Let's Go Flash Somebody!

Or this entry could be called, "Know What Your Flash Can Do!" How well do you know your equipment? If you tell somebody that's writing you a check at the end of the day what you can do, you better be able to do it. How powerful is your flash? How much do you lose with different modifiers? Well today I found out exactly what I can do with my Alien Bees AB800. I set up my flash in a dark room, I marked off five feet and stood there with my light meter. I can usually get my flash to within five feet of my subject. If not I just need to remember the Inverse Square Law. (more on that some other day) At full power my AB800 puts out f.32 at five feet with no modifier on it. With a shoot through umbrella, f.16 and with my Paul C. Buff beauty dish, f.22 with or without the sock diffuser on it. Well f.22 is my magic number. In the above shot, I set my exposure to f.18 with a shutter speed of 1/200 of a second to expose the sky the way I wanted it to look. Then I set my flash to get proper exposure on the model. That's asking a lot from a flash. It takes a lot of power for the model not to be a dark blob. Just look at that sun...it's BRIGHT! A speedlight won't do it. I know that I can get f.22 out of my flash with the dish on it as long as it's within 5 feet of the model so f.18 was no problem.