I'm looking for a portable flash (possibly 2) powerful enough to block out the sun!
Basically I want to under expose everything in the scene except for the subject that will be in the immediate foreground and lit by the flash. These will be at the beach so a lot of sun will need to be taken out with ND filters.
Will you be using modifiers or shooting full length? How many stops do you want to underexpose ambient by? What time do you anticipate shooting? These has a big impact on the amount of power you need.
It'll be in the afternoon from 1pm to 3pm. I'll be shooting full length shots of people (so between 6 and 12 feet away) and want to basically make it look like night for the exception of the subject.
Do you insist on inverter/battery or are you willing to accept a fuel driven generator (e.g. Honda Eu) ? In any case this allows the usage a large range of studio pack/head combos or monolights. Besides the dedicated DC packs Elinchrom Ranger, Hensel Porty or Profotos ....
Profoto acute B2 600 at full power with a magnum reflector will get you f/32 iso 100 at 4m which assuming your sync speed is 1/200 is about 3 stops above mid day sun. You could also look at a D1 1000ws monolight with external power. These would be easy to rent.
Your other option is probably an elinchrom ranger (1000ws) with high performance reflector.
I know paul buff have some examples of the einstein with a high output reflector turning day into night but their european presence is very limited.
EDIT: just noticed your latest post, how powerful is your battery?
Another key element here is portability. Those options seem only viable with an assistant. I don't mind that if that's what it takes but running solo is preferred. I had planned a kind of smash and grab style of shooting.
Elinchrom ranger or elinchrom quadra are your best choices if you want easily portable. Ranger will allow the use of modifiers where quadra will do what you want bare flash but might not be powerful enough to overpower the sun once you add modifiers.
It would seem that you are working against your goals of making it look like night by the absolutely most difficult time frame possible. Even if you moved your time frame to two hours before sunset, you can knock off 1 or 2 EV.
I'm still not getting "sun will be highest" if you are going for a night vibe and wanting your illumination to be solely dependent upon your your lighting with no ambient influence.
Okay, so there may be more people at the beach ... how many are you putting in your scene (illuminted by flash portion)? ... and your falloff will be ... so why the need for "peak beach" time it it's going to be ND / night and only foreground/subject illumination?
It just sounds like you are working harder against yourself than necessary ... but I'm sure your vision is very clear to you. Looking forward to seeing the pics.
I'd like the people to be acting normally as they would for that time of day. The subject must be completely isolated by the flash, correctly exposed and the background looking very dark although figures being Visable as if it's night. There's no one sun bathing at night :-)
RustyBug wrote:
It just sounds like you are working harder against yourself than necessary ...
I have to agree with this statement. The more portability you require the more you should try to work within a time that helps with that. There are options, but there are limitations as well. Using the lights as far away as you require makes things even more difficult when you suggest portability. Then again portability depends on how strong you are
Your best may be coming at it from another angle and getting a camera that can flash sync at high speeds and a short flash duration flash of lesser power. 1/1000 sync gets you two stop more sun killing assuming you don't clip too much off the flash output.
Dooglestar wrote:
I'm using a 7D. Are you saying I could use an ordinary flash then? Can you elaborate a bit please? This sounds interesting.
You can either use lots of flash power and shoot at a smaller aperture/use ND filters or reduce the ambient light with a higher shutter speed because the shutter speed will not affect the flash (unless it is much shorter than the flash duration of course). The problem of course is that you are limited by the camera's flash sync speed, cameras like the D70 and some compact cameras (like the fuji X100) can flash sync at much higher speeds due to their shutter design meaning you should be able to use less flash power and therefore smaller flash gear.
