High Speed Sync vs ND

Do you guys know what the benefits and drawbacks of high speed sync versus ND's? When you raise your shutter speed up, you guys saw the flashes. Let me show you this again. Look at these flashes. Okay, what's happening is the sync speed on a flash means that under 1/200th of a second, your radio can communicate to the flash and it can fire in time. By the time the shutter speed, the shutter opens and it closes, it can fire off the flash. When you go above that, it can't match the speed, right? So what ends up happening is, if it actually lets you do it, this doesn't even let me do it. I can't bring the shutter speed above 1/200th of a second. But if it lets you do it, you get a black bar. You guys see the black bar that goes across the image where the flash fires in one section and doesn't fire in the other section? That's a sync speed issue. With happens is with full-feature flashes that offer high speed sync, when you use high speed sync, that flash didn't get- Nothing changed physic...

ally with the flash. It can't now fire within that 1/400th of a second or 1/800th of a second just because you pressed a button. What ends up happening is it pulses. So when I press this test button, you see that pulse? It does that exact same thing when you are firing high speed sync. Now if it's pulsing 50 times to fit in one of those shots into your shutter speed. Let's say at 1/1000th of a second, it has to pulse 50 times, like this. What happens to your flash power? It just dies, right? What if it has to pulse 100 times to get in a single frame at 1/4000th of a second? Or 1/8000th of a second when it has to pulse 500 times to get in a single shot? Your flash power dies dramatically. What we've found is that you're gonna lose at 1/8000th of a second, you're going to lose around eight to 10 stops of light from your flash. That takes you down to like a small percentage. 100, 50%, 25%, 12.5%, 7%, 4%, I used to be an accountant. I'm a photographer now this is why. Because I think I just halved something wrong. That's alright (chuckling). So, you get down to like 1% to 2% of the total output. Now if you use an ND filter, does your ND filter does this effect flash power? This is like a trick question. Does this actually, does this effect your flash power? (crowd chattering) Yes. This stops down all light coming into the lens. But guess what> If I can get away stopping down four stops of all light to get my shutter speed down to 1/200th of a second, I still have my full flash power. So we're talking about an additional, this will get me four extra stops worth of light power from my flashes versus using high speed sync. Does that make sense? Nod or jump up and down, like, kick someone next to you. Do something like that so I know, yeah? There you go, I got an elbow, good. Little aggressive, but that's cool. So, that's the benefit of an ND filter over high speed sync and it carries true. The funny thing is that manufacturers are going to tell you, "Ooo, the new..." We love Profoto Gear, we use a lot of Profoto Gear. And everyone, Elinchrom, Profoto, everybody, will tell you that, "Oh, it has high speed sync now." For some reason, nobody publishes how much power you're losing with high speed sync. Nobody says it. I'm always like, "Have you guys published "how much power you loss, you lose?" And everybody's like, "No," and I always go test it and it's still the same thing. It's we're losing 7, 8, 9 stops of power, in that range. So, it's one of those things where if you have to, there's certain situations where you'd use high speed sync. That's if you're shooting sports, you need a fast shutter speed to freeze the ambient light. Like if you're shooting sports and you've got this motorcycle driving by your frame, and you need to keep it at 1/5000th of a second to freeze everything, you would use a high power, like a Profoto B1, or even higher power with high speed sync. You're cutting down a lot of the power, but then it's a high-powered strobe. So you still get more "umph" out of it. That's the one situation that you'd use it. Engagement photography, there's no dude on this planet that can run that fast. (audience laughing) Just not going to happen.

Class Description

Couples want to capture their commitment to each other in high-quality, creatively shot photographs. They also expect their bliss to appear natural and evocative. Photographers who are trying to build their engagement photography portfolio need to be able to juggle both technical and creative expectations. Pye Jirsa’s Incredible Engagement Photography will teach students how to strike this balance with basic equipment.

