Getting the Most Power From the 580EX

[Seb29]

I have a 5D Mark2 and a 580EX flash unit. I want to shoot fast motion skateboard photographs at night. The 580EX only allows up to 1/200 speed. I need it to go to about 1/500 while still looking bright at about 800 ISO. Any ideas how I can get the most power out of the 580EX to do this?
Thanks!

[Familiaphoto]

The challenge you are facing is sync speed, not 580EX power. If you go too fast with the shutter the flash will have no effect as it won't be timed right. The only way to get a higher sync speed I am aware of is by using the pocket wizards which could be a good dollars investment.

What I would recommend is going over the sports section and see what those guys are doing to freeze action. In essence they go to longer shutter speeds to get the ambient light where they want it and then use the flash to freeze the action. Very neat trick which can work in many circumstance, but not all.

[Seb29]

Would you happen to have a link to this thread? Is there no other native way to bypass the 1/200 shutter limit?
Thanks!

[Jim G]

If you absolutely have to have higher shutter speeds and still sync the 580EX flashes have a high speed sync mode activated by the button on the back of the flash unit with the little lightning bolt. Be aware that the effective power can be drastically reduced and you likely won't get anywhere near the range you would if you stayed within sync speeds.

[bobbyz]

If you shooting at night, there is no ambient so you can easily stop motion with your flash. Whether you shoot at 1/200 or less or more should not matter as long as your flash is providing most of the light. Your flash duration (which is something like 1/1000 or faster) will stop motion.

[Familiaphoto]

Thanks for bringing up Auto Jim, I always forget about that. The link to the sports forum is below. Just do a search on flash and you'll finds lots of stuff.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=30

Also, dmwierz, a POTN member is a great sports shooter. Go to his sports photography podcast and you'll find some information there on shooting sports with a flash.

http://web.mac.com/dmwierz1/Site/Welcome.html

[40Dude6aedyk]

The way to get ALL the power from your flash that it is able to put out is to set it to manual flash mode with output 1/1. It can do no better than that. It can dump ALL its photons in about 1/500th of second, so if your shutter is at 1/250 or 1/200, then your camera sensor will capture ALL the photons created by the flash that are reflected back from your subject.

There are no tricks to this. It's simple physics.

If you want twice the number of photons, then get twice the number of speedlites.

[rdompor]

This hasn't been mentioned, but it something that I think you should try:

Stopping down the aperture and using the flash at high power may kill enough of the ambient (depending on exactly how much ambient there is) to freeze your subject with the short burst of flash.

[tim]

If you shooting at night, there is no ambient so you can easily stop motion with your flash. Whether you shoot at 1/200 or less or more should not matter as long as your flash is providing most of the light. Your flash duration (which is something like 1/1000 or faster) will stop motion.

Listen to Bobbyz. You don't need 1/500th shutter, you just need the flash to be significantly brighter than ambient.

[Jim M]

I shoot drag racing and a lot of it is at night. Unless you have the brightest skateboard situation on earth, you can easily overpower the ambient light with flash. So if you can overpower the ambient, which I believe you can, there is no reason on God's green earth to shoot at a shutter speed faster than 1/200 sec. The flash will freeze the action.

On the other hand, if you have enough ambient light and you want it to be part of the image, then you need high speed sync (HSS) as described above.

[Roona99]

You have some different options to choose from and to try.

1st of all you need to understand why your camera is limited to 1/200 sec sync time. Take a look at this http://regex.info/blog/2008-09-04/925 and also google sync speed to read what it is.

-Some remote triggers will allow to shoot a bit faster than 1/200. It depends on the camera + trigger combo. The 5dMark2 shutter is kind of slow since it has Full frame sensor. (therefore the shutters have to travel much more than with a cropped sensor like 50D for example) The new pocket wizard remote will be able to bump up those sync speeds. Also older ones like elinchrome skyports will bump it up someworth also.

-Other option is to get a camera with electronic shutter. Canon 1D, Nikon D70 or similar. They have electronic shutters and with them you can achieve 1/500 sync speed. They are popular among skateboard photographers for example, because of their possibilities with the sync speed.

Other people have said here you just need to undersxpose the ambient and the flash will stop motion. This is true, but this ofcourse limits your possibilities to this kind of photos only. If you want to expose ambient also, you cant use this technique and no self respecting photographer limits his style to this type of flash photography only IMO..

Also you can use HSS during the day, but it is not nearly as usefull as sync flash. (if you just need a fill flash, HSS will work most likely however)

If you have money, get the new pocket wizard and learn to place those flashes. 5dm2 is a great camera, but doesnt have very good flash sync capabilities..

[Roona99]

Heres a few examples:

1st one is taken at 1/200 around sunset time.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3328/3292260238_caa3814113_o.jpg

This one is taken during the day at 1/800 and 1/2 power using EX430 in HSS
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3329/3429155228_8db9c3875c_o.jpg

(Both taken from close distance using 10-22)

Both use flash. Both very different. No reason to only use one teqhnique.

[vadim_c]

Heres a few examples:

1st one is taken at 1/200 around sunset time.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3328/3292260238_caa3814113_o.jpg

This one is taken during the day at 1/800 and 1/2 power using EX430 in HSS
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3329/3429155228_8db9c3875c_o.jpg

(Both taken from close distance using 10-22)

Both use flash. Both very different. No reason to only use one teqhnique.
Rona aside from the flash technique you got some amazing photos !

[gryphonslair99]

Heres a few examples:

1st one is taken at 1/200 around sunset time.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3328/3292260238_caa3814113_o.jpg

This one is taken during the day at 1/800 and 1/2 power using EX430 in HSS
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3329/3429155228_8db9c3875c_o.jpg

(Both taken from close distance using 10-22)

Both use flash. Both very different. No reason to only use one teqhnique.

Please don't tell me you jumped from a perfectly good airplane of you own free will. :mrgreen: Nice photos though.