I did my fourth platform diving shoot at Ponds Forge, Sheffield, just before Christmas. This is probably the most technical shoot I do & involves me triggering 4 remote flashes from 70m away in the stands. You can watch the behind the scenes video at the bottom of this article.
I shoot at 1/2500s to freeze the water droplets so I need to use High Speed Sync for the flashes. As you probably know, when you are shooting with a DSLR camera most flashes limit your shutter speed to 1/250s, otherwise you’ll literally see the shutter curtain coming down on the finished shot - it appears as a horizontal black line across the image. That’s because the flash is not firing for longer than 1/250s, so part of the image is lit & part not. Not every flash can fire faster than 1/250s but fortunately for me my Elinchrom & Rotolight Neos do.
I also used some constant LED lighting this time & it was a good job I did. I’d neglected to take account of the fact that my previous shoots had all been done in daytime, so I had ambient light flooding through the roof to help me. This shoot on a December evening didn’t have that luxury & boy did it make a difference. I was shocked at just how much extra benefit the daylight brought - lesson learned!
Anyway, all went well. Massive thanks to Alex & Tom for the video, Marlies for organising the divers on the platform and of course to Nikki Smith and the girls, boys and parents of Sheffield Diving Club, without whom none of this would be possible.
