Sunday, January 11, 2009

Question about flash slow sync


Hi Mike!

Hope you had a nice Holiday!!! I've been playing around with my camera and wanting to do some more photography stuff. Anyways, take a look at this pic I must have moved the camera (which I normally don't do) . I was using tripod on some shots and others I wasn't. But I think this turned out cool!

What are your thoughts on why this occurred?

Karin Fox

Reply:

It's called slow sync on your flash. It lets you take a pix with a long exposure (in a dark room) and also the flash fires at the beginning or end of the exposure. So your dog is mostly sharp because the flash stops action, and the lights were bright enough to show their multiple positions because you hand held and moved during the long exposure. Good thing you didn't have it on a tripod. Oh my gosh, did I just say that!

And yes very cool, it could be very useful to me. I've never thought about how that effect would get a better image, but this one is better.

The setting that controls if the flash fires at the beginning or end of the exposure is called "rear" or "2nd curtain". On my Nikon D300 it's called rear and automatically sets slow on also. Use rear when you want the motion to be before the main image lighted by the flash. Experiment, I shot my Christmas train coming at me and in rear mode so the Engine was perfectly sharp and the rest of the train a blur. Cool effect.

Mike