Hello fellow photographers! Im wondering if anyone more experienced in lighting could give me some input on this topic. I have been shooting for 15+ plus years, I have always preferred and enjoyed natural light, I have shot with strobes and speedlights when i was doing more media work and the people i was photographing were still. I have started focusing on children, newborns and family and for the most part i use the natural light in my home studio. I recently had a cakesmash session and right before the the clients arrived the lighting completely changed and the sun was just way too strong and shining in a weird position where i had my set up, so i rolled my roller blind down and pulled out my speedlight and put it in an umbrella, now my issue and inquiry here is, when i shoot with the speedlight my aperture needs to be at 1/160 other wise i get the black bottom bar, the subject is a 1 year old who doesn't stop moving, although i got enough good shots because i over shot, there were so many blurry images where his face wasn't sharp at all. My settings were 1/160, 2.2 and around 200 - 300 iso, my speedlight was on ETTL and on high speed. My question is, how do you get the image sharp shooting 1/160? Especially when the subject is always moving around. Does anyone have any lighting recommendations for photographing children?
Black bar means shutter is too fast for the flash and you need to enable HIgh Speed Sync.
When you are at 2.8 your depth of field is narrow. At 10 feet away, your range is 9.5 to 10.6 for what will be in focus. That is only 1ft. Shooting at 5.6 puts it at 2ft.
I think you had a compound issue. Increase your f-stop and ISO. Drop your shutter speed, because the flash will stop do a good job of freezing the motion. Increase your flash power fill the frame.