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Why Should You Use High Speed Sync Flash Vs Natural Light?

Chris Gampat
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11/27/2017
2 Mins read
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Profoto B1 First Impressions sample photos (7 of 10)ISO 1001-160 sec at f - 5.6

Last Updated on 11/27/2017 by Chris Gampat

When you’re first getting into working with flashes, a question you’re most likely going to ask is why you should even consider using high speed sync at all? You’ve probably seen some photos and lots of photographers probably figure they can create the same look with natural light. Realistically, you could do so with great difficulty in Photoshop and Lightroom. But it’s much easier to get it right in camera and then carry on shooting as you normally would. Plus, they’re two specific and different looks.

What is High Speed Sync

High speed sync can sometimes be known as overpowering the sun. You see, most cameras have a maximum flash sync speed that can be fired without getting any sort of trail from the shutter curtains in the frame. But with high speed sync the flash tends to fire in succession so fast the human eye can’t really see it. It allows you to shoot at a faster shutter speed and therefore stop some extra motion. Your flash output is still otherwise based on the ISO and the aperture of your lens. Lots of portrait photographers, wedding photographers and other shoot with high speed sync. Sports shooters do it as well. But most of the time, it’s traditionally seen with portraiture. And to really understand it, you have to sort of see the scene as something beyond what your eyes see. Instead, your mind’s eye needs to see something different.

What Does Natural Light Do?

Before we even get into it, you should know how flash works with exposures. Your shutter speed controls the ambient light, the ISO controls overall sensitivity, and the aperture controls the amount of light from that flash in manual mode. But in TTL mode, your flash will read the aperture and the ISO providing that those are being communicated to it. With natural light, all that you’re working with is what’s in front of you and nothing else.

Here are two examples:

Natural Light

High Speed Sync

Notice how with high speed sync we have two key light sources: the sun behind them and the frontal light. This couldn’t have been done easily without high speed sync. You’d otherwise need an ND filter, and a whole lot of flash output power.

The Creative Photographer’s Tool: What Does High Speed Sync Do?

So if you’re working with high speed sync, what you’re supposed to do is envision another light source in the scene along with the ambient light being cut down intensely. Here are some examples of this at work: it’s very difficult to do otherwise, but if you want the HSS look, you should check out this post that I did a while back.

This image is still using flash at 1/1000th f3.5 and ISO 100. I shot at 1/1000th by activating the high speed sync function on my flash. Now I’ve got loads more details in the sky and Matt’s face is nicely illuminated. The shadow on Matt located at the camera right position could have been eliminated if I had just moved the light just a bit. But in this case, I really like the effect and look.

This is high speed sync: which cuts down on how much ambient light is in a scene

camera flash high speed sync natural light Photography portraits portraiture sync
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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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