Auto FP High Speed Sync-Nikon

[Steven G Webb]

As I understand it, by using an SB800 on camera set to Auto FP and plugging a Pocket Wizard into the flash's sync plug I can shoot at higher speeds than 250th when lighting with White Lightning flash units at full power. The beauty in the magic is really part of a normally flaw of the White Lightning's flash duration. The X3200 at full power has a flash duration of 1/300th of a second. The magic is in the SB800's communication with the camera in the synchronization and the camera exploiting the long flash duration of the White Lightning.

Who's done this?

I get the concept but I don't have the SB800 so I can't test the theory. Here's what makes this idea so important to me. I shoot horse shows, jumpers mostly. Consideration #1 1/250th is not stop action speed. Consideration #2 Many of the venues where I'm using flash are not totally enclosed, only covered. This means tons of back-lighting and exacerbation of the ghosting (see also #1).

If I can in fact run the shutter speed up to 1/1000 ot 1/1250 I can knock down the back lighting and if I can use 500-650 in coliseums I can still freeze the action and keep a little of the ambient light. Hopefully this would result in much sharper images.

I ran this idea passed another photographer at a round table. He was adamant that the notion would not work. His opinionated take of other disputable facts during the meeting did not lend total credibility to his claim that this won't work.

Anyone else have anything similar? I do not need an expensive hot shoe flash, I'm pretty flush with battery powered flash units. If I could improve my paying work with a bit of equipment, I'd buy one. If it won't do this trick, no sense in laying out the cash.

Help appreciated,
Steve

[dmthompson]

Originally Posted by Songman45

As I understand it, by using an SB800 on camera set to Auto FP and plugging a Pocket Wizard into the flash's sync plug I can shoot at higher speeds than 250th when lighting with White Lightning flash units at full power. The beauty in the magic is really part of a normally flaw of the White Lightning's flash duration. The X3200 at full power has a flash duration of 1/300th of a second. The magic is in the SB800's communication with the camera in the synchronization and the camera exploiting the long flash duration of the White Lightning.

Who's done this?

I get the concept but I don't have the SB800 so I can't test the theory. Here's what makes this idea so important to me. I shoot horse shows, jumpers mostly. Consideration #1 1/250th is not stop action speed. Consideration #2 Many of the venues where I'm using flash are not totally enclosed, only covered. This means tons of back-lighting and exacerbation of the ghosting (see also #1).

If I can in fact run the shutter speed up to 1/1000 ot 1/1250 I can knock down the back lighting and if I can use 500-650 in coliseums I can still freeze the action and keep a little of the ambient light. Hopefully this would result in much sharper images.

I ran this idea passed another photographer at a round table. He was adamant that the notion would not work. His opinionated take of other disputable facts during the meeting did not lend total credibility to his claim that this won't work.

Anyone else have anything similar? I do not need an expensive hot shoe flash, I'm pretty flush with battery powered flash units. If I could improve my paying work with a bit of equipment, I'd buy one. If it won't do this trick, no sense in laying out the cash.

Help appreciated,
Steve

Interesting question Steve. As I remember someone here on the forum had worked out a way to do that but I don't remember who. Maybe if they are still here they can jump in. I would certainly like to know if it would work with my AB800s.

Dwight

[Steven G Webb]

Dwight,
If you have a Nikon flash that will work in Auto FP high speed sync and use pocket wizards you're set. Attach the SB to the hot shoe, set it to Auto FP and set your ss to 1000 or so. Now connect a pocket wizard (transmitter) to the PC plug on the flash itself. Set your flash to full power (this is an odd requirement) and let it rip. You may find you can cut the power of the flash to nearly half before the duration speeds up too much to get caught by the fast shutter speed. OH...forgot to mention. The SB contributes nothing, point it up or backward. The only thing it's doing is communicating with the camera and essentially lengthening its own flash duration. You are just exchanging the long burn time of the AB for the long duration of the flash.

I'd just like to hear from someone who's done this with success.

