Raw Transcript
something quite a few people asked me to talk about was flash photography for surfing so it’s something that I’ve experimented with quite a bit but I haven’t I definitely say I’m an expert and I definitely wouldn’t say that I’ve got to a point where I’m really happy with my setup and everything so this is another one of those those courses where hopefully my experience will help you get past the initial barrier to trying it but I’m not going to offer you any sort of comprehensive advice so I would check out the links below which have a few more resources to using flash in photography in general in surfing but here’s my take so far on using flash in surf photography so the most common type of flash you’ll see in surf photos is basically a speedlight which is the name for like a camera mounted flash gun basically and all the main brands have those available from the different brands of camera so and many of the water housing manufacturers offer a housing specifically for that type of flash for a speedlight so Aquatech SPL you can buy off-the-shelf housing that you can just drop your Flash gun straight into and seal it up and then the hard part is connecting that to your camera and making it sure that when you shoot your fire the flap fire the shutter on your camera the flash fires the most reliable way I’ve used em and it isn’t the one that any sort of professional surf photographer would use is a dive style flash so this is a dive strobe that you use designed to be used underwater usually in a pair for two of them where obviously you’re quite deep and there’s not much light underwater so you need a lot of light to light up your subjects but I’ve used this one before this is an st 100 pro from sea frogs and and i’ve used this one for flash photography above the water and it works it’s it’s probably I mean looks bulky but to be honest it’s it’s probably similar sort of size weight to one of these professional speed lights in a housing so that isn’t the main the main reason people don’t use this isn’t the size the main reason is you have to trigger it through this optical court so this is like a fiber optic cord basically you’re the pop-up flash on your camera say there it is on the Sony Canon cameras Nick on everyone else has this the same thing well most of their models if it’s a professional camera you might not have a pop-up flash because you’re expected to use off-camera flash that isn’t basically you fire you set up your camera to shoot as if it’s using this flash to light the scene but inside the housing it redirects this flash through this cord into a sensor that’s built in to this flash or whatever flash happen to be using I’ve also used a fuji nano flash which is an inexpensive these are really expensive buy or not this one in particular but dive strobes in general of quite expensive there will be some it’s a bit of kit the Fuji nano flashes are the cheapest of the lot and it’s waterproof and it’s really small and it uses the same technique where you just flash out of your camera triggers this so um so basically flash fires on your camera the light from that flash travels through this cable and sets off a sensor here which triggers the big flash which lights up the scene so I’ll show you some examples of shots that I’ve taken uh surf which used this technique um but if you’ve seen any professional photographers flash shots the chances are they are using a cable an electrical cable rather than optical cable to connect their hotshoe on the top of that camera what shoe is simply the M the mount that you stick a flash into so you get a cable that slots in there and then that goes through through a waterproof bulkhead or sometimes there’s a there’s housing which incorporates the space for the flash as well so you just literally pop the flash onto the camera as you would normally and then you put the whole thing in a water housing I’ll show you some pictures of those salty surf housings do one for there and so nice a six series so you’ve connected basically a camera here to a flash which is outside in a housing and when you press the button it fires that flash the benefits of doing it that way rather than with the optical cable are it’s more consistent and reliable the electrical connection as long as it maintains the connection it will should fire every time this optical one is less predictable although generally if you’ve got it set up right it should be fine but then these aren’t designed to be used in the waves so you might find that this cable is knocked or something I don’t know any problems with mine but the main issue is this onboard flash takes quite a long time to recycle so rather than our high-speed 11 frames a second that we’re getting when we’re just taking fisheye photos for instance what we’re getting there is one shot wait for a second half a second whatever happens to be two seconds another shot so you get one chance at getting a nice photo lit up with the flash of a wave and it’s really hard to get the timing right um so lots of try an error with this technique using these with the with like the professional off-camera flash with the Kate with the electrical cable then you’d normally get I believe it’s like three or four in very quick succession not as fast as without a flash but certainly usable for surf photography to get two or three flashes of a wave as it goes past and often that’s more than enough for a wave because they don’t think they’re quite quick and the reaction that was over quite looking anyway so if you wanted to go down that route then I would definitely make sure that your water housing supports that before you buy it so aqua tech SPL salty surf housings liquid I have a look on their websites just double-check that the one you getting has a either they all do it slay differently as I think there’s like a flash bulkhead this is an aqua tech base housing not the brand-new base to this is the original base and it’s got a blanking plate here like a plug which you can take off and you can screw in the flash bulkhead I’ll show you on this older anchor Tech housing there’s a flash bulkhead there you take that off and then you can plug in a waterproof electrical cable there and then you can attach a flash to the top if you want to go down that route then you can fly that lots more information about it I think flash photography is great fun and on camera flash it’s great fun the experiences I’ve had doing it have been really rewarding but it’s been a lot more hassle setting it up making trying to make things work because I’m not prepared I don’t have the professional speed lights for a start there they’re going to run you a few hundred dollars I don’t have the experience using those in other types of photography so there’s a learning curve there that I’d have to meet I don’t have the housing necessary that works with that one so it’s a it’s a big investment in time and money to get this sort of rig going the bits I’ve done have I think brought giving me pretty good results for the investment I’ve made but they certainly don’t match up to the Leroy belet’s um in the tube flash fish are his shots for instance that I think are probably the ones that spring to mind when I think of surf flash photography at the moment and so yeah I’ve done a few experiments but like I say there’s a lot more you can learn about this that’s beyond my experience so far and one other thing I will mention dress quickly is remote flash and it used to be I think there was a bit of a trend for it and it came from skate photography I believe I’ll put some links in in the resources so you can learn a bit more about it like I did you don’t have the flash mounted on the top of the housing yeah it completely separate and it’s triggered wirelessly from a transmitter inside the housing or on an extra bit of housing on top and a receiver with the flash so PocketWizard is the brand name of the most well known transmitter receiver system but you can get lots of different options I’ve tried it myself with a much cheaper brand young new oh they make flash they make lots of different accessories for cameras but especially flashes that are very inexpensive and remote triggers which are quite inexpensive as well so I’ve experimented with making a little waterproof housing for one of their young euro flash units putting a remote trigger on there sticking that to a stick whacking her into the sand in the shore break and then moving away and taking photos transmitting the flash signal to the to the flash so the flash goes off over there somewhere and I’m over here and it just gives you a different dynamic look things that sir photographers have done is make that get that waterproof flash housing and have someone swimming in the lineup holding it whilst someone a surfer does an air performs one over near that person and then on the land or boat or wherever the photographer takes the photo triggers the flash and you get this this really unique effect which I thought I kind of played around with it like I said with my kind of budget set up I’d recommend doing it’s very good fun again it’s a step a couple of steps below the level of experience and commitment and investment that you need to really pull off something professional-looking and although saying that I mean I’m really happy there’s also I got so if if you’re out there and you wanted to experiment with this budget and photography flash stuff then by all means give me a shout send me an e-mail leave a comment and I’ll do my best to help out more hopefully this has given you a kind of inspiration to try and get just on the first step along that stage you flash photography for surfing
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