Using a strobe in the woods

LRussoPhoto

Trying out using a my sb900 on a little cross country racing. Looking for some c&c please.

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LRussoPhoto

All shot in manual at f4 1/250 iso400 except for #1 which was at 1/100, I guess that would explain the blurryness. Do them seem a little overexposed? look a little too bright to me but maybe not.

jmphotocraft

I would say the flash was a too hot on these. If you can, try getting the flash off the camera, off to the side by about 45 degrees. I think this would be more dramatic.

Zerodog

Yeah these are a little hot. Get your flash power down quite a bit. Get your ISO up a bit and use your high speed sync for your flash. Also use rear curtain. Great first try with it though. Looks dark in there.

LRussoPhoto

Yea, I need to figure out some sort of mount to move the flash, maybe on a mono pod below the camera.
Zero how would raising the iso help me here? The fp is turned on so when you say use high speed sync you mean just raise my shutter speed right? Would I dial the flash power down through the flash ec or would these other things you mention being dialing it down?

Molotov Everything

Raising your ISO would help because it would shift the balance of how much of your exposure is coming from ambient light and how much is coming from the flash. These look over-flashed a bit so that would help things blend more.
High speed sync cuts effective flash power on its own so I wouldn't go to HSS and turn down flash EC at the same time. That might be too much. Try one or the other first I suppose.

LRussoPhoto

So by raising the iso that would make the backround brighter correct? Guess thats what you mean by blend better. I remember reading another thread on here about shooting night football and it saying if you under expose the ambient it will darken the backround but the flash will still light your subject. Not saying thats the look I'm going for, just trying to understand the way it all works.
Thanks for the help.

perroneford

QuadRacer041 wrote: »

So by raising the iso that would make the backround brighter correct? Guess thats what you mean by blend better. I remember reading another thread on here about shooting night football and it saying if you under expose the ambient it will darken the backround but the flash will still light your subject. Not saying thats the look I'm going for, just trying to understand the way it all works.
Thanks for the help.

Raising the ISO will increase the light overall. Background as well as foreground. You need to cut your flashpower an equivalent amount. Doing both of these will make the background brighter, and your flash on the close subject less bright. Thus bringing them more into balance.

What you are looking for here is the *ratio* of light background to foreground. Right now, you're looks like a 1:4 or 1:3. A 1:1 would mean your flashed subject and the background would be the same brightness. This gives a very natural looking effect that is nice for portraits, but a little bland for sports. You are looking for something around a 1:2 or 1:1.5. This will pop out the intended subject from the background, but not look overflashed.

Does that help?

coldclimb

Just a quick note, but getting your flash off the camera is the way to go. That simple adjustment in light angle will work miracles for your scenes. I recommend that as a first step, and then you can grow quickly from there!

LRussoPhoto

I know cold, I have to get that setup done soon.

As far as raising the iso goes, I think I understand what you mean. I would raise the iso and if I let in more ambient by either opening the apeture or raising the shutter speed say by 1 full stop I would want to lower the flash power by 1 stop or maybe only 2/3 stop to get the correct ratio your talking about.
Am I making sense?

kurtw

I sometimes shoot on-camera flash for fill (more balanced ratios of flash to ambient). When shooting on-camera like this, I usually like to tip the flash head up just a bit to feather the light onto the upper half of the subject and feather it off the foreground and lower half of the subject (wheels and undercarriage).

The last mountain bike race I shot was done with fill flash off-camera on a light stand. It really helped pop the photos without an unnatural in-your-face flash look. I think I even have some BTS shots. I'll try to get that posted.

Edit to add/reiterate: Once you bring up the ambient, you'll have to deal with the sync-speed of your camera to avoid motion blur where you don't want it. That either means shooting angles where you can pan shots at sync speed or slower, OR turning on high-speed/FP sync and coping with the loss of power at higher shutter speeds. With a bright enough ambient and flash for fill, you can't rely on the flash to freeze motion as you were doing in the shots above.