This was shot at sunset, and the weather and clouds turned out pretty nice one the day.

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First up, here is a shot of Dove Lake in Cradle Mountains National Park. It’s a very popular tourist area and the scenery is surreal. If you’re visiting, there’s quite a few different walks you can take in the area to see more of the area and the weather can changes very quickly.

I was only there for one night, and here is one of my favourites from the sunset, I only had a short duration to capture it, in between the sessions of heavy cold winds and rain.

A few months ago, we did a studio photo shoot with Sam. It was her first photo shoot, we organised her some professional makeup for the day, and wow did she do a great job in front of the camera.

Here are some of my favourite images from the day.

Here are some of my favourites of the day.

We did a photo session with Marie recently, this was her first photo shoot and was wanting to get started into modelling and get a few images to start up her portfolio. Here’s my favourite image of the day. I think she did great for her first photo shoot. We photograph many men and women who are just getting started, so if you’re from around the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie area, and would like to get something like this done, don’t hesitate to contact us! We can provide professional make up and hair styling as well, to make a complete package.

For the photographer’s checking out this page who might curious how we made this, we only used classic beauty lighting, with a single beauty dish and silver reflector underneath the face. The retouching was done by myself.

You can see more of my work at www.andygock.com.au

Here are some of my favourite images from the photo shoot.

I decided to do my own tests…

Canon 580EX at full power

Lights Tested

I decided I would measure the flash durations of various lights. Thanks to Refined Reflections for lending some of his lights to test.

These include:

• Canon 580EX
• Nikon SB-24
• Nikon SB-26
• Nikon SB-28
• Nikon SB-80DX
• Yongnuo YN560
• Cactus KF36 (Vivtar 285HV)

These speedlights above are all IGBT triggered power control, this results in shorter durations for lower power discharges.

There are also some results from:

• Broncolor Flashman floor pack with Pulso 2 head (1800Ws symmetric)
• Broncolor Impact 41 mono light
• Godox 120 Ws
• Alien Bee B400 160 Ws
• Paul C Buff Einstein E640 (640 Ws), measured for constant color mode and action mode
• “Mystery” eBay light 400 Ws

Here are the results I measured, these are real word measurements I personally performed on these flashes. Later in the article, I’ll describe, how I actually did the measurements.

I’ve also added some results of a few mains powered strobes for reference as well.

The Results

Canon 580EX

Nikon SB-24

Nikon SB-26

Nikon SB-28

Nikon SB-80DX

Yongnuo YN560

Cactus KF36

* This is the same as Vivitar 285HV

Broncolor Flashman with Pulso 2 head (1600 Ws)

I double and tripled checked this, the duration is really shorter at higher power!

Broncolor Impact 41 Monolight

Godox (120 Ws)

Alien Bee B400 (160 Ws)

Paul C Buff Einstein E640 (640 Ws)

We measured this under 2 modes, Constant Color and Action mode.

Under constant color mode:

Under action mode:

“Mystery” eBay light (400 Ws)

How I measured it

I built up a basic little circuit using a BPV11 phototransistor as the sensor. The output was then read by an oscilloscope and the t.1 interval determined by setting two cursors to correlate to the respective t.1 amplitudes.

The resistor was chosen so that the transistor always operated within linear regions, and collector current was within maximum limits allowed. The device never reaches saturation. It measures light between 620 to 980 nm, peaking at 850nm and has a turn on and turn off response time between 5 to 6 microseconds each (plenty fast enough for our measurements, within 5% for the fastest measurements) (- fixed typo on units, thanks Randy)

The t.1 (sometimes called t0.1) is measured as below:

Sample Discharges

I didn’t bother to save the waveforms for each test, it just would have taken too long. But I did keep a couple for my personal reference. Here are some of them, just as an example to see the shape of light output of the 580EX at different power levels.

The vertical axis is linear to the irradiance at the sensor, so something that is twice as high means it was twice as bright (one stop). From one image to another in the plots below, they are not to scale.

Canon 580EX at full power

Canon 580EX at full power minus one third

Canon 580EX at 1/4 power

Canon 580EX at 1/64 power

Final Words

This article might be updated later as I get my hands on more gear to test and add to the result list.

Leave a comment if you have any questions, or perhaps you’ve picked up a mistake somewhere.