The Sony Alpha 9 III’s global shutter gives new freedom to flash photography. Watch in the video below as Sony Artisan and professional portrait photographer Miguel Quiles shows the immense power of the Sony Alpha 9 III when paired up with a flash. See more videos and tutorials like this one on the Alpha Universe YouTube Channel.

Portrait photographer Miguel Quiles shows the power of the Sony Alpha 9 III when paired with a flash.

Two Different Exposures

In the video, Quiles is setting up flash photography on location. If this is something you’ve never done before, he explains that there are a few things you should know first. “The first thing is that you have two different exposures when you’re doing flash photography outdoors. You have the exposure that is basically the ambient exposure, which is controlled by your camera settings. Then you have the exposure that is being created by your flash, which happens to be lighting our lovely model Caitlin.”

During a shoot like this, you would dial in your camera and your flash independently. “What’s really awesome with the v because of the global shutter technology,” Quiles says, “we can actually have crazy high shutter speeds and we can still sync our flash with it. No High-Speed Sync, no ND filters, none of that crazy stuff to get amazing exposure.”

Shooting Wide Open With Flash

Pairing the Sony Alpha 9 III with the Sony 50mm f/1.2 G Master, Quiles tests finding the exposure in this shooting environment. He’s shooting wide open at f/1.2, something that he says would typically create some problems when shooting with flash, but because he’s using the Sony Alpha 9 III he isn’t as limited with his sync speed or light power.

“In this case with the Sony Alpha 9 III we’re getting full power with this f/1.2 aperture. So that’s what we’re going to shoot at,” he explains. “Base ISO is 250, so we’re going to leave it at that. Our shutter speed is going to be anywhere from 1/12800 up to 1/16000-sec. It’s really going to depend on what this ambient light is doing. What we’re trying to do with our settings is expose for this background so that we’re not getting completely blown out details outdoors. But we’re also going to make sure that our flash lights our subject in this environment, so that’s where the flash comes in.”

Without the off-camera flash, because you’re exposing for the background, your subject wouldn’t be very visible. But even at high shutter speeds with the Sony Alpha 9 III, he’s able to have everything sync up perfectly so his subject is perfectly lit and the scene is properly exposed. He just says to keep in mind that if you’re shooting between f/1.2 and f/1.6, then 1/16000-sec. is the highest shutter speed you can use. If you want to shoot at the camera’s maximum of 1/80000, then you have to be at f/1.8.

Shooting With Flash Outdoors

During a bright afternoon outdoors, Quiles explains how you can use your shutter speed to get your ambient light under control. “You could actually underexposure your ambient light, which is crazy,” he says. “So what we’re going to do is, we’re going to take a variety of different shots – anywhere from 1/16000-sec. up to 1/80000-sec. And what that’s going to do is, remember, your camera settings are adjusting the ambient light exposure. So if we’re at 1/80000-sec., we’re effectively underexposing our ambient light so it’s going to appear a little darker. When we light Caitlin with our flash she’s going to appear brighter.” This gives his subject a “flashy look” and he can change his shutter speed to change the amount of ambient light in the photo.

For all of the shots in the video, Quiles was not using High-Speed Sync. He utilized the full power of the flash, between 8.4-8.6 power for the outdoor images. If he were using High-Speed Sync, he wouldn’t be able to get that full power. “But because of the global shutter with the Sony Alpha 9 III, we got full power from the flash and we were actually able to actually underexpose, if we wanted to creatively, underexpose the ambient light and light our subject.”

Bonus Tip

Quiles wraps up the video with an important bonus tip – make sure that you go into the custom settings of your Sony Alpha 9 III and set one of your custom buttons to turn on and off your Live View Display. Why? Because if you’re shooting with the settings that control the ambient light, you’re not going to see your subject with those settings.

“What you want to do is, you dial in your ambient light with your Live View Display on, you won’t see your subject but you know your ambient looks good. Then push your button for the Live View Display setting, to turn that off. And then now you actually can see the entire scene, you already know what your exposure looked like because you saw it before you turned it off. And then you just start taking your shots.”

See more videos featuring the Sony Alpha 9 III HERE.

See more videos and tutorials like this one on the Alpha Universe YouTube Channel.