Posts Tagged ‘high speed sync’

2nd June
2010
written by simplelight

Post on when to use high speed sync:

The High Speed Sync feature allows you to work with Speedlites way past your camera’s normal sync speed (1/160 – 1/250 depending on camera). By shooting at very fast shutter speeds you can dramatically reduce ambient light and shoot what look like night time shots at high noon.

If 1/250th is fast enough to freeze most action, why would we need to shoot faster than that or why would we need to use flash outdoors in the daylight? To begin with, if we are shooting people against a bright blue sky and we try to expose the scene for our subject, the blue in the sky will get completely washed out and turn white. On the other hand, if you crank the shutter speed fast enough to get the sky to stay nice and blue, the subject will be underexposed. The best way to solve this is to expose for the sky and then use flash to light the subject. While this sounds simple the problem is really bright conditions is that you may need a shutter speed significantly faster than your sync speed, sometimes well over 1/1000th of a second.