Sony a7R III | Sony FE 24-105mm F4 G OSS | Profoto D2 1000Ws AirTTL Monolights at 10 FPS
Sony a7R III (Order from B&H Photo | Amazon) can shoot 10 fps with it’s mechanical shutter using studio flash for lightning-fast sequences. This enabled me to shoot moving still portraits of up to 80 frames in a single burst at 10 frames-per-second.
As a portrait photographer I’m always looking for that moment when it happens, but being able to tell the subject to go through a series of poses very quickly. This gives you the ability to capture the split-second “moments” happening in front of you at 10 frames-per-second.
Here’s a look at portraits shot at 10 fps using Profoto D2 studio strobes.
CAMERA: Sony a7R III
LENS: Sony FE 24-105mm F4 G OSS
LIGHTING: Profoto D2 1000Ws AirTTL Monolights
FLASH TRIGGER: Profoto Air Remote TTL-S for Sony
LIGHTING MODIFIERS: Profoto White Beauty Dish Softlight Reflector + Profoto Honeycomb Grid
MEMORY CARDS: Sony SF-G UHS-II SDXC Cards
Order Sony a7R III from B&H Photo | Amazon | Adorama
18 thoughts on “Moving Portraits: Sony a7R III at 10 FPS with Mechanical Shutter & Profoto D2 Flash”
Nicely done Brian. Interested to know if you were using eye af on these or regular af?
Eye AF
Holy….. this the tech we dream of as photographers right?
Yup!
I’m really impressed with the recycle time of the D2!! 🙂
Yup, pretty darn good for a monolight you can buy for under $1500…
Looking like a lovely A7Rll upgrade. Are you shooting compressed or uncompressed RAW here, I’m wondering if that choice affects the buffer depth much? And are you writing to both card slots simultaneously?
I shot RAW (Compressed) + Jpeg since RAWs weren’t supported when I tested. Uncompressed RAWs are double the size so the buffer fills twice as fast. I can’t see any difference between Compressed & Uncompressed RAW….except how quickly Uncompressed fills up your memory cards and hard drives
but how to trigger off camera a jinbei/flashpoint unit? what triggers for sony a7ii pls.
i can not find pixel kings anymore, and they were made for old minolta hot shoe anyway. thanks
Flashpoint makes their own wireless transmitters and receivers, but I doubt you could shoot 10 FPS very long before a Flashpoint monolight melted down.
Hi Brian, I found your work and book about portraits amazing – I see you are also working with Sony, If possible a merely tech questions for studio project – more pixels bigger size more and more space is needed … how/where do you store your images… ? Thanks, Best Regards,
Thanks Stef! I’m currently using these drives: LaCie Porsche Design 5TB Mobile Hard Drive USB 3.0 USB-C Compatible. I can usually get 2 years on one drive. Once I’m back at the studio, each drive gets backed-up to a back-up drive for redundancy.
Do you remember what power you had the D2s set at? I have the B1s and am wondering if I can do similar.
Also any word about an update for the Air Remote. I have already put in A3 and am getting the a7RIII delivered soon.
Thanks.. Your blog is awesome!
D2 1000w/s worked at 7.0 at 10FPS (or 8.0 for 500w/s).
B1 isn’t made for fast recycle like that.
Profoto has been made aware of the issues I reported but with AirRemote TTL-S firmware A3. But I do not know if they have taken any action on it.
When I shoot with the Profoto Air Remote and Sony A7R3 the camera reverts to auto exposure for the viewfinder (Live View Display:Setting Effect Off) even thought it is still set to Setting Effect On. That would be okay for Strobe only shoots but not for shoots with mostly ambient light and strobe to fill/Accent. Is there a way to have my viewfinder show me what the ambient scene looks like with manual settings and still use the Air Remote with the B1? I currently have to use Pocket Wizzard Trippers and it is not as convenient.
It’s meant to do that. Profoto uses Sony flash protocols so when shooting in low light with flash you don’t get a ‘black screen’
Do you think there is or is going to be a workaround for this? We shoot a lot of location with ambient light and mix in a profoto and it would be great to be able to use the Air Remote.
The work-around is to use a “dumb” trigger like PocketWizard that doesn’t use Sony wireless protocols – of course you’ll lose both TTL & HSS and the native flash sync will drop from 1/250th with transmitters that use Sony wireless protocols down to between 1/160-1/200 sec using triggers that don’t.