In the 1st instalment of the series, I mentioned about the compatibility of your camera and the flash you’re triggering off camera (yeah, it’s possible to trigger non-brand or other brand flash wirelessly using optical slave mode oso, but that is another roost day looorrr), today I wanna talk about flash sync speed lah.

Noticed you’re shooting in Aperture priority mode, as soon as you activate the pop-up flash, or when you attached a flash gun on the camera hotshot, the shutter speed  goes to 1/60th of  a second? That’s the default factory camera setting. Great for stopping camera shake or freezing movement with flash, lousy for retaining  detail in the background if the actual ambient shutter speed is lower than 1/60th of a second. The solution is slow speed flash (Americans call it “dragging the shutter”, if you followed Strobist blog lah). By using Manual mode, at your selected  shutter speed and aperture setting which is just nice to record some ambient light and still retaining decent depth of field (like f5.6 and 1/30th or 1/15th of a second) use your flash to fill up the shadow area in the foreground. if the flash is set at TTL setting the output might be too bright you need to dialed it down -1 or -2EV (sechukup rasa lah) or vice versa it it’s too dark.

Such is the vagaries of leaving the flash reading to TTL mode, most time you got it right sometimes the metering is fooled by the scene brightness oso.

When you’re out of doors, unless you activate HSS (that’s High Speed sync in Canon and Sony “speaks”) or TTL BL FP  for you Nikon fanboy out there. Such function is enabled only when using own brand high speed sync compatible flashes), the flash sync speed of 1/60th will make the exposure inaccurate. Too much ambient light will renders your picture with vast over-exposure, “nanti nak buat apa pun Tak Boleh!”. You need to use the flash maximum sync speed of 1/125th or 1/250th (depending on camera model). In bright sunlight that will bring your Aperture setting to f/16 at ISO 100. Again, compensate your flash output to balance out your foreground subject with your background subject lah.

A photo that I made at around noon when teaching a lighting workshop at Kolej Komuniti Rompin, sometime back…

Lighting data: Nikon D3 with 24-70mm lens3x Speeelights shoot thru brolly triggered by PW Plus II radio transceiver1/250th , f/11 @ ISO 200

To use flash to overpower sunlight, that’s a different kettle of fish (kekadang aku tak faham peribahasa Orang Putih ni, a “different kettle of fish”? Cerek ikan yang berlainan? Pasti faildotcomdotmy gitu…) altogether, that will be another post lah…

(to be continued)