I had been thinking about a photo walk in my garden for a few days. So when I woke in the morning and saw that it had rained sometime in the night I was eager to get out with my camera to photograph some rain drops and anything else that was interesting. The morning was overcast and still – perfect for those after the rain photos that are so fun to make.
I also wanted to try out a Sigma 105mm Macro that had come into my shop for a consignment sale. Sigma makes many excellent lenses and since I was not familiar with the 105mm Macro I wanted to try it so I would have an opinion for any customers that might be looking for a Nikon mount Macro lens.
I mounted the lens on my camera and attached a cord so I could use an off-camera flash and sat down for my morning bagel and coffee.
Then the weather changed. I would have liked more clouds or even a slight rain, but oh no…that’s not what was waiting for me. I got the worst weather I could imagine for close-up photography in the garden, a sunny day with a slight breeze!
What a drag. Gosh, I was all ready. What to do? Enter high speed sync.
Most cameras have a limited flash sync speed. This usually means the fastest shutter speed that the flash “syncs” at is 1/160 to 1/250 second depending on the camera.
High-speed synchronization is a function with most modern cameras that will allow the camera to use faster than normal flash shutter speeds when using an external flash.
Since it’s introduction on modern digital cameras, most portrait photographers have come to depend on HSS when the day is sunny demanding high shutter speeds and smaller apertures.
With HSS one can set the camera’s aperture at wide apertures like F/3.5 to get that soft out-of-focus bokeh effect.
As Wikipedia explains; In photography, bokeh is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in out-of-focus parts of an image, whether foreground or background or both. It is created by using a wide aperture lens.
I was able to select unusual settings like ISO 1600 and a shutter speed of 1/8000. Remember the day was bright and breezy – and I wanted the flowers, just like some posing human model, to be motionless and have a blurry under exposed background.
The ISO I chose was random. With my camera set to allow HSS I just kept moving my settings so I could use wide apertures like F/3.5 to F/5.6. Depending on the background. I didn’t have to pay attention to my subject movement and all I needed to think about was getting pleasing photos with soft, dark backgrounds.
As I walked out my door I was planning to get photos of water droplets, but with few exceptions, the breeze had dried most of them up. So I moved to my, 'let's see how creative I can get' mode.
Sure I ended up with lots of unusable images that didn’t work, but I also got a few that I really liked. That’s the fun of digital, bad shots help us learn, don’t cost money and get deleted.
I enjoy my quiet wanderings though my rambling garden any time of the year and no matter the conditions using flash technology like my digital camera’s high speed sync, plus a good closeup lens always makes for a successful time photographing the garden.
Stay safe and be creative. These are my thoughts for this week. Contact me at www.enmanscamera.com or emcam@telus.net.
