Question on overpowering the sun with high speed sync.

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I've recently been reading about overpowering the sun with off camera flash, using high speed sync, does anyone do this regularly and if so could you please post your results, i've never done it myself but would love to have a go, so what advice would you give to a newbie at this, and does anyone know of any easy to follow video tutorials, many thanks in advance :thumbs:
 
if the subject is in the shade then at around f/11 at 1/200 you can get a black or very dark photo so any flash on top of that will basically overpower if i guess, following that logic then yeha at say f/5.6 or something at faster shutter speeds say 1/1000 in the sun you may get a black or dark photo and again a fast sync flash on top of that should work. basically you are wanting your flash to do the lighting so without hte flash you want to achieve a very dark or black photo allow ing the flash to do the work
 
It's difficult. You won't do it with high speed sync - way too little power to overpower sun. An overcast day maybe, shooting very close, but not full sun at normal shooting distances.

As a general rule, you need 400ws to have a go at this, even then it's tight. Hot shoe guns are around 60ws max.

Then find a workaround for x-sync speed, such as ND filters.

Edit: Sunny 16 Rule says 1/200 sec at f/16, ISO200. So to overpower the sun, you're looking at a flash that can deliver f/22 outdoors at normal shooting distance. A bit of shade makes a huge difference.
 
Here's one I took last year... shooting into the sun; photo taken about half an hour before sunset:

r_bpool_1.jpg


Manual exposure 1/2000s and f/4 to expose the background at the level I wanted. Flash was my 580EX2, held out camera left on the curly cord extension thingy and I left it to the ETTL magic to take care of the flash.

Best suggestion I can make is to just give it a go; tweak the settings and see how the results vary. ;)
 
My attempt at over powering the sun with 2 430exII flashes...

4718336748_2aed4d2970.jpg


Okay so the image has been rescued in photoshop and it didn't work too great on camera but it looks just fine with a bit of adjustment in Camera Raw...

One flash was aimed at the ground 1/1 power at 14mm zoom. the other was also fired at 1/1 power but this time, 105mm zoom.

This was my first and probably last try at it but it was nice to experiment, maybe with 3 flashes all at higher zooms it could have been done more competently and possibly required less photoshopping but if you do plan on trying it in full sunshine get ready for some Camera Raw adjustments and some dodging and shadows/highlights fiddling.
 
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