Creating a natural looking portrait outside with flash limits your options regarding your camera settings. A photographer might be stuck at their sync speed, usually 1/180 to 1/250, and at a low f-stop of around f/22. This creates a balance of flash to ambient that will not over expose your subject, but who wants to shot portraits at f/22 all the time?
Shooting portraits with your lens wide open, especially with fast glass, creates the subject/background separation that is so desired by photographers and clients alike. Photographer Joel Grimes shows us how to use an ND filter to overpower the sun while using a wide open aperture.
[REWIND: Ensure That Your Engagement Session Rocks: 5 Planning Tips ]
To achieve the desired result Grimes used a variety of gear:
Westcott 24” Rapid Box Beauty Dish
Paul C. Buff Einstein
Some cameras have ND filters built in like the Fuji X100T, which has a three stop ND filter that moves in between the sensor and the lens. Being able to shoot portraits inside then switching the ND filter on for outdoor shooting with out adjusting the settings makes it an indispensable tool during a fast paced event like a wedding. If your camera does not have a built in filter, Shivani wrote up a great list of 5 Tiffen ND Filters to fit every budget that is worth a read. See link below:
5 Tiffen ND Filters For Every Price Point
Source: Joel Grimes via Youtube
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I’d like to point out that the subject is in the shade. I wouldn’t necessarily call that “over powering the sun”.
That’s true, but most of the background is in the sun, so that’s the ratio that has to be balanced, or “overpowered.” If he had only balanced his strobe with the ambient light actually hitting the model, the sky and background would have been completely blown out. The way that he metered and exposed the shot gave him the saturated blue sky, and green trees and grass behind her.
what i think may have been a useful mention in this video is “ok we’ve taken our settings from ~f/11 to f/1.4 by adding a 6 stop ND filter, now we have to jack up the flash 6 stops to get the light level from the flash back to appear as it was before.” that takes a pretty powerful light source (hint hint: not a flashgun)
This is so wrong.
You dont need a single bit of more power.
ND filter dont change the ratio between the sun and the flash.
So…. have you ever heard about hss strobes ? :))))
HSS strobes can suffer from significant power loss, inconsistent output and tremendous power draw on batteries
If you are interested. Pye goes over the Pros and Cons of HSS and ND Filters in our Lighting 101 course
https://slrlounge.com/store-product/lighting-101/