what are quick cycle portable flash units used for?

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sammyjay

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hi guys im currently doing a photography course (i know nothing as yet) and was hoping someone could tell me what a quick cycle portable flash unit was used for?? and also what is transportable studio flash gear and its use? an help will be appreciated :)
 
Hi sammyjay, It sounds like we may be doing the same course, but don't panic too much I spoke to one the tutors and he said that the first assignment has no right or wrong answers and that it was really just to see what we already know ( or don't know ), It's a hard assignment when you look at what has to be done..
 
anything where you need lots of juice and a fast recycle time... some sports photographers use them, lots of use in stuff like skateboarding and action sports...

transportable studio flash is.... studio flash that's transportable ;) battery powered and used where you want to introduce light outside or on location.

very fast recycle time flash...
http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2009/10/chase-jarvis-tech-strobed-photo-sequences/
http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2009/09/now-you-know-sandisk-extreme-pro-2/
 
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sammyjay said:
hi guys im currently doing a photography course (i know nothing as yet) and was hoping someone could tell me what a quick cycle portable flash unit was used for?? and also what is transportable studio flash gear and its use? an help will be appreciated :)
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If you want to shoot in bright sunlight its best to put the sun behind your subject so their face or whatever is in open shade, no harsh shadows and they don't squint. But if you expose for the subject the bright background will be overexposed, if you expose for the bright background your subject will be underexposed. The solution is to expose for the background and then throw extra light onto your subject. This can be done with a reflector or flash.

If you use flash there is a maximum shutter speed you can use, I won't go into the details but most dslr these days max sync speed is around 1/200th sec. That's often not fast enough to expose for the background properly unless you stop down the lens by using a small aperture. But the smaller the aperture, the more flash power you will need to get enough light onto your subject. This means the brighter the sunlight you are trying to overpower, the more juice you need from your flash. If you are at or close to full power on the flash, it will take longer to recycle between shots, the bigger portable studio flash units put out more light than the hotshoe mounted speedlights, and the fast recycle provided by the big powerpacks just means you can shoot faster.


Some speedlights can use high speed sync, they can let you use flash up to the cameras max shutter speed ie. 1/8000th sec. But there is a trade off, the flash actually pulses lots of small flashes during the exposure and the output is dramatically decreased. So you have to get your flash closer to your subject, and even that won't be enough to give you the light you need in many situations. High speed sync is very useful for a little fill though and you can use multiple flashes to increase the amount of light being produced. But once you are using more than a couple of speedlights for this purpose its probably cheaper and easier to use a portable strobe unit.
 
it's also a term that I've never heard a photographer use ever.
 
I'm glad I found this website/thread I'm on the same course too and some of it is a bit confusing for me :)
 
Quick cycle portable flash could just be a battery powered speedlight. Its pretty fast to recycle and very portable and used to light subjects mostly in low light situations but as noted above can also be used to fill in shadows or light subjects that are backlit or even just used as a light source to take portraits - especially good when modifiers like a brolly or softbox are added.

"Transportable studio flash" is a studio power flash head that is powered by a portable battery. Generally these are much more powerful light than a speedlight. The studio lights generally take much larger modifiers and therefore can drive larger modifiers to that of a speedlight. They can provide power when needed to over power the sun (again as noted above) and can allow you to place a flash unit further away from your subject to allow better compositions without getting gear in the way.

Really no easy answer but all of the above from others should cover it too ;)
 
The terms used seem arbitrary to me....
"Quick cycle" is a characteristic, not a type... could be anything with enough power behind it.
Same with "Transportable studio flash"...could mean just about anything. Compact? Lightweight? Battery? Inverter? WTF?

Of course there's no right or wrong answer...the questions are jacked.
 
Power is not necessarily anything to do with quick cycle (recycle I guess it means).
 
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