Do Pentax users prefer flash or LEDs?

Holger Bargen wrote:

JasonTheBirder wrote:

A lot of people have mentioned the superior power of flashes. However, the biggest advantage for the flash is that it freezes motion. It's quite helpful for things that move like slowly moving insects or flowers that might sway a little in the wind. For high-powered macro, even random vibrations can mess up an image.

The flah freezes motion if you let the flash control the light at 100%. If you want the flash just for brightening shaddows depending on the exposure time you may get a mix of not sharp aspects as well as frozen aspects from the flash. That's some kind of a ghosting effect. Of course you can use this effect for creative results

+1

Sometimes that can be a really cool effect!

If you can either get the person's face in the dark so that when there is no flash, their face does not get exposed to the ambient light you can do flash with a longer(ish) exposure -- drag the shutter for a neat effect.

That is what I did with this Dumbo Ride shot.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tacticdesigns/9254285718/in/album-72157631300869284/

1/4 second shot. Flash to get some light into my daughter's face. The slow shutter speed to drag in the ambient light in the background.

- but in general it's soemthing you want to avoid. If your camera-flash combination allows HSS - shorter exposure times while using flashlight - you may overcome this problem. But HSS at shorter exposure times reduces power of the flash significantly.

+1

Here's a shot using HSS on my Nikon.

It was shot during the morning.

The gym is not really dark. The lights "are" on.

But HSS over powers the gym's lighting and makes the gym look like the lights were off. LOL.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tacticdesigns/16027064033/in/album-72157631300869284/

Not the usual shot from the gym. LOL.

An advantage of LED would be that you can work in boost mode and do any of the newer techniques that combine multiple photos like in-camera HDR, Image stacking for larger DOF etc.

Here's a couple of times I went for a more creative look with the flash with my Pentax . . .

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tacticdesigns/7785576014/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tacticdesigns/3035326957/

LOL.

Flash and LED both have Pros and Cons either way.

And sometimes the Cons can be turned into Pros if you get creative! LOL.

Take care & Happy Shooting!