# Max sync speed?



## Hardrock (Mar 8, 2011)

I'm wanting to do some indoor action shots using flash but  the cowboy studio triggers aren't working above 1/250 even with my Canon 430ex ii set to high speed sync.  On cowboy studios website they say they go to 1/320.  Is there an alternative to having a high speed sync of lets say 1/400 and using OCF. With out spending a small fortune?


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## Big Mike (Mar 8, 2011)

The maximum sync speed is a limitation of the camera, specifically it's shutter.  At speeds above the max, the shutter isn't all the way open and any one point in time, thus, if the flash fires, the shutter sill be blocking part of the sensor.

High Speed Sync (HSS) on the flash, is a function that fires the flash repeatedly and at a lower power level...thus allowing the whole scene to be lit up as the slit in the shutter travels across the frame.  It only works when the flash is on the camera, or is being controlled via a Canon master flash/unit.  

In other words, you can use HSS with a simple radio trigger like that.  So even if the Cowboy trigger is good up to 1/320, the camera itself is only good to 1/250 without HSS....so that is your max.

With that out of the way...you may not need a fast shutter speed to freeze movement.  The burst of the flash is much shorter than 1/250...so it can freeze action pretty easily.  You can use 1/2 and get nice sharp shots when using flash.  They key is to limit the amount of ambient exposure...which will cause blur with moving subjects.  So if you're indoors (and in control of your lighting) then just shut the lights off and use only the flash.


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## Hardrock (Mar 8, 2011)

Thanks! So in other words expose for the flash only not the ambient?


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## D-B-J (Mar 8, 2011)

If you are trying to expose for the ambient, just close your aperture a little more, a stop or two.  But i have to use a special setting on my nikon in conjunction with the su800 to get my sb600's over the 250 mark.


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## Big Mike (Mar 8, 2011)

Hardrock said:


> Thanks! So in other words expose for the flash only not the ambient?


 If your goal is to freeze a moving subject...then yes.


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## minister (Mar 9, 2011)

This thread brings one more question to my mind , 
If i am doing high speed photography like gun shot, 
it defiantly require above 250 shutter , and my cam is nikon d5000, so dose it mean I can't do high speed photography.or off the camera allow me to use faster shutter


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## Edsport (Mar 9, 2011)

I would think that trying to capture a bullet coming out of a guy would require a very high speed shutter. I'm no expert about flashes but my guess would be to use a constant light rather than a flash...


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## cnutco (Mar 9, 2011)

Edsport said:


> I would think that trying to capture a bullet coming out of a guy would require a very high speed shutter. I'm no expert about flashes but my guess would be to use a constant light rather than a flash...


 
I too, think that would be the easiest way.


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## Overread (Mar 9, 2011)

Actually most setups which go for gunshots, insect wings etc... ultra fast motion - rely upon bulb mode in the camera for shutter speed. They then have to combine a highspeed and high powered output of flash light (to freeze the motion in a split second) with a super fast external shutter (to ensure ambient light is 0 and to help capture the frozen motion). 

Bulb mode is used in the camera whilst the external shutter fits either on the lens end or between lens and camera - that way only the fraction of light that the external shutter lets in is registered on the sensor (the rest of the bulb exposure is black with no light).


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## Village Idiot (Mar 9, 2011)

minister said:


> This thread brings one more question to my mind ,
> If i am doing high speed photography like gun shot,
> it defiantly require above 250 shutter , and my cam is nikon d5000, so dose it mean I can't do high speed photography.or off the camera allow me to use faster shutter



Are you talking about using a flash as well? If so, read up on how you get two exposures when using flash, the ambient exposure and the flash exposure.


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## KmH (Mar 9, 2011)

A bullet's motion is stopped with lighting, not the shutter speed setting.

Hot shoe flash (strobe) units produce their flash of light in short time frames.

At full power a Nikon SB-800 has a flash duration of about 1/1050 sec. At 1/128 power the flash duration is just 1/41,600 of a second.

High speed photography using strobed light was pioneered by Harold Eugene Edgerton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Many not familiar with strobed lighting don't understand that shutter speed is not used the same way as when not using strobed lighting. Shutter speed is used to control the exposure of ambient light while the lens aperture is used to control the exposure of the strobed lighting. The duration of the strobed light is used to stop motion, though consideration must be given to if the flash of light is in sync with when the front shutter curtain has fully opened, or just at the instant the rear shutter curtain begins to close.

Many cameras and hot shoe flashes also have a mode for using flash when the shutter speed is to short for both shutter curtains to be fully open at the same time, usually faster than 1/200 or 1/250. In that mode, the strobe has to fire many times during a single exposure, and in order to recycle that quickly the strobe must fire at less than full power.


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## Garbz (Mar 9, 2011)

Edsport said:


> I would think that trying to capture a bullet coming out of a guy would require a very high speed shutter.


 


KmH said:


> A bullet's motion is stopped with lighting, not the shutter speed setting.
> 
> Hot shoe flash (strobe) units produce their flash of light in short time frames.



