Hypersync test #7 – Nikon D3x / Alien Bees / Pocket Wizards – Hypersync Testing with Playboy Model Alexandria

You can read my previous hypersync testing results here:- Hypersync Test 1Hypersync Test 2Hypersync Test 3Hypersync Test 4 (Diana), Hypersync Test 5, Hypersync Test 6 (Emilee)

This test with Alexandria was a complete departure from my previous tests which had been conducted to establish that I that I could comfortably shoot at 1/2,000th of a second at 100 ISO and F2.8 in bright outdoor light with my Nikon D3, Alien Bees and Pocket Wizard transceivers. And I had established that I could shoot all the way up to 1/8,000th of a second with minimal cropping to the frame.

With that knowledge I wanted to try something completely different. I have played with freezing liquids in a studio setting using the fast flash duration of speedlights to freeze the liquid, but I wanted to see if I could use fast shutterspeed to freeze the liquid outdoors in bright sun, but overpowering the sun with studio strobes.

Freezing Liquids Outdoors Concept

You may ask, why do I want to freeze water outdoors in a bright setting?

Well, when you freeze liquids in a studio setting you are typically shooting against a dark background (typically black) and backlighting the liquid with the speedlights. There is generally no color in the liquid. For instance, frozen water looks like a lovely mass of molten acrylic, shiny, sparkly and totally clear with the back studio backdrop showing through the liquid. And of course when shooting opaque liquids like milk you end up with a frozen white liquid with droplets.

And the uniformity of color and background makes Photoshop work so simple that creation of composite “liquid dresses” whether they be water or milk, are relatively easy to shoot and composite in various ways.

But if you shoot outdoors in a bright colorful location, the clear water will refract all the colors of the background into the frozen mass, essentially creating a molten multicolored acrylic canvas, as you can see. And with the detail and color contained in the water, you really need to capture the full image in the camera, as it will be a total pain to build up a composite image in Photoshop.

Hypersync, Nikon D3, 1600 ISO, 1/4,000th sec, F8. Bright sunlight, Four Alien Bees 640WS flashes, using Pocket Wizard transceivers
Hypersync, Nikon D3, 1600 ISO, 1/4,000th sec, F8. Bright sunlight, Four Alien Bees 640WS flashes, using Pocket Wizard transceivers

Practice makes perfect

I have tried freezing water outside in bright sun with hypersync several times in the past all with less than perfect results. My main issue is that I always shoot glamour at around F2.8 to F4.0 with long lenses in order to have the sharp model pop off the blurred background. But when you throw water in front of or behind the model, now you need depth of field otherwise the water splashes will be out of focus, essentially destroying the intended effect (as seen in the image below with two water streams separated in by approximately 4 feet).

Hypersync, Nikon D3, 800 ISO, 1/4,000th sec, F5.6. Bright sunlight, Four Alien Bees 640WS flashes, using Pocket Wizard transceivers
Hypersync, Nikon D3, 800 ISO, 1/4,000th sec, F5.6. Bright sunlight, Four Alien Bees 640WS flashes, using Pocket Wizard transceivers

So now this means you need to have a smaller aperture to create a larger depth of field to have both the model and the water in focus. Or you can shoot with a short lens, and have the entire scene in focus, something that I almost never do in glamour.

So during this shoot I was totally out of my comfort zone.

Also, shooting at smaller apertures with hypersync adds another wrinkle. When you shoot with hypersync you are not getting the full flash illumination that you would normally get at the standard camera flash sync speeds. You are getting the tail of the flash, very often a small fraction of the rated flash power of the head. And when shooting with hypersync, not only is the aperture affecting the flash illumination, but the shutterspeed now also has a linear relationship with the flash illumination. The faster the shutterspeed the less flash illumination provided.

Hypersync Settings – Nikon D3, 4 x Alien Bees 640WS at full power, Pocket Wizards

So, in trying to freeze water outside with flash, not only do I have to go to a smaller aperture, but I also have to shoot at a shutterspeed of somewhere around 1/4,000th to 1/8,000th of a second, both variables killing the already reduced flash power available. This only leaves ISO, so once again I am forced out of my comfort zone and I am forced with the flash power I have available to shoot at way higher ISO’s than I ever do in my glamour work. For this test I ended up shooting at around 1,000 to 1,600 ISO, and of course deal with the associated noise/grain.

The Shoot

I also had an idea to incorporate an assortment of balloons in the water to add excitement and add more specular highlights so we all spent an age inflating, tying off and weighting down 50 odd balloons, and trying to get them to cooperate. Unfortunately the translucency of the balloons meant that flash power the perfectly exposed the model completely blew out the highlights in the balloons, so that idea never really worked.

