Night During the Day

I was board today. Then I found a large icicle hanging outside my dining room window. So I pulled out my 5DII and start to take some shots as I’ve always found the textures of ice interesting. Using the ambient light I got board quick. Then I remembered and article I read on Pixsylated (click here) about using high speed sync (HSS) to turn day into night. So I figured, why not lets give it a try.

Below is what I came up with. I cranked up my shutter speed, closed down the aperture and lowered the ISO to get everything as dark as possible. The only post processing was to boost the blacks a bit and add some sharpening.

I have to say I’m happy with the results for a first attempt. Let me know what you think. After each picture is a shot of how the light was setup. I used my 430EX off camera using my homemade clamp (click here) and triggered it with my 580EX II as a master.

One thing this exercise proved to me was how diminished power is in HSS. Not something I couldn’t work with, but it is much the reason the flash is so close to the ice. I eventually knocked the icicle down by bumping it with the flash, or I would have gotten more shots. ooops!!!

You can find the images at my Flickr site if you want to look at larger versions and see the EXIF (click here)