HOW TO SYNC FAST with lights

HOW TO SYNC FAST WITH EXTERNEL THIRD PARTY LIGHTS ie. prolincrome

 

my cam is sync speed is only 200 with these lights how i can sync fast to get

this shoot.

Shutter speed has little influence on flash exposure unless the 0.1 flash duration is longer than the sync speed you've choosen.

 

For example, at full power (2400 watt-seconds) the profoto Acute2 2400 packs with the standard Acute head is 1/70th second. In that case using a sync speed shorter than 1/80th second will close the shutter before the flash has fully discharged and you'll get an underexposed photo.

 

Most monolights and pack and head systems have a flash duration of between 1/200th and 1/600th second.

I think we need more information, like what are you shooting? Motion? Still-life? Indoor? Outdoor?

that doesent matter what i am shooting i just want to know HOW TO SYNC FAST WITH EXTERNEL THIRD PARTY LIGHTS, is there any other way to sync fast, any other technique

Sorry, you're not giving me enough information to answer your question. The most basic information I would be able to give to you, would be to use an external flash meter to detemine your f-stop, set your camera to the max. flash sync speed (not knowing what camera you're using prevents me from telling you what that is) and just doing some tests.

My long explanation is gone... due to the web site "roll-back"...

 

Get SB-800 for your D200 and shoot in FP mode, if you do not mind the limitation and possible "side-effects" caused by FP. You will be able to sync at faster shutter speeds than the max 1/250 sec X-sync of the D200 camera. E.g. 1/1000, 1/2000 sec. etc.

 

For faster sync without FP get a different camera, e.g. D70, D50, or cameras with a leaf central shutter.

I think that if you cover all but the central hotshoe contact on the trigger cord (I am assuming you are using a hotshoe cord and not PC-cord) then the camera will not know there is a flash of any sort attached and therefore allow you to set any shutter speed. Of course you may experience partial exposure of the frame due to the mechanical shutter.

Otherwise, if you are using some other triggering system, I cannot think of a way to allow the camera to shoot above its max sync speed. I don't have a PC socket on my camera, so can't vouch for any mods that might help in this case, but the masked hotshoe contacts definitely work.

Ironically this is one area in which cheaper cameras often have an advantage due to their hybrid mechanical/electronic shutters - e.g. D40 will sync at almost any speed, the D200 will not.

 

Alan

The short answer is: you can't get the third party studio flashes to sync in any meaningful way for high speed photography. And you cannot use the camera's shutter.

 

In another post, you asked about sound triggers. That tells me you're trying to do things like balloons bursting, glasses shattering, fruit exploding, etc.

 

Studio flashes, as Ellis pointed out, have fairly long durations, and can't stop motion. Small flashes like SB-800 can do this, but you have to manually turn them down to very low power to get the short flash duration. For the SB-800

 

1/16 power - 1/10900 sec

 

1/32 power = 1/17800 sec

 

1/64 power = 1/32300 sec

 

I do almost all my high speed work at 1/32 power. To get more flash power, I use more flashes, typically four. Now, this part is important, you cannot synchronize high speed flashes with Nikon's "CLS system", you must connect the flashes together either via PC sync cords or cords that connect to the three pin sync connector on the sides of Nikon flashes. And the whole bunch of connected flashes connects to your sound trigger, motion trigger, laser trigger, whatever you're using.

 

And in another post you mentioned you have a D80. That camera doesn't have an electronic shutter like D70 and D50 did, it relies on a mechanical shutter. So even if you take some of the suggestions that have been offered about using only the center contact of the camera's hot shoe, and set your camera at a very high speed like 1/8000 sec, all you'll get is a very tiny band of image slicing across what should have been a picture. And if you use the FP sync that someone mentioned, you'll get "smeared" motion as the shutter "slit" travels across the image.

 

The way you take a high speed image is to completely darken the room. You have to get it so dark that a one or two second exposure (without the flash) will produce a totally black image. This is kind of hard, we had to modify the windows and shades of the MPW studio in order to achieve sufficient darkness.

 

Then you need to rig your sound or motion trigger (I prefer a laser trigger) to fire the flash when the high speed event happens. For the glass breaking picture, I set up the laser trigger to fire the flash when glass flew about 2 inches after the pellet gun struck the glass.

 

I set up four SB-800 flashes, each set at 1/32 power, in two banks of two from different angles. The flashes are about 1 foot from the glass. I covered the flashes with clear plastic bags to protect them from flying glass. I set up the camera on a tripod for a good shot, and ran a remote shutter cable to where I was crouched with the pellet gun to shoot the glass. Room lights off, shutter open, fire the gun in the dark, there's a bang and a flash, and a picture!<div></div>

This one is a little more complicated. I set a Mumford "Time Machine" triggering system to fire 6 flashes at 30mS intervals (about 33 flashes/sec). Laser trigger exactly as described previously.<div></div>

Gunpreet, I saw the link to the exploding lemon image you posted in another thread. You definitely need to use the techniques we've described to you in this thread and the other: several small flashes, turned to low power, in a dark room. You can't use the big studio flashes, and I'll show you why in a minute. Right now, here's a smaller fruit, a little yellow pepper about 1/3 the size of your lemon.

 

This was shot of an unfortunate pepper was done with a D2X, probably at 3 or 4 SB-800 at 1/32 power, which is around 1/17000 sec. It would have looked a lot better if I had shot it at 1/128 power, which the manual says is 1/41000 sec. In order to do that, I would have had to set up a lot more carefully. I did an "easy" setup for several shots, with the flashes about 12-18 inches from the subject. If I had cut the distance in half, and carefully placed them at 6-9 inches from the subject, then I would have had 4x the power, and could have cut down to 1/128 on the flashes.

 

Even at 6 inches, the SB-800 should cover a your lemon. And, since it's a larger fruit, it would have a ratio of particle size to fruit size that would better make the particles look frozen in the air.<div></div>

Here's what I mean about the size of the fruit. The grape, being both smaller and "wetter" than the pepper, makes more of a spray. Had I "hardened" it in the freezer, it would have disintegrated exactly like your lemon (which probably was frozen). I've frozen subjects before in liquid nitrogen (expensive and dangerous) or in a bath of dry ice cakes floating in acetone (much safer). Dry ice in "fluroinert" would be even safer, if only I had a gallon of fluroinert.<div></div>

And here's why you can't use the studio flash units for high speed work.

 

Here's a "White Lightning" studio flash turned down to 1/32 power, its fastest setting. It doesn't matter if the studio flash is a Prolinchrom (note the spelling, it's like a "rip off" combination of two respected brands "Profoto" and "Elinchrom"), a Paul C. Buff "White Lightning" like I used for this shot, or a real Elinchrom like we use at MPW, big studio flashes just aren't fast enough.<div></div>

And an SB-800 at 1/32 power has a lot more stopping power.<div></div>

And, just because it's tradition, the classic water drop...<div></div>

Nice set of posts Joseph. Did you post this somewhere else on its own? I keep this linked on my client until the next rollback :-P

thank you very much to all of you, for helping me on this topic.

Walter - thanks. I am going to flesh it out into an article on high speed and put it on my site, but I'm always behind on those things.

 

Gunpreet - you're welcome.