Outdoor shoot using the GlO1 Round-Head TTL Speedlite - By Akhlaq Ahmed

This shoot was done on 24th October of this year, roughly a week before the second national lockdown.  As the second lockdown was inevitable, I decided I would do my last shoot before the lockdown and also decided that to choose a park which was 5 mins away from me as the location.

The aim of this photoshoot was to create an Urban looking theme using Dennis as the male model.  I have purchased the GI01 Round Head TTL Speedlite about a year or 2 ago but never actually got round to testing this outdoors properly and so this was a great opportunity for me.  The Camera I used was a Canon 5D Mark IV, I also used a Pro ST-IV 2.4 Flash Transmitter which was used on top of the camera hot-shoe to trigger of the GI01 Round head.

Bearing in mind, most of the shots were taken with the G101 off the camera, triggered by the flash.  I felt I got more better results this way. Also, one thing to note was it was almost starting to rain and at times it did.  As this was a big Park, every time it rained, we sheltered ourselves under the tree just to protect the camera equipment.  As a result of the weather, it was a good time because it was getting cloudy and so I didn’t have much natural sunlight getting in the way, the GI01 did all the light work for me.

I decided to place the GI01 round head on its stand that it comes with and place this on the wall or on the ground to see what works best, I had the model to pose by sitting on the bench and doing things like throwing the autumn leave in the air, I felt this was a really good idea since the grounds were full of autumn leaves.  In one of the shots, you can see Dennis (the model) throwing the autumn leaves in the air.  The idea here was to freeze the frame where the leaves are in the air by using HSS (High Speed Sync) on the GI01 round head.

For this particular shot I held the GI01 in my left hand whilst shooing with my right hand.

I had set the G101 to the highest setting of 128/25 this was controlled using the Pro ST-IV 2.4 Flash Transmitter.  I had set this to a ETTL mode.  My camera settings were set to 1.4 with ISO of 100 and 1/640 seconds, this is what helped to freeze the leaves being thrown in the air.  Bearing in mind the lens I use is a Sigma 35mm which brings out amazing Depth of field and amazing crisp sharpness in the images as this is was usually sigma lens are known for.

I felt this was an amazing way to test out how fast and powerful the GI01 actually is and the results really was amazing as you can tell from the results.

 

After playing around with the GI01 with different settings, I decided to walk to the basketball courts with the model since it was empty due to the weather.  During our time in the basketball courts, I got the model to sit down on the ground, this time I placed the GI01 on the ground where the model was sat and edited this out in the image so it becomes invisible.

Again, I used the ETTL Settings on the GI01, I tested out the different exposure and settings on the Round head to give me that urban feel to the image.  Looking at the images, I feel I have achieved this because these images have been very popular on social media.  I always like to shoot with the 1.4 F stop to give me that blur background effect, I believe the kind of shoot I was going for really did justice to the images.

The way I go around with getting the best exposure settings is to simply experiment with the exposure settings on the flash head, not only for this particular shoot but in every shoot I have done.  I feel this is the best approach to get around making the most of your shoots. 

In conclusion, I will say that the GI01 is the best flash I have used for an outdoor shoot.  It is very portable and easy to carry around with you on doing outdoor shoots moving from location to location.  You can also see on the Pixapro website how this is much better then the Profoto A1. 

I really love the HSS feature on the round head because some of the images have been taken at high shutter speeds as fast as 1/3200 seconds on exposure time.  Pixapro have never let me down with their lighting equipment and I have purchased all my equipment from them for the last 5 years or longer.  I hope this blog will also inspire others to purchase the GI01.

 

Instagram @akhlaqphotofilm

Website: www.photo-film.co.uk

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