The gorgeous Playboy model Alexandria Kingsbury graciously collaborated with me on this project and I was ably assisted by two Art Institute students Brian and Lazaro. I tried all aperture, shutterspeed and ISO combinations, along with a host of lighting approaches, using scrims, modifiers, barn-doors and flags and finally nailed down something that worked. And of course there were hundreds upon hundreds of buckets of water tossed in front, behind and on top of our lovely model, all trying to nail that one defining shot that I had visualized in my mind. Of course, converting the visual idea into a finished product was way more difficult than I had imagined and as far as I am concerned the defining shot never materialized.

Hypersync, Nikon D3, 1250 ISO, 1/5,000th sec, F8. Bright sunlight, Four Alien Bees 640WS flashes, using Pocket Wizard transceivers. Model Alexandria Kingsbury
Hypersync, Nikon D3, 1250 ISO, 1/5,000th sec, F8. Bright sunlight, Four Alien Bees 640WS flashes, using Pocket Wizard transceivers. Model Alexandria Kingsbury
Hypersync, Nikon D3, 1250 ISO, 1/5,000th sec, F6.3. Bright sunlight, Four Alien Bees 640WS flashes, using Pocket Wizard transceivers. Model Alexandria Kingsbury
Hypersync, Nikon D3, 1250 ISO, 1/5,000th sec, F6.3. Bright sunlight, Four Alien Bees 640WS flashes, using Pocket Wizard transceivers. Model Alexandria Kingsbury
Hypersync, Nikon D3, 1250 ISO, 1/6,400th sec, F8. Bright sunlight, Four Alien Bees 640WS flashes, using Pocket Wizard transceivers. Model Alexandria Kingsbury
Hypersync, Nikon D3, 1250 ISO, 1/6,400th sec, F8. Bright sunlight, Four Alien Bees 640WS flashes, using Pocket Wizard transceivers. Model Alexandria Kingsbury

Once again Hypersync allowed me to do something that would not be possible using HSS or standard flash sync speed, and I am pretty encouraged with the results. However, Hypersync once again proved to be problematic by not being consistent throughout the shoot. This further reinforces me experience that the technology is great for personal work but is not reliable enough for me to use with my commercial clients.

Hypersync test #6 – Nikon D3x / Alien Bees / Pocket Wizards – Hypersync Testing with Emilee

You can read my previous hypersync testing results here:- Hypersync Test 1Hypersync Test 2Hypersync Test 3Hypersync Test 4, Hypersync Test 5

In my previous testing I made the comment……. “Well Hypersync works for me ….. sort of!”

I felt that it was too unstable to be relied upon under pressure, but I suspected that part of it might be me, so this time round I took way more care to make copious notes during my testing to figure out what was causing the instability.

This time I had the benefit of working with a personal friend and model Emilee, who has worked with me many times before and is used to the stop-start process that goes along with trying out a new technique

As mentioned before in my previous posts regarding hypersync, my main objective was to be able to use wide open apertures around F2.8 in bright sunlight, and to use flash to fill the shadows and possibly overpower the sun. Shooting at wide open apertures with long lenses provides the shallow depth of field that makes the model pop off the blurred background. But shooting at the maximum sync speed allowed by the camera, typically around 1/250th, in bright sunlight means that you have to stop the aperture down around f8 and this unfortunately brings the background into focus.

So we started with an ambient exposure of 100 ISO, F2.8 and shutterspeeds initially in the range of 1/,1000th to 1/2,000th of a second. I shot with my Nikon D3x, Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 transmitter fitted with the Pocket Wizard AC3 zone controller to separately adjust the power of each flash head. I used one, two and three 640WS Alien Bees moonlights, powered by Vagabond batteries. On each Alien Bees flash was a Pocket Wizard Flex TT5 transceiver each set to a different group, and mounted to each of the TT5’s was a Pocket Wizard AC9 Alien Bees Adapter. The main light was fitted with the 18” Omni reflector to create more punch, and the rim lights when used were fitted with the standard 7” reflectors and 30 degree grids to kill the spill back to the camera.

In order to try and develop a repeatable lighting approach, I systematically measured the model to flash distance for each shot and kept copious notes of flash power and camera settings, so I would be able to replicate it in future. I mainly shot with the 70-200mm f2.8 lens but also used my 200-400mm F4 lens which narrows the depth of field even more when shooting at longer focal lengths.

During this test I was able to obtain better lighting consistency from shot to shot, so I suspect that part of my frustration in earlier shoots was merely a lack of familiarity. However there still remained some instability, particularly in adjusting the light output, but overall I was very encouraged by the results. Hope you like them too.

