The meeting took place at the Meridian Hill Park, a beautiful park right in the middle of DC. We had a good time discussing different techniques and then we shoot using High Speed Sync and applying the Sunny 16 Rule with small strobes.

So, what the term overpowering the sun means? The answer may vary depending on who you ask. I interprete the term as this:

“To expose your subject matching or overpowering the ambient light, being the ambient light source, the sun.”

Let’s define it by examples:

First let’s take a look at a typical picture during daylight exposed for the subject.

Exposed for Subject

The picture above is exposed for the subject but because we are under daylight the sky comes a bit over exposed, colors ar a bit flat, hence boring.

So, if I want to get a nicer sky color I need to lower my exposure. Like in the picture below.

Exposed for the Sky

Now we get a nicer deep blue color in the sky but we loose our subject as it is way under exposed. (Note: the picture above is more under exposed than it should be for demonstration purposes).

We need to add our own light source in order to be able to balance with that ambient light or overpower it. By adding a single strobe I was able to overpower the ambient light (the sun) by just a notch giving the picture a much better contrast between the subject and the sky.

Overpowering The Sun

In the picture above I under exposed the sky by just one stop to avoid under exposing too much the rest of the background. If you compare this picture with the first one above, you’ll notice the better contrast without any retouching. This was done by using a single portable strobe (Canon 580EX II) with a shoot through umbrella and a CTO gel.   Add another light source and you can turn that sky a very deep blue or use no modifier for a stronger light source.

There are a few ways you can achieve this technique.

• Power
  • Using a powerful lightsource like a studio strobe will make things lot easier, especially if you are competing with the sun at noon.
  • Pros
    • Easier to compete with the sun even in mid day.
    • You can use wide open apertures (e.g. f/2.8) as your flash will be able to compensate with its power
  • Cons
    • Heavier equipment to take to the field, so you may need assistance.
    • If in the field you need to find your own power source (e.g. Power generator or a Power pack)
    • Will get expensive. Of course, if you’re shooting for Sports Illustrated magazine cover, then, who cares?
    • Limited to the cameras highest sync speed

Profoto Pro-B head 1200 Ws

Profoto Pro-8A 2400 Air Power Generator

• High Speed Sync (HSS)
  • Your camera may have what is known as High Speed Syncing, if this is the case by using a HSS capable flash of the same brand you can overpower the sun. HSS allows your camera to use a flash at higher speeds than the camera top syncing speed which is normally caps at 1/250 of a sec. With HSS you can go to speeds of 1/8000 (depends on the camera) and still be able to use the flash to lit the subject. This is achived by firing lots of flashes during the time the shutter curtains are moving. This is a great feature, but until recently you were limited on the use of this feature. But now thanks to wireless triggers like the Pocket Wizard Flex and Mini we can make use of this great feature off camera in full daylight and even add light modifiers.
  • Cons
    • You need to have a camera and flash(es) capable of HSS and they must be of the same brand as this is proprietary functionality.
    • If using off-camera flash during strong daylight the camera infrared system can fail. You can use wireless triggers and these can get expensive as you add more lights.
    • Since this is limited to your cameras manufacturer strobes, your light power is also limited.
  • Pros
    • You can use wide open apertures like f/2.8.
    • You can use high shutter speeds.
    • Is great for portraits or sports photography.

Canon 580EX II w/ HSS

• Sunny 16 Rule with small strobes
  • The Sunny 16 Rule says that “On a bright, sunny day, the correct exposure for any subject is f/16 at the shutter speed nearest to the reciprocal of the film speed”. Well we are on the digital days, so we can translate the film speed to our ISO. An example of the Sunny 16 Rule would be to have f/16 with a speed of 1/200 and a ISO of 200. Based on this rule this should guarantee a balanced exposure. Since small strobes like flash guns are not very powerful, we can use this rule to overpower the sun with those. We all know the photography rules are meant to be broken so depending on the power of our flash we will have to play with these numbers a bit. But it will serve as a good starting point.
  • Cons
    • You are limited to small apertures (e.g. f/16)
    • Don’t try this at noon, strobes most likely won’t be powerful enough
    • Limited to the cameras highest sync speed
  • Pros
    • Relatively inexpensive
    • Light to carry for on-site jobs (everything needed can fit in a backpack)

Speedlights

Also, always remember to leverage the equipment you have available. For instance, make use of your camera histogram which helps inmensely when shooting directly under the sun, turn on the high alert to view any over exposed areas in the picture, take advantage of your max camera sync speed and, of course, always shoot RAW.