Steve

[jerryph]

Originally Posted by Songman45

As I understand it, by using an SB800 on camera set to Auto FP and plugging a Pocket Wizard into the flash's sync plug I can shoot at higher speeds than 250th when lighting with White Lightning flash units at full power. The beauty in the magic is really part of a normally flaw of the White Lightning's flash duration. The X3200 at full power has a flash duration of 1/300th of a second. The magic is in the SB800's communication with the camera in the synchronization and the camera exploiting the long flash duration of the White Lightning.

Who's done this?

Steve, you *know* I've done it... lol

Originally Posted by Songman45

I get the concept but I don't have the SB800 so I can't test the theory.

Do you have an SB-600? That will work too, but then instead of taking the sync signal from the flash, it has to come from your camera, which I know you use (and your D200 does not have one does it? lol... but for example my other D700s do and that works as well). So that flash with a sync port are SB-700, 800, 900 and 910s would be your only other choices.

Originally Posted by Songman45

I ran this idea passed another photographer at a round table. He was adamant that the notion would not work. His opinionated take of other disputable facts during the meeting did not lend total credibility to his claim that this won't work.

It works... been there and done that many times.

Originally Posted by Songman45

Anyone else have anything similar? I do not need an expensive hot shoe flash, I'm pretty flush with battery powered flash units. If I could improve my paying work with a bit of equipment, I'd buy one. If it won't do this trick, no sense in laying out the cash.

The PW Plus IIs can do it.. the ControlTL units do it a little better because we can control the timing of the event and they do not need an on camera flash. Heck, the ControlTL units specifically have settings for the your X3200 series of studio strobes in their software that optimizes the flash timing and they can come fairly close without a lot of time wasted experimenting (which is always fun to do regardless).

We've spoken about it in the past, and you know it can be done, but I don't think you've had the chance to play with it yet. You are exactly the kind of guy that if only we lived closer together, I feel I could chum around with and have a blast just showing you this little trick over the course of an afternoon.

Free idea tidbit: Did you want a small "trick that will get you up to 1/320th with zero losses? Use a MiniTT1 on the camera as the transmitter. Et voila, your max sync speed goes to 1/320th... and likely even 1/500th for you and your cropped sensor cameras if you used speedlights (studio heads require adjustments), and ZERO lost light. Maybe that alone would be enough to get you those crisper shots over 1/250th?

In case you lost the link and in case you want to show your other photographer friend:

The Jerry Blog!: High-Speed and no CLS

The Jerry Blog!: Hyersync tests - 08-20-2011

If you need me to do some testing, I have a D200 (SB-600, SB-800 and SB-900s), and both the ControlTL and Plus II triggers, and though I do not have a X3200, I do have a Photogenic PL-2500DR. Not 100% the same, but enough to give you a darn fine ballpark result!

Edit: I couldn't help myself and had to do some testing. First thing... it's been a while since I did this test with the ControlTL units and the D200. As of now, it is actually much easier on a D200 to use an iTTL flash with sync port and a pair of Plus IIs (onn the flash and one on camera), than it is to use the ControlTL units. I am talking straight out of the box, no changes to the Flex and Mini. I am sure that if I took the time and played with Hypersync settings I could match or beat the results.. however, you would be optimized for ONE specific shutter speeds. The Plus IIs are a bit of a compromise, but you do not change ANYTHING and just dial up the shutter speeds and it just keeps working... all the way to 1/8000th. so those 1/500th to 1/100th shutter speeds you are looking for should be a breeze.

If one wanted to maximize things, and use the ControlTL units, you would need a Mini or Flex on camera and a Flex on the studio strobe. This is obviously more expensive, but are more adjustible/optimizable and results would be a touch better (less flash power lost). One could also use tricks like SpeedCycler, if you had an AC3 (this is where you have 3 studio heads in 3 different locations along, for example, where the horses move) and with each press of the shutter a different strobe would hit, up to 3 groups. Another advantage is that one could really fine tune the hypersync settings and minimize the lost flash power, but as I said, you would have to do this to one specific shutter speed (or actually 2 shutter speeds but using different configuration settings and then switch from C1 to C2 on all COntrolTL units. A hassle but a choice. ) and if you went to a high shutter speed not optimized for, you would get banding, unless you dropped it down to 1/320th or less.

