How to Beat the Midday Sun using 1 Speedlite

[Sonny]

How to Beat the Midday Sun!

[Jake]

I may be missing something, but the guy says:

Now, I know that at f/9 my speedlight would be working flat out, giving me a slow recycle time, which was no good for me; my model today was a 3 year old girl! I wanted a faster recycle time, to catch those cheeky little looks and also to be ready for whatever may happen! For this I decided to dial the sun down even further by attaching an ND4 Neutral Density filter to my lens. This would decrease my exposure by 2 more STOPS and mean I could match the sun’s power at f/4.5 @ 1/200, and in turn increase my recycle time.

Using a ND filter affects your flash exposer also, so how is that going to increase the recycle time of the flash?

[Daniel Bates]

You know, the ND filter only blocks sunlight and passes all the light from the flash straight through. It's magic. Only the ND filters from Ritz Camera do this, though.