Beating Daylight

Ben (from folio32.com) called over to me the other day, buying my 'not used since I got Quadras' Tronix Explorer. We were talking about beating daylight using the Quadra and the Maxispot 29º reflector. So despite still being crippled, I set it up by the door to show him..First shot ambient only, underexposed. ISO100 f22 1/200sec

2nd shot with Quadra added at 5.0 (half power)

For a laugh I bumped the shutter speed to show what would happen once you went past sync speed. I was explaining that the ambient exposure would still work, but the shutter curtain would block the flash exposure. Below we can see the shutter is blocking the bottom third of the flash. Also Ben is in the feather of the light here, rather than being in the full direct light of the flash. The shot still serves it's purpose. We're at 1/400sec now.

Knowing this, we can cheat a bit to keep our sync speed up. This next one is at 1/400 sec and looks okay? How is that?

Well that's easy. Let's see the original uncropped and unrotated original.

You see, knowing the curtain is coming in 1/3 of the way from the bottom means that if we go wider and shoot upside, we can still get our subject fully light if we have them in the bottom 2/3rds with the camera UPSIDE DOWN!The final thing we did for a laugh was to put a 10X filter on and shoot at f2.8, changing the other settings to suit. This filter is susceptible to infrared and has a pink cast to it.

Now none of these were serious shots. I literally shot out of my back door as I was to sore to go anywhere. My exterior wall is cream, so Ben was getting midday sun reflected onto him, making him squint. Still I think he enjoyed seeing the tricks performed!Finally, I'd like to point out that bar white balancing on the last one, no exposure etc has been added, so the images are as out of camera (except where noted). The aim wasn't perfect, it was showing what could happen in the 10 minutes we were messing with gear.