Hypersync testing with Emilee in bright sunlight - 1/2,000th second, f2.8, 100 ISO, Nikon D3x Alien Bees, Pocket Wizard
Hypersync testing with Emilee in bright sunlight – 1/2,000th second, f2.8, 100 ISO, Nikon D3x Alien Bees, Pocket Wizard
Hypersync testing with Emilee in bright sunlight - 1/2,000th second, f2.8, 100 ISO, Nikon D3x Alien Bees, Pocket Wizard
Hypersync testing with Emilee in bright sunlight – 1/2,000th second, f2.8, 100 ISO, Nikon D3x Alien Bees, Pocket Wizard
Hypersync testing with Emilee in bright sunlight - 1/800th second, f2.8, 100 ISO, Nikon D3x Alien Bees, Pocket Wizard
Hypersync testing with Emilee in bright sunlight – 1/800th second, f2.8, 100 ISO, Nikon D3x Alien Bees, Pocket Wizard
Hypersync testing with Emilee in bright sunlight - 1/1,250th second, f2.8, 100 ISO, Nikon D3x Alien Bees, Pocket Wizard
Hypersync testing with Emilee in bright sunlight – 1/1,250th second, f2.8, 100 ISO, Nikon D3x Alien Bees, Pocket Wizard
Hypersync testing with Emilee in bright sunlight - 1/500th second, f4.0, 100 ISO, Nikon D3x Alien Bees, Pocket Wizard - Nikon 200mm - 400mm f4
Hypersync testing with Emilee in bright sunlight – 1/500th second, f4.0, 100 ISO, Nikon D3x Alien Bees, Pocket Wizard – Nikon 200mm – 400mm f4

Click here to see my next Hypersync test using the Nikon D3x, Alien Bees, Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 and  Flex TT5, featuring stunning Playboy model Alexandria

Hypersync test #5 – Nikon D3x / Alien Bees / Pocket Wizards – testing the effect of shutterspeed on flash exposure

You can read my previous hypersync testing results here:- Hypersync Test 1, Hypersync Test 2, Hypersync Test 3, Hypersync Test 4

Hypersync – Constant ISO, Aperture, Flash Power and Distance, yet varying the Shutterspeed

From my previous tests I wanted to confirm my previous observation of the effect of shutterspeed on the flash exposure, something that does not happen in traditional flash photography using shutterspeeds at or below the camera’s advertised sync speed.

So with a constant ISO of 100, aperture constant at F2.8, flashes at constant power and flash to model distance kept constant, I shot my model at shutterspeeds ranging from 1/1,000th to 1/8,000th of a second in one stop increments. As you can see from the image below the relationship with flash exposure is inverse and linear. Double the shutterspeed, and all other variables kept constant, the flash exposure, as well as the ambient exposure (obviously) drops by one stop.

As a sidebar, the reason for adding the palm leaves in the foreground was to have something at the edge of the frame that would be hit by the flash so I could see how far the dreaded shutter curtain banding was intruding into the image. And you can see the flash banding start to intrude onto the palm leaves on the right hand side of each image, especially noticeable at 1/4,000th and 1/8,000th shutterspeeds.

Hypersync test #5 - Nikon D3x / Alien Bees / Pocket Wizards - testing the effect of shutterspeed on flash exposure
Hypersync test #5 – Nikon D3x / Alien Bees / Pocket Wizards – testing the effect of shutterspeed on flash exposure

Hypersync – Constant ISO and Aperture, increasing Flash Power with increase in Shutterspeed

So I did another experiment to confirm it, but this time, each time I increased the shutterspeed, I increased the flash power by one stop. And as you can see in the image below, while the ambient exposure decreased linearly at 1 stop increments, the flash exposure remained constant.

Hypersync - Constant ISO and Aperture, increasing Flash Power with increase in Shutterspeed
Hypersync – Constant ISO and Aperture, increasing Flash Power with increase in Shutterspeed

So this further confirms that the flash exposure is affected in exactly the same manner as the ambient exposure …. An increase in shutterspeed above the advertised sync speed will affect the flash exposure at the same rate as it affects the ambient exposure.

And of course the banding is now way more visible with the extra flash illumination. For my use, the banding is not negatively affecting the image at shutterspeeds up to 1/2,000th but as I get above that I will need to pay attention to how I frame the image if I have any objects that will receive flash illumination in the foreground. As long as I frame the image to allow for the banding I will be able to shoot with flash all the way up to 1/8,000th of a second.

Cool – now I understand it better and kind of know what I want to do next!

Click here to see my next Hypersync test featuring the lovely model Emilee using the Nikon D3x, Alien Bees, Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 and Flex TT5