Honey, I shrunk the dog!

Learn fast flash photography skills as Peter Travers shoots at light speed with Canon’s new EL-1 Speedlite (and accidently shrinks his puppy)

- Peter Travers

THE MISSION

Master HSS mode to shoot outside with faster shutter speeds and wide apertures for better action shots

Time needed One hour

Skill level Advanced

Kit needed • Speedlite with HSS mode • Wireless flash triggers • Lighting stand

Flash photography isn’t a dark art – learn to embrace the flash light instead! In this project, we’re going to show you to manually and remotely control a Speedlite, plus explain how to use the HSS (High-Speed Sync) mode for better action shots in bright sunlight. You may have used some fill-flash before, such as taking portraits in daylight to reduce harsh shadows and lighten up people’s faces. However, Canon EOS cameras have a maximum flash sync speed – eg 1/180 sec to 1/250 sec, depending on your EOS camera. This means in bright conditions when using a pop-up flash or flashgun, you can’t shoot at faster shutter speeds or wide apertures (eg f/2.8 at 1/2000 sec) without ending up with overexposed images, or a black band across the bottom of images.

For this photo project, we’re using Canon’s new beefy pro EL-1 Speedlite. If we switch to HSS mode, it enables us to shoot with a much faster shutter speed than your camera’s flash sync speed, such as 1/1000 sec. This makes it ideal for capturing quick-moving action shots of our doggy, without a hint of motion blur. Plus, we could open our aperture to around f/4 so our subject has separation from a blurred background.