Profoto B1 high speed sync

Some of you may know that I am a big fan of flash when it comes to photography. I almost flash everything, overtime, at any aperture.

When camera makers started putting more and more pixels into the sensor, I’ve been screaming for more dynamic range.

When they have started their race towards the summit of ISO, I’ve been begging for a higher flash sync speed. To a point that I even bought a Hasselblad Medium format to be able to flash sync through the full range of the shutter speed.

“Unfortunately” the Hassy’s shutter speed is topped at 1/800th of a second. No fun for outdoor wide aperture flash shooting.

Now, the good news is Profoto has released their promised firmware, to allow the Profoto B1 to sync all the way to 1/8000th of a second, for Canon and Nikon only guys, I wanted to give it a go.

This might be the response for what I have been waiting for.

For this 2 hour plan, non scientific but oh so much fun shoot, I loaded two (actually 4) cameras:

– the Canon 5D mark III

– the Fuji X-T1 Graphite Silver Edition.

(I also brought the Olympus OMD-M1 and the Panasonic GX7)

In the lens department, I took along, for the Canon:

– 50mm f/1.2 L

– 135mm f/2 L

And for the Fuji:

– Carl Zeiss Touit 32mm f/1.8

– Carl Zeiss 85mm f/1.4 Planar.

The idea is to use the Canon lenses at their widest aperture, and at their fastest shutter speed, and sync the shot in HSS with the Profoto B1.

Photos shot with the Canon will be “off camera flash”.

Because the Fuji X-T1 Graphite Silver Edition has a shutter speed of 1/32000th of a second (about 2 stops over the Canon 5D Mark III), I can use the camera in Av doe with the lenses set to their maximum aperture.

Photos shot with the Fuji X-T1 Graphite Silver Edition will be “ambient/available light”.

Note: No reflectors or modifiers were used when shooting with the Fuji X-T1 Graphite Silver Edition.

As mentioned above, this is no scientific test, nor review of any kind. This is purely fun and the gorgeous Nykki was so delicious to shoot.

Below if the first set of images, shot with the Fuji X-T1 Graphite Silver Edition.

Talent | Stylist | MUA & Hair: Nicole Reynolds.

Click to enlarge.

The images above have been edited with ACR to adjust contrast and colour temperature.

The set below is shot with the Canon 5D Mark III and the Profoto B1 in HSS mode (one light was used for the shoot).

Lighting Exif: Profoto B1 in TTL HSS mode. Profoto Zoom Reflector II + 20° (degrees) grid + barn-door.

I kind of like the contrast created by flash and while you can “create” the same look in post, I must admit I am lazy about the things that happen after the click. The most time I spend to edit one image would be less than 2 minutes. Not that I use images coming out of the camera, I just don’t want to spend that much time in mixing the pixels of an image. That would be the job of digital retouchers :o)

The two images below give you an idea of the “normal” exposure of the ambient and the exposure I used with the Profoto B1.

The ambient (above)

The exposure with flash (above)

When it comes to exposure, I’d say it’s a personal thing.

Let me know what you think of flash vs non flash in the comment below.

Oh, here are some images shot with the Olympus OMD-M1 with the Panasonic 42.5mm f/1.2 Leica Nocticron lens.

The Olympus has a maximum shutter speed of 1/8000th of a second and I had an ND8 filter in front of the lens to cut of some ambient.

Edited and added some grain. I am a big fan of grain ..

To finish off, the shooter shot by the talent. Fuji X-T1 Graphite Silver Edition & Zeiss Touit 32mm f/1.8