round numbers, a decent speedlight puts out in the region of 100-120Ws equivalent (more than some rival flash manufacturers give them credit for) so it's equal to three or four of those in normal sync mode.

HSS output cannot be expressed in the same way, as it's effectively continuous light, but as a rough guide, merely switching to HSS mode at say 1/500sec will cost you the best part of three stops, and you lose another stop for every halving of shutter duration thereafter. That's a heavy loss, though not always as bad as it seems because as shutter speed goes up, that also reduces the ambient light in proportion. But put it another way - HSS is great for fill-in flash at close range, couples and small groups etc, and it's very effective for that. Anything more demanding though, and you need to think carefully. Pretty much anything is possible, but not easy.

 

[juggler]

Thank you all.. looks like the Atom used conventionally would be the place to start.

 

[mike weeks]

HSS output cannot be expressed in the same way, as it's effectively continuous light, but as a rough guide, merely switching to HSS mode at say 1/500sec will cost you the best part of three stops, and you lose another stop for every halving of shutter duration thereafter. That's a heavy loss, though not always as bad as it seems because as shutter speed goes up, that also reduces the ambient light in proportion. .

Of course if for every stop you reduce shutter you open up the aperture you have the same light because it is constant and not flash by nature.

Mike

 

[sk66]

Of course if for every stop you reduce shutter you open up the aperture you have the same light because it is constant and not flash by nature.

Mike

True enough. But aperture is a critical aspect of an image. Often it is the most critical (w/in a small range) and not really *a variable* as such.

To follow on with the discussion, ND's are a better way of dropping the ambient. That's because they do not reduce the maximum flash output capability the way HSS does. And the flash will be using significantly less power (battery) for any exposure.

 

[HoppyUK]

Of course if for every stop you reduce shutter you open up the aperture you have the same light because it is constant and not flash by nature.

Mike

The real point I was trying to make was the dramatic reduction in effective flash exposure with HSS. Most of the light falls on the shutter curtains, not the sensor, and is completely wasted.

On my Canon 5D2, for some strange reason the flash will fire in either normal sync mode at 1/200sec, or in HSS mode when enabled. So there is a direct comparison. With HSS enabled, effective exposure is reduced by exactly two stops. Some guns are a bit worse than that, though the exact losses are slightly variable according to camera.

In the same vein, Pocket Wizard's optimised HSS (for Canon) tailors the flash exactly to the camera model and shutter speed, reducing waste light. Depending on the camera and settings, it can improve brightness by a stop or so at faster speeds. As an aside, it's this PW feature that revealed a weakness in Canon 580EXii guns, by encouraging users to run them very hard - until they melted...

Edit: using ND filters to pull the shutter speed down to normal x-sync speeds works very well if you're wanting to maybe use a low f/number in bright light. But that's no good if you want to freeze fast movement.

 

[Garry Edwards]

Pretty much my own view.
If I was the cynical type - which of course I'm not - then I might think that HSS is little more than marketing hype, claiming to produce a 'solution' to a problem to which the only real solution is to use a camera that doesn't have a focal plane shutter.
The best solutions, as I see it, to overcoming the problems of too much contributed ambient light, are to
Only shoot when there isn't too much ambient light (in which circumstances a fast flash duration can also freeze movement because there isn't enough ambient light to cause its own blur)
Use a ND filter and a really powerful flash
Use a tail end sync trigger
Or of course, use a camera that doesn't have the shutter speed limitations of a focal plane shutter.

 

[sk66]

Edit: using ND filters to pull the shutter speed down to normal x-sync speeds works very well if you're wanting to maybe use a low f/number in bright light. But that's no good if you want to freeze fast movement.

Generally true... but it depends on the power required to bring the subject back up to desired level. (i.e. how far you are dropping the ambient w/ the ND). Posted for others benefit...

 

[sk66]

Or of course, use a camera that doesn't have the shutter speed limitations of a focal plane shutter.

Great point.
There aren't many DSLRs still around that use a leaf shutter or electronic curtains. But MANY compact cameras do. And they often have adequate resolution and can be used at low enough ISO's for this type of work. I know I was able to get my Fuji to sync at 1/8000 w/ external flash via optical trigger.

 

[HoppyUK]

Generally true... but it depends on the power required to bring the subject back up to desired level. (i.e. how far you are dropping the ambient w/ the ND). Posted for others benefit...

