Each week in our Master Lighting & Off-Camera Flash Facebook Group, Community Leader Trevor Dayley announces a weekly challenge designed to inspire members and showcase the incredible talent that exists in the SLR Lounge community.

A couple of weeks ago, we tackled the topic of High-Speed Sync! This can be a difficult concept to grasp when you are first starting out and incorporating flash into your work. We wanted to break it down and feature some incredible work from our community to help you understand why you should use HSS for flash photography. If you need more background on HSS and what it means, our Lighting 101 course covers that in full!

1. To Control Ambient Light

If you want to maintain a shallow depth of field and you are already at your lowest ISO, you’ll need to speed up your shutter speed to darken your ambient light. Cameras have what is called maximum shutter speed sync – the fastest shutter speed you can set on your camera where both curtains will fully expose the sensor when using flash and avoid the black bands. Most cameras have this setting at 1/180th of a second or 1/200th of a second. Using HSS while speeding up your shutter speed yields dark & dramatic ambient light as you’ll see in some of these examples below.

Jared Gant – Website | Instagram | Wedding Maps Profile

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A great example of under-exposing your background and using HSS!
A great example of under-exposing your background and using HSS!
A darker ambient light exposure and a pop of flash really do the trick!
A darker ambient light exposure and a pop of flash really do the trick!

Jason Vinson – Website | Instagram

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A great example of darkening the ambient light to draw in focus on the subjects.
A great example of darkening the ambient light to draw in focus on the subjects.
This technique can be useful for creating silhouettes when there is still light out!
This technique can be useful for creating silhouettes when there is still light out!
Speeding up your shutter speed allows you to block out unwanted items in your photos. Here, you'll see the entire background is blacked out.
Speeding up your shutter speed allows you to block out unwanted items in your photos. Here, you'll see the entire background is blacked out.
Jason VInson nails this technique bringing all the attention to his subjects by cutting out the ambient light.
Jason VInson nails this technique bringing all the attention to his subjects by cutting out the ambient light.

Jesse La Plante – Website | Instagram

high speed sync wedding photography
A stunning example of darkening down the ambient light exposure to make your subjects pop!

Matt Gruber – Website | Instagram

sunset flash photography
Using HSS while speeding up your shutter speed yields dark & dramatic ambient light

2. Maintain A Shallow Depth of Field

Portrait and wedding photographers love using their primes lenses as a compositional tool to blur out backgrounds with a shallow depth of field. The main issue with this choice is that when shooting in bright daylight you’ll need to compensate with your exposure settings to arrive at the correct exposure. It’s possible to use an ND filter to maintain a shallow depth of field without having to stop down, however, this could result in loss of quality depending on the type of filter you choose to use. If you don’t want to stop down to f/16 (and get literally everything in focus, defeating the purpose of your prime lens) then use HSS!

Pye Jirsa – Website | Instagram

high speed sync
The background falls out of focus in this image shot at f/1.4 on a Sigma Art lens with flash composited out in post.

Matt Gruber – Website | Instagram

High speed sync flash wedding photography
A beautiful image showcasing how combining shallow depth of field with high-speed sync flash.

3. Overpower Harsh Sunlight

Working on peak afternoon sunlight is definitely not every photographers’ dream. While we crave golden hour lighting at all times, sometimes you are forced to work with time constraints and you have to figure out how to make it work. One of the most popular ways to overpower sunlight is to use a high-powered strobe in HSS mode. You’ll need a lot of power to combat the harsh sun, a minimum of 200 w/s, and likely will need to composite out your light and stand because it will need to be very close in proximity to your subjects. Here are some examples of that technique:

Pye Jirsa – Website | Instagram

High speed sync flash photography
Pye took this portrait at peak afternoon sunlight and composited out his flash.

Matt Gruber – Website | Instagram

Wedding portrait using HSS flash.
A great example of how using HSS during in broad daylight from Matt Gruber!

Rohit Gautam – Website | Instagram

flash portrait photography
How this was shot: Mola Demi Beauty dish on location with Profoto B2. Camera Left. 2 stop ND filter.

Julie Gayer – Website | Instagram

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Julie used HSS to photograph these children as the sun was setting behind them.
Julie used HSS to photograph these children as the sun was setting behind them.
A behind the scenes image of how these shots were created.
A behind the scenes image of how these shots were created.
Such a beautiful use of flash to balance out the scene.
Such a beautiful use of flash to balance out the scene.
In this series of images you'll see the sun setting in the background so you'll
In this series of images you'll see the sun setting in the background so you'll
Julie used HSS to photograph these children as the sun was setting behind them.
Julie used HSS to photograph these children as the sun was setting behind them.

 

Related Reading: [Here’s Why You Should Use An ND Filter For Your Portraits]

4. Capture Motion in Bright Daylight

Since most cameras have a flash sync speed of 1/200th of a second, it can be hard to capture any type of fast-paced movement. Using HSS allows you to speed up your shutter to catch the motion. Here are a few examples of how wedding & portrait photographers use HSS to capture motion:

Trevor Dayley – Website | Instagram

Fashion portrait using High speed sync flash photography

Trevor does a great job in showing the flowy movement of the dress using HSS.

Jason Vinson – Website | Instagram

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Jason uses HSS here to capture and freeze the motion of the hairspray.
Jason uses HSS here to capture and freeze the motion of the hairspray.
This image brings the drama due to the use of a pinpointed flash on the subject.
This image brings the drama due to the use of a pinpointed flash on the subject.

If you are interested in learning how to best utilize HSS on your next shoot, check out our Flash Photography Training System which includes 4 of our best-selling lighting courses ranging from introductory lighting lessons to advanced off-camera flash techniques! Our entire lighting library of education is also available in SLR Lounge Premium!