Small body, flash too big?

Guy Parsons wrote:

M_digicapt wrote:

If I want to photograph a bird 10m away with a 1/500ss, how do I do that with an manual flash?

If the flash has the range to do that, either natively or with some tele projecting sort of hood, then if the ambient light is low, why would you want 1/500 sec shutter speed?

The flash at full power maybe be a bit slower than a 1/1000 sec pulse, so that tends to freeze any movement.The camera may set to say 1/160 sec with ambient light still severely under-exposed but the flash doing the actual exposure is 1/1000, so no blur.

Up closer with TTL the flash pulse can be as short as say 1/50,000 sec so again any shutter speed up to the usual max sync speed is fine, as the flash is the dominant light source and does the movement freezing.

It's only when you mix significant ambient light with flash that you may get movement problems. I've seen many a case of a subject both frozen by the flash but also with significant blurred outline due to the ambient light and a slower shutter speed.

That mixed light scenario is when you do need high speed sync flash capability, which of course shortens the flash maximum range. All this is overcome if you use a camera with an in-lens shutter as then you can flash sync with one pulse up to say 1/2000 sec shutter speed. Our M4/3 crummy focal plane shutters limit flash flexibility.

The reason why high speed sync flash has less range is because of the need to emit a train of pulses throughout the whole time that the focal plane shutter slit is travelling across the sensor, my old Nikon SB-26 flash manual has the best diagram I've seen about that.....

Regards..... Guy

HSS has become a bit of a silly buzz word Guy, its not quite the same as high speed flash.

Lower the flash output and you get a gain in flash speed (quicker duration), higher shutter speed is not quite so important, lots of birders use flash extender so they don`t need to set the flash at full power for increased range as well.

Lots of info here, for those interested, but I guess your a bit like me Guy and already know all this stuff.

http://www.digitalbirdphotography.com/7.7.html