Last several weeks saw decent weather so I decided to try outdoor photography again but this time I used the strobe flash unit. The flash like the godox hgh speed sync is a great tool to use outdoors when the sun is shining bright and exposures are impossible to achieve without blown out highs. So what these units do is give a strobe effect to give you a impossibly high flash sync speed. Basically you meter in manual to a fast shutter speed like 1/1000 sec and use a f-stop to get a relatively dark exposure, but you meter for the sky or ambient light - so that the sky is in linear exposure range and you get a blue sky, but the doll is underexposed. You then set the flash on HSS mode and adjust its power to let's say 1/16 power and adjust it - take a series of exposures until the histogram shows the doll is exposed well, but with sky and leaves of trees exposed properly. This way you get nice blue skies and a well exposed subject. In the past we used ND filters to simulate this effect, but we typically needed tripods. Here the advantage is we still use the camera set to a fast shutter and still hand hold the camera.
There are many tutorials on YouTube that go into great detail and suggest workflows you can use. Any camera should work, but you do need manual access as well as access to camera settings to flash speeds. Almost every outdoor fashion shoot uses this method, and I must admit, it has made my pics easier to take and I may do a tutorial on YouTube to demonstrate this method. I also use it indoors, but not using HSS mode, but general off axis flash (There's one pic below that is semi indoors). Again, refer to YouTube for videos using off axis and off camera flash. Your subject and depth will be greatly enhanced.
Some pics I took are below
Enjoy
Click on image for full size & gallery
