Photographer Ryan Brenizer posted a handy tip on his Amazon Blog. How to use the High-Speed Sync [or Nikon: Auto-FP] to convert sunlight into “just another studio light you can control”.
…High-Speed Sync is a trick of new flashes — instead of one brief burst, how about an extremely quick series of pulses? That way you could illuminate a frame at any shutter speed. But there’s a trick — to be so fast, the flashes have to be very weak.
So high-speed sync gives us a way to fire at as fast a shutter speed as we want, getting as close as the camera can to that moment where even a small flash is the brightest thing around. But how does that affect your pictures? In terms of balancing the existing (non-flash) light, the faster your shutter speed, the wider your aperture can be…. wide apertures mean you can pop your subject out of the background with a shallow depth of field, even in bright sunlight. If you had to stay at 1/250th of a second, you might need to fire at f/11 to balance the light, and get a huge depth of field. If you can punch it up to 1/8000th, though, you could shoot at a background blur-producing f/2!
There are a few tricks for using Auto-FP in sunlight. The important thing is that with full control over your shutter speed, the sun is now just another studio light you can control. Is it high in the sky, an unattractive mid-day light (as at left)? Put your subjects entirely in the shadow, crank the shutter speed as low as possible, and now it’s just a subtle edge light? Is it a nice attractive sunset light? Open the shutter a bit and let it work.
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