Speedlight help Please

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Gary
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I had the afternoon off work yesterday and spent a few hours with my Dad. He has recently started playing bowls so thought it would be good to get him out as his health as not been the best these days (just daignosed with early stage Parkinsons) so keeping moving is a good thing for him.
I took the camera so I could pester him at the end of our game and try and get this photo of him, sort of wide angle with a moody sky. I will post the image below.
The setting for the image were Iso 400, F6.3, 3200 shutter. 580 ex on camera @ +2 1/3 fev
I was in av mode and -1/3 ev on camera.
My problem was not getting the flash to register on Dad. I am assuming this was because my shutter was 3200 allthough I was on High Sync flash my power/range would be limited.
My conclusion is I should have been on 100 iso thus lowering my shutter speed.
Am I thinking along the right lines or did I go about it the wrong way. I wanted to keep the flash on camera.

I had to up the exposure 1/2 stop in Dpp and I guess it is still under.
Any help advice would be a great help.

Gaz

ipmly0.jpg
 
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Apart from anything else, the flash hasn't actually fired in that shot. You sure HSS was enabled?
 
Hi Richard. Yep it don't look like it but it did in the large size image you can see it in Dads eye plus there was a slight shine on the ball before I edited.
I took 5 shots and in my hatse to get results I did move the flash head up a notch and pull the bounce card out ( again on reflection wasting light).
I took a screen grab of the exif.

Hope you can help for future reference.
Gaz

2znof92.jpg
 
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One of the issues with ETTL is like all auto metering it'll get fooled sometimes.

To show that much sky I'd have gone manual (not something I do lightly with on camera flash).
There's plenty of power in a 580ex for that shot, just the sky quenched the flash I'd guess.
 
Ah, okay, the lack of catchlights on the ball etc is one thing (don't edit out those important details when looking for answers!) but there is zero evidence of flash in any part of the image - and there would be if the flash was doing anything significant, however slight.

I can only assume that the combination of HSS, with the high shutter speed (1/1000sec should be plenty fast enough) and angling the head as you now say you did, has resulted in a complete absence of flash contribution.
 
Well I guess to try again you could like you say lower the ISO to 100, which will give a longer shutter, as well as a smaller aperture, you should be able to get yourself well within a sync speed of 250 with an f16 aperture.
 
Ivan S said:
Well I guess to try again you could like you say lower the ISO to 100, which will give a longer shutter, as well as a smaller aperture, you should be able to get yourself well within a sync speed of 250 with an f16 aperture.
Click to expand...

and flash in manual mode, probably full power
 
Richard (Sorry about the edit issue) I did think from your reply that you could not find the hallmarks of a flash. That said it hardly recorded.
Thanks everyone for your help. I will try again next time I take Dad out. Will start out with iso 100 and aim flash directly at Dad. I did aim flash at him directly on the other shots which were no better, looking at the exif on them the shutter had gone to 4000 which is the limit on the 6d, so I guess I would have had the blinking warning light in the camera ( I find once I start shooting that I forget to look at the info in the view finder) telling me to lower the iso I chose f6.3 for reasnable dof.

Gaz
 
It seems to me that you've made life over complicated for yourself by selecting such a fast shutter speed and therefore effectively greatly reducing the power of your flash, and by then expecting the camera to correctly guess the settings...

Personally I would avoid HSS wherever possible, it does have its uses other than as a marketing tool, but the downsides are significant. And I don't see any need for such a fast shutter speed, even if you had used a shutter speed that wasn't fast enough to freeze the movement, your flash (if it had had enough effective power) would have frozen the limited movement and created a sharp image where it mattered, with a bit of movement blur from the ambient light, adding to the sense of action.

And, as Richard said (more politely) don't do editing on images that you want help with - we need to see what's happened in a shot.
 
Bottom line is the flash hasn't done anything, though I like the shot and can see what you're trying to achieve re the sky - it looks like you've had a go at darkening that too in post, hence the slight halo around your dad.

The shot would benefit from a tiny dash of fill-in (for which HSS on-camera is ideal) but taking it any further, to really darken the sky, presents difficulties. The first problem is power and no hot-shoe gun in HSS mode has enough poke to do that in anything other than low ambient light. Even in normal sync mode, you'll struggle in bright sun unless very close.

The next problem is when the flash becomes the dominant light source, it usually needs to be modified and softened and suddenly you're into a whole different scenario with softboxes and light stands and flash heads with big power.

There's more - if you look at images where flash has been used to over-power daylight, they work best when there is no foreground and very little background apart from the sky. Imagine that shot with loads of flash power and a nice big softbox: you're close, with lots of important foreground and it looks like your dad is about twice the distance from the ball. Inverse square law says the foreground is going to be much brighter, maybe a couple of stops, so in the final image you'd have a pool of bright light with the grass in the foreground over-exposed. There are things you could do to mitigate that, but it's not an easy subject to tackle.

