High Speed Sync and How it Works - Lighting Tutorial

To understand high speed sync, we need to understand how shutters work. Most camera shutters are two curtains that open and close. I know there are some cameras with a leaf shutter but that is for a different lesson. At speeds slower than 1/125th, or 1/60th depending on your camera, the first curtain open completely before the second curtain begins to close. At faster the first curtain of the shutter opens and before it is completely open the second curtain starts to follow it and close. This means that there is no time that the sensor is open to light all at once. A small slit travels across the sensor exposing the frame it as it goes. If your strobe goes off during this time, it show a black bar at the bottom of the frame, basically the part of the image that was not exposed to the strobe flash.

High speed sync solves this problem by firing the strobe in pluses as the first curtain opens and continues to pulse until after the second curtain closes. It happens so fast that the sensor perceives the flash as continuous light.

The upside is that you can shoot at fast shutter speeds keeping your strobe synced with the camera, allowing you to shoot with a wide open aperture in bright light situations and giving you a nice shallow depth of field. You can also strobe light your subject and then crush the BG with the shutter making your subject stand out. Remember: shutter controls ambient light and we match the aperture to the power of the strobes.

Let’s look at our shoot in downtown Los Angeles. We took beautiful Angela Whitworth downtown and shot on Grand Ave. In LA you can get a permit that allows you to shoot on the street as long as you aren’t blocking traffic or the sidewalks. I am shooting on my Canon 5D Mark III, starting with a Tamron 24-70mm lens. The camera settings are ISO 320, shutter 1/500th of a second at F4.5. The key light is a medium, silver lined soft box. It will give us nice highlights on her skin. We put a full orange (CTO) on the light and I will shoot on Tungsten for my white balance. We will allow the shadow exposure to be bright enough so the shows are blue on her face.

That is it. One Baja B4 with a full CTO.
I did a few shots at the end with another light as a rim. I used the back of a mirror as a bounce board under her chin to open up some of the shadows.

I hope you learned something about high speed sync today – how it works and how you can manipulate the background light with your shutter while still getting enough light on the subject. Keep those cameras rollin’ and keep on clickin’.

[wormburner]

Jay P., I finally gave in and purchased my Baja B4 after watching this video. I used it for the first time this weekend and it performed like a charm - and NO cables! Yay! I was on the beach in Toronto with a monoblock, just great stuff. Paired with a 80x100cm softbox, the light was dreamy. Thanks for the info.

[leonard]

All of you here need to stop complaining and thank this man for working so hard to teach you people things you don’t even understand in the first place wow. Thanks my friend for the awesome vids. Now can you use HSS at night. And one more thing Ladies and Gentleman you can accomplish high-speed sync with most speedlites that you probably already own

[SpiderboxFilms]

Informative video. I have been trying high speed sync and was surprised to see the shutter speed effect the exposure of the strobe past 250th of a second. I thought the strobe would stay constant regardless of shutter speed. Thanks for your work.

[zardosspinosa]

not a good video on HSS, blue background kinda weird and background looked over exposures, the whole idea of HSS is to correctly expose background or even under expose to get the subject to pop, the girl was cute though

[avishekdas]

sir u did a great job...
don't listen to the haters.

one or two were a bit overexposed... But i really loved the concept.

[bradwilson]

Fantastic photography channel. I love your in-depth, technical descriptions and explanations. They are great for a scientific mind that wants to understand the ins and outs of photography. Keep up the great work!

[Kigai]

Love the vids and I learn a lot, but not all of us can afford big flashes so we have to use the little flashes that you don't like, keep up the good work.

[tw]

Another great video from this channel that I was able to get some screenshots of equipment and set-ups from. I still have to use speedlights and variable ND-- and hope the subject doesn't plan on moving faster than 1/200 second, but that's alright.

You gotta love the people complaining about these demo pictures even though the thumbnail is what brought most of them in... (That, or people just really don't know what HSS is and were drawn in by the technical promise of the title).

[julianarecart]

you explain very well! I was looking for solving some doubts on High Speed Sync! thank you so much!

[dossipdan]

That model is credited as "talent" - euphemism at its best !

[jb_]

Man I remember you from R.I.T. .. i always think about that armadillo every time i'm doing a studio room set ...

[deenugent]

You really need a whole team for this kind of setup. I'll need to find some help!

[MrPabloguida]

What an engaging model. Well done darling.

[luengomez]

Thanks for all your video assistance to make all my pictures look good. Talking about Flash High Sync, this a good way to shot in DSLR above 1/4000 with flash. To shoot high speed 1/4000 or above, is not necessary Flash Slave Trigger Hot Shoe Sync Adapter. The only thing that you need is a flash with High Sync, Camera with flash sync speed option. First mount your flash on top of your camera, set it up to Manual or ETTL mode full power, enable the H sync. turn on the strobes or flashes synchronized to slave 1. Thats it.

[jake]

Oh my god love the lighting. It's so 90s shampoo commercial but in a good way.

[ruihe]

High quality photos, great video and thank you for sharing and teaching.

[myked]

Angela Whitworth is absolutely gorgeous!

[judderman]

Thank you very kindly. Very helpful to a budding photographer from the UK

[GeorgeGrice]

Makes something so complicated, very simple

[nune]

You should do a behind the scenes on your crew. They're out there WORKING! Good video.