Make Your Photography Natural. I’m often asked, “Why use a reflector and not a flash for fill-light outdoors?” There are several answers to this question, but the most obvious one, often overlooked by many photographers when trying to “pre-visualize” their final photos is that you don’t need to worry about camera shutter-speed sync with photography reflectors. Flash, with a few rare exceptions, means camera shutter-speed synchronization and reflectors means don’t worry about it, unless you utilize the SUNBOUNCE FLASH BRACKET.
This photo of Elizabeth was illuminated with a SUNBOUNCE PRO ZEBRA reflector.
As with most continuous light sources, camera sync-speed is nothing to worry about when it comes to working with reflectors, unless you are pointing a flash or strobe into the reflector as the primary light source that you are trying to reflect. While I’ve done this with my studio strobes pointed towards either a SUNBOUNCE PRO or MINI, SUNBOUNCE also makes a “BOUNCE WALL” that mounts directly on your camera and works in conjunction with your camera flash unit or speedlights.
However, today we’re discussing the main reason when I elect to use a reflector only, and not flash, or reflector plus flash. The latter has its uses too, but we’ll save that for future blog posts as the idea today is avoiding camera shutter-speed sync worries.
Now to clarify, camera shutter-speed is different than camera shutter sync-speed. Camera shutter-sync speed is something you worry about when your using a flash, with or without a light modifier, as your light source, but camera shutter-speed is a different animal; it’s the entire spectrum of shutter speeds available from your camera including sync speeds.
This photo of Jessica illuminated with a SUNBOUNCE PRO and SPARKLING SUN fabric screen.
So why is this important? Because if you prefer a shooting style that includes a lot of bokeh (low-aperture to create a blurred, moody background), you’ll need a very high shutter-speed on a bright sunny day. The proof is in the “Sunny 16 Rule,” which basically states that on a bright sunny day if you set your shutter-speed identical to your ISO setting, then you’d set your aperture, or f/stop, to 16 on your lens for proper exposure. Thus ISO 200 means that your digital camera’s shutter is set at 1/200th, while your lens aperture is set at f/16. Most cameras safely synchronize at 1/200th and below.
Sometimes high apertures are just too much depth of field for my style of photographing people. Save the f/16’s for landscape photography, as landscapes don’t normally require flash or reflectors for illumination like people or animal subjects. When I breakout my SUNBOUNCE PRO, with either a WHITE, SILVER, SPARKLING SUN, or ZEBRA fabric, and use the sun as my light source reflected off that fabric, chances are I can set my lens aperture to a lower aperture number then adjust my shutter-speed for the appropriate exposure.
One other advantage to this mad method of thinking, higher shutter-speeds are a must when using lenses with long focal lengths. The rule here is that your minimum shutter-speed for any telephoto lens should exceed the focal length in number. In other words, if you’re shooting with a 200mm lens, or focal length, your shutter-speed as a minimum setting is 1/200th. This rule is designed to reduce camera shake as long focal length lenses magnify camera movement especially when hand-held, though this is not a real issue with mirrorless cameras with a stabilized sensor.
Sometimes there is the possibility, especially when the sun is your sole source of light you are bouncing off your reflector, that you might not be able to adhere to the Sunny 16 Rule of your exposure settings and if you’re not careful, you’ll blow out the sky or the highlights, like clouds in the sky. Shooting outdoors with SUNBOUNCE photography reflectors is a great combination that will help you avoid “flash looking” photos and flash with a SUNBOUNCE WALL is a better alternative if you absolutely need flash.
