Also in this issue:
- Other ways to get a blurry background
- A-Mount to E-mount Adapter Nuances
- Portrait Lighting Workshop (and other events)
- And more...
Upping My Game
For over 20 years I've prided myself on making "Wow!" images using pretty modest equipment. I was one of the earliest proponents of wireless flash when Minolta introduced it to the world in the 1990's. I used it extensively in my travels to add better light with the greatest of ease.
But over the years I slowly started to hit its limitations. It wouldn't reliably trigger outdoors (or in a large gym, as I discovered on an important shoot); and the intensity of the flash would be severely reduced when trying to "overpower the sun" using High-Speed Sync (HSS).
Recently I wanted to "up my game" and start taking outdoor portraits using fast glass wide open. That almost always means using a fast shutter speed, necessitating either a camera with a leaf shutter in the lens (like the Sony RX-10 or Fujifilm X100 series) or using a powerful strobe capable of High-Speed Sync (HSS). Essentially, what I wanted was the benefits of modern technology so I could do portraits that would wow my customers (and possibly other photographers). And it meant triggering via radio instead of using the wide and narrow pulses coming from the on-camera flash.
