Speedlites and portraiture?

GR3Z

GR3Z

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Graeme
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What with Xmas just around the corner im considering getting the missus to get me a speedlite, been looking a various brands and I'm going to go with canon if i get one, I've already tried a cheaper yongnua alternative and its broke, so not going to buy cheap anymore. I'm considering the 580ex ii or the new 600 ex-rt.

My main question is to the wedding and portrait photographers out there, how often do you use a speedlite on an outdoor shoot, the reason I ask this is I went to a friends wedding earlier on in the year. I got talking to the the hired toggers and they had there speedlites flashing most of the time, I asked them how they shoot wide open on a bright day as my shutter speed was above 1/200th my flash sync speed and was blowing out the sky, they said they use hi speed sync, is this somthing that used regular for portraiture. Does this feature allow you to shoot at any shutter speed, can you still use this as fill light in you we're exposing to get the sky nice and blue? Hope this isn't to confusing, finding hard to explain :)
 
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Within reason, HSS eats flash power, so requires the flash to work very hard - keeping the flash close to the subject will help, but using modifiers will hinder - so it's a balancing act.
 
Hi. I've used a (home made) light bouncing to throw the light forward, and also used a 580ex on manual mode outdoors
 
unless you have perfect light I would always consider speedlites
esp for wedding photos where you can't reshoot and the light might throw huge shadows across the person's face
the 580exII is a great piece of kit
I have this and 2x YN flashes, about £100 each and quite like them for the price so far.
 
Any flashlight with ETTL will be great, since you are shooting Canon you are best off in Av mode since you can expose for the background separately to the subject, it took a while for that one to click but once you get the hang of it's awesome.
You use the shutter speed to bring down the brightness of the sky, the aperture controls the flash exposure and then you fine tune with exp compensation, wouldnt think of doing outdoors without a flash now.
Depending on your camera you may be able to use the camera as a master and stick your flash on a light stand to get off camera flash as well
 
I use fill flash for groups, manual exposure on camera, flash TTL -1 ish to fill in, but not for portraits, for these I find the right light which you can't always do for groups (space required etc.) Mine are on HSS all the time.
 
Thanks for the response everyone, I've just received my new 600 ex rt just got to figure out how to use it properly, so far ive just left it on ettl and rattled a few shots around the house, I must say I'm impressed with the way it handles the exposure and also how the red ir beams help it focus... Just need to get out in some nice sunshine and take some portraits
 
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