Now, a little caveat... once shutter speeds start to come close to and exceed flash duration, it is not like at shutter speeds under sync speeds where no matter what you set it to, from 1/250th down to hours, that flash is not affected. At these shutter speeds, you **will** affect flash power via shutter speeds and it is quite close to being linear (increase shutter speed 1 stop, flash power drops about 1 stop).

I've now done some quick tests and will create a short video for you with results and I will also place these photos online somewhere.. EXIF intact, so that you can see that a D200 was used, that a studio head was used and that all shutter speeds upwards from 1/250th to 1/8000th were used.

Hey, quick question... how would strong flashes from an X3200 affect the horses and participants? Could you do this at a live event and not have anything negative happen?

Wait for that in my next post where I show the video and photos.

[Steven G Webb]

Jerry,
I can't thank you enough. I know we've plowed potions of this field already. I'm appreciative of your patience. First, the flash from the 3200's do no affect the horses at all. Jumpers are desensitized to a lot of distractions. Hunter riders (note: not the horses) are affected by their perception and on occasion we'll be asked not to photograph a particular exhibitor. There are competitions in Western riding where pistols and rifles are fired from horseback. Mounted police have competitions to demonstrate how desensitized their mounts are. In these contests, smoke and fire are replicated by fog machines and colored lights, police cars with lights and sirens are used, even strings of firecrackers are lit and tossed into metal drums next to the horses. So, photographic flash is not harmful to horses, nor dangerous.

My concern with the effectiveness of the HSFP hack has to do with the distance of the light-to-subject. In a particular coliseum the lights are mounted above the seating area. Illuminating subjects approx 275-300 feet away. I realize were talking tiny amounts of time, but we're also talking about fitting an event into a 1,000th to 8,000th of a second window. So is the signal-to-fire + light-to-subject+light-to-camera an amount of time that impacts the trick? Will it all still fit into the equation?

I wish I could get my hands on a SB800 for a few weeks.

Steve

[zemlin]

I've done it with an SB-600 plugging the radio trigger into the sync port on my D300s body. Did it with the SB-800 too - no difference between the setups that I can tell. I was using an Einstein, and with the shorter flash duration it only works with the flash at full power, but it works.

[Steven G Webb]

Thanks Zemlin. Do you think it will work with a long distance between the light source and the subject? I'm not concerned with the distance between the camera and flash, I'm not extremely far from the flash units. I'm just covering a really long throw and a lot of real estate by time the light hits the far side of the arena. The arena is about 150 ft wide, the lights are away from the edge probably another 50 feet and above the floor 30-35 feet.

Steve

[zemlin]

I would not expect distance to be a factor. Both light and radio travel REAL fast.

[Steven G Webb]

Originally Posted by zemlin

I would not expect distance to be a factor. Both light and radio travel REAL fast.

Well that's how I felt. Generally when I have that kind of feeling someone comes in like a cast member of "Big Bang Theory" and shatters my feelings with some kind of quantum physics formula, like the one that says bumble bees and helicopters can't fly.

Actually my need for reassurance from someone who knows, stems from a conversation I had with someone who said he knew and that it wouldn't work. Of course during the course of an evening (and first meeting I might add) he said many things that could not be supported. Might have known.

Steve

[zemlin]

I haven't quite figured how it works out. On my setup (Einsteins) what baffles me a bit is that regardless of whether my shutter speed is 1/1000 or 1/8000, I can only get light on the full frame with full power.

Based on this plot you'd think I could get full frame at a 1/8000 shutter speed down most of the power curve in color mode.

So I figure the FB sync must anticipate the shutter by a split second and fire the flash early and it all has as much to do with the delay as with the flash duration. Someday when I have time to play, I'm going to study this setup, comparing my different camera bodies, etc.

I don't have access to extreme high-speed video, but I do have audio recording gear that might be useful in studying the timings since all these things make noise when they fire. 96 KHz sampling on audio tracks would let me track timings pretty well