Here’s another photo from the event after post-processing:

Anastassia on Strobist DC

[Note: Big thanks to Anastassia (model above) & her father Val, Mike, Phil & Ninoska, all Strobist DC members for their help with the meetup and getting these shots]

Sunday night I wanted to try a new technique but I got tired of using myself as the “guinea pig” of my photography experiments, so I decided to try product photography.  Conveniently I want to sell my radar detector, a Passport Escort 8500 X50, so that became my subject.

Product Photography - First Attempt

Picture setup explained:

I used a three flash setup (three speedlights). One strobe is to the right of the camera as fill-in flash with a blue gel firing through a white umbrella.  A second strobe is lighting the white background, also has a blue gel.  The third strobe is left of camera positioned right on top of the radar device with an CTO gel and a snoot of about 12 inches to emphasize on the product. I added a bouncer that added a bit more light to the black rippled bottom background.  I used photoshop to add extra vignette effect (the background flash already produced a slight vignette effect) and also added the effect as if the radar was on (obviously didn’t do a good job at it).

For my first attempt, I’m pretty happy with the results. What would I do different next time? Well, two things I would try to add a bit more light to the bottom part of the product.  I would also position the fill-in light in a way that doesn’t reflect on the plastic as it did on the right-upper corner.

Critiques welcome!

Ninoska's Portrait at Fallingwater (click for full size)

This portrait was taken around 4:50 PM so the ambient light was very good. However, Ninoska and the closer objects were coming up underexposed; to compensate I used a strobe coming from camera left at just over 1/4 power and with a CTO gel pointed to her. It worked great and left very little shadow as you can see on her back. To get the misty waterfalls I set the camera exposure time to 1/4 of a sec, the aperture to f/11.3 and ISO 100.

Below is one of the pictures I took of the house:

Fallingwater By Frank Lloyd Wright (click for full size)

I suggested my friend Gilbert that he should pose for my experiment (he agreed).  Missing light stands I setup two strobes left & right of camera on top of a table and a chair.  I set one strobe at just a bit less than 1/4 of power and another one at 1/8. The strobes both had about 1/4 CTO gels.  Unfortunately the lights were way lower than the subject’s face so I didn’t get the best results but I had to work with what I had. Everyone else was well into the guitar, singing and the burned marshmallows so I didn’t think about using to human light stands.

At the end I liked the results, although I know it could be done better with some planning. The image has not been retouched except for the copyright addition. Your feedback and tips are appreciated.

This is the end result:

(FYI: The picture is being resized to fit in the browser, to see it properly you may have to click on it to open it separately)

Strobist style night portrait

<Update: 12-04-2009>

Below is a portrait of Felipe. We got the effect by accident as he wasn’t aware he was supposed to stay still after the flash went off on first curtain sync. I like this ghost effect as it gives the sensation of action in the picture as if it was alive. The flash and camera settings were the same as the one used for the portrait above.

Strobist style night portrait of Felipe

Details:

Zoom: 300 mm
Aperture : F18
ISO: 400
Exposure Time: 1/5 sec.
Camera on tripod with remote shutter release

The route went all the way to the Gravelly Point park via the Mt. Vernon trail where we had the chance to snap a few pictures of the airplanes taking off the runway and where we decided to take our group picture (see below).

We ended our photowalk sharing our experiences over tapas at Jaleo spanish restaurant in Crystal Dr.

Here are some of the pictures taken by different Photowalkers:

The butterflies are enclosed in a relatively small (natural) area so is easy to get good shots.  Just be mindful to look down on every step you take.  Also I recommend to dress comfortably and be ready to sweat sauna style as the humidity levels in that room must be a 101% in order to make it comfortable for the butterflies.

Here are some of my shots.

Humbly speaking, I was amazed by how the pictures turned out and very pleased by how the colors reflected on the water and the clarity of the pictures. I already have ideas of things I will do next time to get better results but that’s just part of the learning process.  For those of you thinking “how boring can photographing a drop of water must be”, let me tell you I never thought doing this would be so much fun and interesting.  We certainly can’t appreciate what happens when a drop hits a surface because of the speed at which it occurs, but once we’re able to freeze the moment we start appreciating the physics behind drops, tension, momentum, kinetic energy, sound and all those things some of us studied in college but never look at again.

For this attempt I used two strobes positioned left and right of the camera with different colored gels. Here are some of the pictures. (Note: There is no Photoshop involved here, I only use a batch process to add the copyright stamp, other than that what you see is what I got straight from the camera):

Below, some of my shots: