camera used to sync at 1/60th only. I remember shooting my first
basketball game in high school where there was this huge shadow on all
the player's heads. I couldn't figure it out until my teacher (Annette
Cowart) told me it was the shadow of the shutter on the film plane.
This was when the shutter would move horizontally from left to right
on the film plane. (the heads where cut because I was shooting
vertically). Then the industry moved to a vertical shutter that uses
two shutters moving from top to bottom. This greatly increased the
shutter sync speed with flash from 1/125th to eventually 1/250 which
has been a common standard for a while until recently I find that the
D300 now syncs at 1/320th.
There is one thing that Nikon has (not sure on Canon) that makes you
able to sync at super high speeds. That is by using the SB flash with
a setting at FP (which stands fro Focal Plane) High Speed Sync. The
flash is blasted at a longer duration so to not have a shadow
anywhere. This will decrease the battery life of the flash though so
be aware. Also the biggest problem is that the higher in shutter speed
the more power needed and therefore the range is decreased. I have
been told that at 1/8000th the flash would need to be less than 4 feet
away.
I was recently called out by a blog reader named "Stef."
She (assuming she) made mention of my past statements on some of my
Elinchrom lights and the flash sync speeds. She made mention that it
isn't up to the flash head to determine sync but the camera body. She
is right... sorta... for small format SLR cameras with focal plane
shutters.
However, if you have a leaf shutter (like in many medium format
cameras) then you are dealing with a very different situation. The
super fast sync speed Elinchrom and other manufacturers are talking
about is for use with those medium (and large) format leaf shutter
situations. This is something I was used to when using my hasselblad,
but since I don't typically use it, I need to change my thoughts on
this.
One idea though.
If I am still shooting a fast moving subject, have a camera on tripod
(slow shutter speed of 1/60), little ambient light (dark room) and a
flash that blasts light at a certain speed (say 1/4310s), then am I
still capturing the subject at that flash duration??? at 1/4310 of a
second? or at 1/60th?
I am going to shoot a bunch of tests on this and show more about this,
but one thing is very certain; As the years progress, we are seeing
that we can shoot in very subdued light (with little to no noise) and
even into the sun (and syncing the lights)which is opening our
palette. We now seem to be limited only by our imagination. No matter
how much B.S. or misinformation (accidental. I swear) we give, it
really all comes down to one thing. It is all about the results!
attached image, f/22 1/160s ISO 100
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