I decided to take Dave Black‘s Skateboarding preconference workshop at the recent Photoshopworld in Orlando. It was the kind of class I thought would be outside my comfort zone, and it was. The workshop was held at the Metro Skateboard Academy. Having the workshop indoors was pretty much a necessity as it is late spring here in Florida and it was quite hot. I wasn’t quite sure what the lighting would be like and Dave suggested bringing a flash along. I was envisioning some hard light flash images as I felt that skateboarding called for that kind of lighting.

I have several speedlights around but none compatible with the TTL¹ and HSS² in my Fujifilm X-T2 so I thought it was time to get something that would work for the workshop and for other opportunities that might come up.  I do work with a few manual strobes for studio shots etc. so I’m not completely lacking in that area but I have nothing that is portable.

I’ve been seeing a lot of people talking about Godox flashes lately and thought I would see what I could find. I looked at a few reviews and checked the specs of several companies flashes along with the Godox brand. The pricing of the Godox were in my comfort zone. I settled on the Godox TT685F.  Godox has a smaller flash, TT350F, but has only about half the power at GN36³  than the TT685F which has a GN64 which is comparable to flash of other brands. The TT685F is about the same size as any other flash of the same power. It well built and comes with a pouch and a small stand. And the pricing is reasonable.

 

To trigger the flash using TTL you have several choices. You can mount the flash on the camera and let the camera talk directly to the flash. This works but is never recommended as it does give a deer in the headlights look to the image. You can purchase two flashes and put one on the camera and one off camera. The one on the camera talks to the camera and the other flash to pass along the TTL information needed by the flash doing the work. This works but you have to pay the same price for the flash on the camera and it doesn’t contribute to the actual lighting of the image just talks to the other flash. Or you can purchase a dedicated radio trigger that can talk to multiple flash and convey TTL information plus a lot more stuff to the  flashes doing the work. The second advantage to a trigger is that you can change the output of the flash from the trigger on your camera rather than having to go to the flash itself every time you want to adjust it.  Godox has two radio triggers that work with their flash units. There is a compact unit that has a small lcd screen that is inexpensive but I have found hard to use as the lcd is small and usually can only display partial information on the settings.  I chose to go with the larger Godox XPROF trigger with a big screen. It’s a bit bulkier obviously but I think you get a lot more functionality for  about $20 US more. The XPROF uses two AA batteries and is well built and can manage 5 or more groups of lights. I does have some features to adjust all the flash in all the groups at the same time.

 

The day of the workshop we all met at the conference and bussed off to the skatepark. It was quite interesting as they had built a swimming pool like bowl plus a lot of ramps and other things that would make for challenging skating. The lighting in the building was ok, the florescent bulb were probably daylight color balance but a bit dim for doing shots without a flash. I starting out without flash at ISO10,000 to get enough shutter speed to freeze the action. It didn’t take long before I brought out the Godox and tried some shots with the flash in one hand and the camera in the other. It worked out better that I expected.

Perfect! Well almost. The TTL worked  well. I adjusted the power of the flash down 0.7th of a stop from the trigger and was soon getting the images I envisioned.

There is a school of thought that TTL flash should be avoided like the plague but I tend to disagree. I was in a situation where the conditions were constantly changing and setting the flash to manual and adjusting the power (the TT685F goes from 1/128th to full power in 1/3 step increments) would mean that I would miss more images adjusting to current conditions than taking images. So I stuck with TTL and was happy with the results. You need to have your camera set to TTL to get the HSS working. Once you attach the radio trigger and turn everything my X-T2 automatically goes to TTL mode once the trigger is detected. The camera will stay in TTL mode as long as the trigger is attached. You can not change the mode to manual on the camera at that point as I think it needs the TTL mode to work with HSS. You can switch to manual mode at the trigger so everything just works.

In TTL mode the XPROF trigger allows you do adjust the output up or down in 1/3 stop increments. One of the advanced things you can do with the XProF trigger is called TCM. This is a button that will change the trigger and the flash to manual mode with the power setting from the last TTL shot. You set the camera and the flash to TTL then take a shot. You then press the TCM button and it will change the flash to manual at the last triggered setting. This can be an advantage if you want to work in manual mode as it gets you to the setting you need instead of having to shoot, look at the image, adjust, then shoot again. The TTL image may not be perfect but it should be pretty close.

There were over twenty of us including instructors at the workshop and we gave the skateboards a pretty good workout so the last half hour we setup up some stations where we could shoot portraits of the athletes. I put the TT685F on a lightstand and shot thru a small shoot through umbrella still using TTL.

All in all, I enjoyed the workshop and gave my self a bit of confidence that I can get outside of my comfort zone and get the shot. The Godox equipment worked well.  I probably could have used a little bit lower ISO (1600) and let the flash work a bit harder but noise was not an issue.  I used Powerex rechargeable batteries and one set of 4 lasted thru the 2 hours that I used them (about 200 images) without too much drop off in recycle time. So I recommend doing any Dave Black workshop and I think the Godox equipment will serve you well.

• • ¹TTL is Thru the Lens. The camera talks to the flash and tells the flash how much power to use.
  • ³HSS is High Speed Sync. The ability to shoot with shutter speeds higher than 1/250 of a second on focal plane shutter cameras
  • ²GN is Guide Number. A number assigned to the power of flash through an algorithm that I can never remember.