In this course, you’ll discover how to:

Use simple on- and off-camera flash lighting
Communicate effectively to devise creative, meaningful poses
Develop post-processing and overall workflow

Drawing on lessons taught in Pye’s other courses (Photography 101, Lighting 101, and Lighting 201), you will learn how to adapt to a variety of different lighting situations – indoor and outdoor, natural and urban. You’ll also gain a sense of the importance of storytelling and of developing a disarming interaction style for putting couples at ease during a shoot.

Conducting an engagement photography shoot requires a delicate mix of technical and interpersonal skills – but not an abundance of expensive, demanding equipment.

Lessons

1Class Introduction
2Posing Guidance for Him
3Posing Guidance for Her
4Foundational Posing
5Posing Touch Points
6Couples Body Language
7Posing Three Point Check
8Posing Tips with Demo
9Verbal Cues for Posing
10Mood Board Tips
11Posing Questions
12Camera Settings Quick Overview
13Location Scouting
14Seeing the Light
15Shoot: Natural Light in Studio
16Homemade Soft Box
17Shoot: Wrapping Natural Light Around Couple
18Shoot: Flat Natural Light
19Special Effects Intro
20Shoot: Backlighting
21Shoot: Using Sparklers
22Shoot: Sparklers and Spray Bottle
23Shoot: Backlight with ND Filter
24High Speed Sync vs ND
25Shoot: Fog and Spray Effects
26Simple Lightroom Workflow
27Processing Black and White Images
28Culling and Presets
29Editing Using Presets
30Post Processing Q&A
31Flash + Ambient Balance
32Photographers Need to Practice
33Outdoor Engagement Location Scouting
34Meeting the Clients
35Basic Engagement Shots
36Getting into the Creative Shots
37Using Photo Mechanic to Cull
38Culled Edits in Lightroom
39Editing After Using Tilt Shift Lens
40Photoshop Editing for Print
41Engagement University Shot
42Daylight + Flash
43Engagement Picnic Scene
44Composite Street Shot
45Day For Night Engagement Shot
46Natural Flash/Bounce
47How to Make GIFs
48Simple Composite - University
49Intermediate Composite - Downtown
50Simple Background with Reflector
51Final Thoughts

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I think Pye Jirsa is one of the best, if not the best, instructor for photography on Creative Live. He is very personable, smart and approachable. He has a perfect blend of personality (comments, laughs, tangents..) to the amount of instruction. He asks the questions for you, because he knows you are thinking those questions right then. He's very good about identifying settings, gear, etc.. and not leaving us in the dark about how he "got the shot". He goes into great detail. His instructions flow, but are linear, which is helpful. He's very organized, and you can tell that he really put a lot of work into his presentations (slides, video, test shoots, live teaching, graphics, etc..) I have been listening to him for like 10 hours straight, and still haven't gotten tired of him. He keeps things moving, He's very funny too. Nice job, I've learned so much. :)

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This course was AMAZING. I'd say int he past year or two I've fallen into a slump. Uninspired by my surroundings and uninspired by my clients. As a result, it showed through my work. My posing suffered as well and more than a handful of times some of my shoots became more than awkward. Then I bought this course and watched most of it in the course of a day. I walked away inspired, blown away, and renewed. The next day I walked into an engagement session confident. I gave my couples a quick overview on posing and then we just had fun in front of the camera. Immediately afterwards they texted me about how amazing their shoot was and how relaxed I made them feel about posing. The photos turned out fantastic to say the least. I've since shot several more engagement sessions and each one of them has been amazing. If anything, this course should inspire photographers to think outside the box and provide you with the necessary skills to take incredible engagement photos. Thank you Pye and Creative Live! I cannot speak more highly of this course. I should also state I purchased Pye's Natural Light course on SLR Lounge: this course is a wonderful addition to that. If you already own the natural light course and are hesitant about purchasing this one, don't. Buy it and reap the benefits!

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This is by far one of the best courses I have taken. Pye makes learning fun and easy to understand. I feel like I have learned so much throughout the course, that I have truly advanced my photography skills. I am so excited to get out there and try so many of the techniques that he showed. I would love to take another course of his. The pricing for the course doesn't even compare to how wonderful the education truly is, I really got more than my money's worth on this one.