1200D / T5 HSS (High Speed Sync)

rjhp wrote:

Hello everyone and thank you for the kind replies.

From what I thought HSS compatibility was a feature that both the camera and the flash needed to support, but it seems that I was wrong on that.

Is HSS exclusive to E-TTL?

E-TTL = external TTL. So the flash will talk to the camera and adjust it's output even when it is not mounted on the camera. This is mostly exclusive to Canon speedlites.

TTL means the camera can talk to the flash by the hotshoe and use automatic metering. But not when it's firing off camera. Like the Yongnuo 568EX

You don't need TTL for HSS however adjusting the flash power frequency and flash count manually based on your scene and settings will be way over your head.

If I buy a manual flash that is advertised as supporting shutter speeds "1 / 200s ~ 1 / 20000s" can I expect to just set the flash time to 1/4000, my shutter speed accordingly to 1/4000 as well and be golden?

No it will sync up to the max flash sync speed of your camera. which is probably arround 1/200th of a second. Above that you will see black borders of vignetting coming in from the bottom. This is due to the physical shutter being in front of the sensor during the exposure. Look up some high speed footage of shutter in motion on youtube just click this link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmjeCchGRQo

As you can see the physical shutter rolls from top to bottom at faster shuterspeeds. That means the flash can't light the whole sensor at once. Therefore it needs to fire multiple times while the shutter moves along. lighting each part of the sensor till the exposure is complete.

Programming that manually is hard and requires some calculations. And that comes on top of the already complicated values on flash power.

It's just too much for a beginner to deal with. So yes the 560 IV i have here can do HSS. But i generally don't use it since ND's work just as well outdoors to limit shutterspeed under flash sync. And i tend to use these indoors in a studio environment. Which means i am basically at max flash sync and without ambient light impacting my images.

Does HSS only describe the ability to have your camera set flash times above 1/200 electronically via (E-)TTL?

HSS means the flash is capable to fire at a lower output in rapid succession. See it as a machine gun.

If it has TTL the flash can do this automatically based on your faster shutterspeed. You only need to program it to that mode.

You can get HSS with a manual flash but it's not as convenient and for a beginner very confusing.

Thanks to all of you lifesavers!