I'm not quite sure what you mean, but what I was trying to point out was that if you have dropped the shutter speed down to 1/200-250sec with an ND filter, you're going to get ambient blurring even if the flash duration is much faster. That's why Dave Black uses that extraordinary 8-gun rig (linked in post #6) because he needs flash but also a very fast shutter speed.

Great point.
There aren't many DSLRs still around that use a leaf shutter or electronic curtains. But MANY compact cameras do. And they often have adequate resolution and can be used at low enough ISO's for this type of work. I know I was able to get my Fuji to sync at 1/8000 w/ external flash via optical trigger.

Leaf-shutters that will sync at any speed are a moot point. Hasselblads will run to a claimed 1/800sec though I rather doubt they're actually that fast and there are other issues with leaf shutters at high speeds when the shutter blades can act like an aperture diaphragm. Fully electronic global shutters are the holy grail and they can't be too far off, but with your Fuji for example, if it's synching at a true 1/8000sec shutter speed, then it's only going to capture the whole flash pulse at quite low power settings, eg a speedlight at 1/8th or 1/16th power.

Personally, I would be very attracted by a camera that had high sync speed but I think I/we may be in the minority. For example, some Canons have been able to sync at 1/320sec for years but it rarely gets mentioned, and with Pocket Wizard's peak-hypersync feature I can get my Canon 7D up to 1/400sec, and the 1DMkiv will do a genuine 1/500sec. Meanwhile, PW is struggling to make ends meet.

 

[Garry Edwards]

I'm not quite sure what you mean, but what I was trying to point out was that if you have dropped the shutter speed down to 1/200-250sec with an ND filter, you're going to get ambient blurring even if the flash duration is much faster. That's why Dave Black uses that extraordinary 8-gun rig (linked in post #6) because he needs flash but also a very fast shutter speed.



Leaf-shutters that will sync at any speed are a moot point. Hasselblads will run to a claimed 1/800sec though I rather doubt they're actually that fast and there are other issues with leaf shutters at high speeds when the shutter blades can act like an aperture diaphragm. Fully electronic global shutters are the holy grail and they can't be too far off, but with your Fuji for example, if it's synching at a true 1/8000sec shutter speed, then it's only going to capture the whole flash pulse at quite low power settings, eg a speedlight at 1/8th or 1/16th power.

Personally, I would be very attracted by a camera that had high sync speed but I think I/we may be in the minority. For example, some Canons have been able to sync at 1/320sec for years but it rarely gets mentioned, and with Pocket Wizard's peak-hypersync feature I can get my Canon 7D up to 1/400sec, and the 1DMkiv will do a genuine 1/500sec. Meanwhile, PW is struggling to make ends meet.

Well, I agree that leaf shutters aren't perfect, but they do offer a distinct increase in maximum sync speed compared to FP shutters. I've never tried using a Hassie at 1/800th with flash, but I can say that the RZ67 is perfectly OK at its maximum of 1/400th - any vignetting caused by the design of the shutter action is minimal to the point where it just doesn't matter.

The Nikon D70S (?) solved the problem completely with what is in effect two shutter systems, so it can be done. And P&S cameras can do it too.

The main point that I was trying to make is that HSS isn't the answer, or certainly isn't a really effective answer. Maybe though, the real answer is that we've never had it so good and just need to accept that it isn't always possible to freeze action effectively when shooting outdoors with flash - when I started off in pro photography the max sync speed with a SLR was just 1/30th, there WAS a "HSS" workaround at the time, very long-burning flashbulbs that cost a fortune, that output very little light and which lit up the whole area and dazzled people, and instead of having fancy electronic radio triggers we had cameras that had a FP setting that altered the timing, just like today - and, just like today, it was a poor solution.
So, what I'm saying is that there are various PART solutions, such as Dave Black with his very complicated and expensive 8 flashguns, tail end sync, leaf shutters, electronic shutters, clever radio triggers and HSS - of which HSS is less of a solution than the rest.

 

[HoppyUK]

Well, I agree that leaf shutters aren't perfect, but they do offer a distinct increase in maximum sync speed compared to FP shutters. I've never tried using a Hassie at 1/800th with flash, but I can say that the RZ67 is perfectly OK at its maximum of 1/400th - any vignetting caused by the design of the shutter action is minimal to the point where it just doesn't matter.

The Nikon D70S (?) solved the problem completely with what is in effect two shutter systems, so it can be done. And P&S cameras can do it too.

