13.10 A Portable Studio Setup

Figure 13-19 (next page) shows how my portable wireless studio is set up. It uses just one wireless flash and one diffusing umbrella. A parts list appears below:

• A portable Tripod
• Black cloth as a backdrop (in my case a black bedsheet, bought on sale for USD $10)
• An Umbrella reflector which collapses down to 15" (I chose a reflector umbrella rather than a shoot-through to make sure that 100% of the light from the flash ends up on the subject. Accessory flashes are inherently weak compared to studio strobes and so I prefer to utilize all of their output.) You can buy one here: http://tinyurl.com/4ved82g
• Umbrella Swivel hardware (http://tinyurl.com/6g72vs)
• Minolta 5600 Flash (although you could use ANY wireless flash) but at least the head on this one can turn around 180 degrees – useful for soft boxes.
• Minolta Off-camera shoe OS-1100 just to physically mount the flash because it has the old hot shoe (http://tinyurl.com/4shjywj)

Usually I place the umbrella about 45 degrees off to one side (Figure 13-18), but you can also place it 90 degrees (depending on your subject) for even greater impact. Figure 13-19 shows an example of this.

Figure 13-19: My ultra-simple, 1-flash portable studio produces outstanding results and it travels well!

13.11 High Speed Sync (HSS) flash

Figure 13-20: The High Speed Sync (HSS) feature lets you shoot wide open on a sunny day (1/2,000th in this case), providing for the out-of-focus background and still getting the benefits of wireless flash. Here, the wireless flash with a small softbox was set to the above left of the subject, who was standing in open shade.

The same circuitry that allows an accessory flash to communicate in Morse Code also allows the flash to “spread out” the total light output by providing one long low-intensity burst of light rather than just one large short one. (See Figure 13-21 below.) This means you can shoot with flash at a much higher shutter speed than normal. With this capability you can shoot outdoors, wide open, and still have your slave flash expose everything automatically (see Figure 13-20 for an example of this). Equally amazing, Sony has combined the ability to do HSS with wireless flashes.

It’s a little tricky to explain how they did it, so if you don’t care and just want to know how to use it, skip to the “How to Activate HSS” section below.

TIP: Sometimes complex things can be better explained via video. That’s exactly what I do here in making High Speed Sync intuitively understandable: : https://youtu.be/edkLa0HEbcA