TBH, for that shot I'd probably cheat. A tiny dash of fill-in to lift the main subject, then darken the sky with careful masking in post - which is pretty much what you've tried to do :D
 
Garry Edwards said:
It seems to me that you've made life over complicated for yourself by selecting such a fast shutter speed and therefore effectively greatly reducing the power of your flash, and by then expecting the camera to correctly guess the settings...

Personally I would avoid HSS wherever possible, it does have its uses other than as a marketing tool, but the downsides are significant. And I don't see any need for such a fast shutter speed, even if you had used a shutter speed that wasn't fast enough to freeze the movement, your flash (if it had had enough effective power) would have frozen the limited movement and created a sharp image where it mattered, with a bit of movement blur from the ambient light, adding to the sense of action.

And, as Richard said (more politely) don't do editing on images that you want help with - we need to see what's happened in a shot.
Click to expand...
Hi Gary.

Yep point taken re: the edit. I have apoligized for that :-) I was shooting in Av and chose f6.3 for dof so didnt choose my shutter speed. That was a mistake. I just dialed in some -ev and never noticed the shutter was so high. If I would have used 100 iso I would have got away with it I think.

Thanks
Gaz

HoppyUK said:
Bottom line is the flash hasn't done anything, though I like the shot and can see what you're trying to achieve re the sky - it looks like you've had a go at darkening that too in post, hence the slight halo around your dad.

The shot would benefit from a tiny dash of fill-in (for which HSS on-camera is ideal) but taking it any further, to really darken the sky, presents difficulties. The first problem is power and no hot-shoe gun in HSS mode has enough poke to do that in anything other than low ambient light. Even in normal sync mode, you'll struggle in bright sun unless very close.

The next problem is when the flash becomes the dominant light source, it usually needs to be modified and softened and suddenly you're into a whole different scenario with softboxes and light stands and flash heads with big power.

There's more - if you look at images where flash has been used to over-power daylight, they work best when there is no foreground and very little background apart from the sky. Imagine that shot with loads of flash power and a nice big softbox: you're close, with lots of important foreground and it looks like your dad is about twice the distance from the ball. Inverse square law says the foreground is going to be much brighter, maybe a couple of stops, so in the final image you'd have a pool of bright light with the grass in the foreground over-exposed. There are things you could do to mitigate that, but it's not an easy subject to tackle.

TBH, for that shot I'd probably cheat. A tiny dash of fill-in to lift the main subject, then darken the sky with careful masking in post - which is pretty much what you've tried to do :D
Click to expand...
Thanks Richard lots of info there to think about. Yes I have darkened a touch and agree there is a slight halo.Just run round it a bit neater hopefully looks a bit better, hard to tell at forum size though. I have kept the shot as I do like it but was miffed I couldnt get the flash to register. I get what you are saying about foreground objects being brighter.


Gaz
 
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If it I was doing this I would do two things
expose for the sky, and flash for the subject.
if you can you go manual, do so.

1/100s is fine for freezing this sort of action I would have thought
have you tried on a static subject? like an object in your garden?
take the picture of the sky, meter for that
then fill flash your subject and see how it turns out?
 
DizMatt said:
If it I was doing this I would do two things
expose for the sky, and flash for the subject.
if you can you go manual, do so.

1/100s is fine for freezing this sort of action I would have thought
have you tried on a static subject? like an object in your garden?
take the picture of the sky, meter for that
then fill flash your subject and see how it turns out?
Click to expand...

Hiya

Thanks for the info. Yes I got in a bit of a muddle at the time. I understand what you are saying and will endeaver to improve.
I took this image the week before.This is my nervous Daughter minutes before her skydive (Hence the face). I had never shot into the sun before again I was in AV and the image exposed ok (to my eyes). After taking the bowling image and getting feedback here I have gone back to this image to check my settings.Which were iso 250 f4 shutter 1/4000 -1/3ev Flash 0 fec, high speed sync.
Distance to subject was very close and flash was aimed straight at Kirsty.

Thanks

Gaz

Grumpy.jpg
 
I like that shot
very manga! :)
I didnt' realise that 1/4000 would have worked with the flash at all.
I've had similar problems shooting into the sun when I didn't scout a location properly, so maybe I should have done this myself.
similar idea though, the trick is to make sure the flash isn't too obvious I guess, for a subject like outdoor bowling
 
DizMatt said:
I like that shot
very manga! :)
I didnt' realise that 1/4000 would have worked with the flash at all.
I've had similar problems shooting into the sun when I didn't scout a location properly, so maybe I should have done this myself.
similar idea though, the trick is to make sure the flash isn't too obvious I guess, for a subject like outdoor bowling
Click to expand...

Yes I guess having the flash as above in the bowling image would not have worked to well.
Kirsty was very close under 3ft where as Dad/bowling image was about 7ft away.

Thanks for your help with this.

Gaz
 
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