The main point that I was trying to make is that HSS isn't the answer, or certainly isn't a really effective answer. Maybe though, the real answer is that we've never had it so good and just need to accept that it isn't always possible to freeze action effectively when shooting outdoors with flash - when I started off in pro photography the max sync speed with a SLR was just 1/30th, there WAS a "HSS" workaround at the time, very long-burning flashbulbs that cost a fortune, that output very little light and which lit up the whole area and dazzled people, and instead of having fancy electronic radio triggers we had cameras that had a FP setting that altered the timing, just like today - and, just like today, it was a poor solution.
So, what I'm saying is that there are various PART solutions, such as Dave Black with his very complicated and expensive 8 flashguns, tail end sync, leaf shutters, electronic shutters, clever radio triggers and HSS - of which HSS is less of a solution than the rest.

I agree that we've never had it so good really - most things are possible. My first SLR had x-sync at 1/30sec too, plus an FP-sync option, but I've never used one of those legendary FP bulbs. You must be much older than me

I nearly bought a Nikon D70, exclusively for its high x-sync speed. From memory, Nikon claimed 1/500sec but it would run higher than that, as did a couple of other Nikons of that era, but they used a CCD sensor. They're all CMOS now (apart from a few medium-format cameras using the old Kodak CCD) that doesn't seem so adaptable in that respect, but faster x-sync speeds are such a desirable feature that I'm sure it's being worked on.

 

[Garry Edwards]

I'm older than most people - I'm not having a party for my 70th at the end of the month but all presents are welcome
Those old magnesium foil FP flash bulbs are remembered, but not with affection... I used to moan about them, they would literally scorch the carpet if ejected from the flashgun too soon and anyone stupid enough to catch one mid air wouldn't make the same mistake twice - and their usable flash energy was dire, just like HSS of today. When I moaned I was reminded by the "proper" photographers who had used them for longer that although I used to choke on the smell of burning plastic, when they started out they didn't have the plastic coating and used to shatter - those were the days (not).

And, from memory, each bulb costs what was then a days wages for me.

I agree that technology will almost certainly develop to allow faster shutter speeds to be used with flash, and I think that this technology has to be in the area of shutter design, I doubt whether much more can be done trigger wise and even if it can be, I doubt whether Yongnuo will see a big enough market to do it, this is firmly in the area of Pocket Wizard, and I very much doubt whether they are in a positon to develop new technology.

 

[sk66]

The Nikon D8xx series syncs at 1/320. And I've synced at 1/400 w/o significant impact (1/600 is about where it becomes obvious w/ the AD360 used for fill).

I don't think we will see global shutters w/ CMOS... the size/circuitry requirements are too great and I don't think the demand justifies a specialized camera model. But you never know...

It would seem to me that the easiest way to address the issue is with a selectable "long burn" setting for a xenon strobe. I can't see any reason why a xenon tube can't be run for longer times at a given power setting... especially with IGBT control. Garry??

 

[HoppyUK]

The Nikon D8xx series syncs at 1/320. And I've synced at 1/400 w/o significant impact (1/600 is about where it becomes obvious w/ the AD360 used for fill).

I don't think we will see global shutters w/ CMOS... the size/circuitry requirements are too great and I don't think the demand justifies a specialized camera model. But you never know...

It would seem to me that the easiest way to address the issue is with a selectable "long burn" setting for a xenon strobe. I can't see any reason why a xenon tube can't be run for longer times at a given power setting... especially with IGBT control. Garry??

One big reason why I'm sure we'll see all-electronic shutters, as soon as the technology allows, is cost. The mechanical focal-plane shutter unit is an expensive piece of high-precision engineering, as fine as any Swiss watch. It also adds unwanted bulk and weight.

 

[sk66]

It's also a primary failure point...

 

[HoppyUK]

It's also a primary failure point...

Yes, that too - shutters fail, and also wear out eventually.

Thinking about it a bit more, shutter-shock has appeared as new problem for mirrorless cameras. They have no mirror-slap of course, but the way they mostly operate now, the mechanical shutter has to first close after the shutter release is pressed, and then open again immediately for the exposure. Some cameras do that with a notable clonk, made more apparent with lighter cameras that have less bulk to dampen it. There is also additional delay, that needs to be minimised if mirrorless cameras are to make their way into professional sports photography.

It all adds up to a compelling case