Nearly. The common studio strobe actually doesn't produce a bright enough light for a short enough duration to freeze a moving bullet. The shortest duration of a typical strobe light is 1/40000th of a second and in this time a bullet moves enough to blur. To freeze a bullet it's often done with a special type of flash which doesn't ignite a xenon tube with 3000V like a normal flash, but instead basically generates a bolt of lightning at 50kV with a duration of 1/1000000th of a second or so. They are specialist devices and they sound like a gunshot when you take a photo.


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## cnutco (Mar 9, 2011)

Does anyone have the setup it would take to do this? and if so, do I have the gear needed.

Why not take my photog gear to the shooting range too...


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## KmH (Mar 9, 2011)

Garbz said:


> Nearly. The common studio strobe actually doesn't produce a bright enough light for a short enough duration to freeze a moving bullet. The shortest duration of a typical strobe light is 1/40000th of a second and in this time a bullet moves enough to blur. To freeze a bullet it's often done with a special type of flash which doesn't ignite a xenon tube with 3000V like a normal flash, but instead basically generates a bolt of lightning at 50kV with a duration of 1/1000000th of a second or so. They are specialist devices and they sound like a gunshot when you take a photo.


Yep.

That's why I linked to Edgerton and his work.


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## minister (Mar 14, 2011)

thanks for all u r comment , can you help me with any how to link here , bcoz, i want to make sure i can do it with my gear  limit's , I also saw some shot's with balloon blast by niddle. if not gun shot why not balloon


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## Village Idiot (Mar 14, 2011)

minister said:


> thanks for all u r comment , can you help me with any how to link here , bcoz, i want to make sure i can do it with my gear limit's , I also saw some shot's with balloon blast by niddle. if not gun shot why not balloon



The balloon shots fire the camera/flash via a sound trigger.


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## minister (Mar 14, 2011)

ye at start i heard of it , but couldn't find any and what setup exactly i want I have off the camera setup with one flash so i need sound trigger what more


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## Garbz (Mar 15, 2011)

Minister can you please use proper punctuation in your sentences. It makes text much easier to read which is why it was created in the first place, and doesn't take up any additional time to hold down the shift key.

Writing like that in any context typically makes you come across as juvenile and makes it hard for people to take you seriously. None of us want that


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## minister (Mar 16, 2011)

Garbz said:


> Minister can you please use proper punctuation in your sentences. It makes text much easier to read which is why it was created in the first place, and doesn't take up any additional time to hold down the shift key.
> 
> Writing like that in any context typically makes you come across as juvenile and makes it hard for people to take you seriously. None of us want that



sorry , my mistake


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## Village Idiot (Mar 16, 2011)

Garbz said:


> Minister can you please use proper punctuation in your sentences. It makes text much easier to read which is why it was created in the first place, and doesn't take up any additional time to hold down the shift key.
> 
> Writing like that in any context typically makes you come across as juvenile and makes it hard for people to take you seriously. None of us want that



The guy is from Delhi. Maybe Australian isn't his best language.


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## minister (Mar 17, 2011)

yes mate


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## slate mike (Mar 18, 2011)

One very important thing to remember about those super high speed xenon strobes is that they produce huge electrial current that can kill you if you're not very experienced and very careful.


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## Derrel (Mar 18, 2011)

The very-newest PocketWizard triggers are supposed to allow you to exceed the stated maximum synch speed...the folks at PocketWizard refer to their new technology as HyperSync.

Rob Galbraith DPI: Casting light on the PocketWizard MiniTT1 and FlexTT5


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## pgriz (Mar 18, 2011)

Thanks, Derrel, for pointing out a really good writeup.  After reading through the capabilites, I'm getting bitten by the equipmentitis virus.  Sigh.  Another item to start saving for. 

As you know, I've been experimenting with Canon's ETTL and it's been frustratingly inconsisent.  Some times I get the exposure bang-on, while others are either too hot or too dark.  Using manual (a la stobist) has been much more reliable (but a lot more slow and less spontaneous).  The challenge has been that when using the flashes in direct flash mode, the light has been too harsh, but using it in bounce mode has been too inconsistent. I'm sure there's some basic user error that I'm doing, since the marketing propaganda from Canon keeps on saying how easy ETTL "should" be, but I wish their "easy" was easier.


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## Derrel (Mar 18, 2011)

Yes, the HyperSynch technology was reallllly looking like it would be promising a year ago, but then after the actual shipping of the transmitters and receivers, it was discovered that the Canon 580 and 580 EX-II flash units had some pretty serious radio frequency interference issues that varied from country to country, or batch to batch, and one of the muckey-mucks at the PocketWizard firm lamented publicly that they had purchased one,large batch of Canon flashes with which to do their development; he stated that he wished they had bought them all piecemeal off of e-Bay, to have received a broader cross-section of the actual flashes on the actual market. So, this was really an unfortunate case of a revolutionary new technology, HyperSync, that was almost totally killed off by this unforseen Radio Frequency Interference issue that just took center stage, and PocketWizard went into sort of a self-protection mode, and developed the shrouds and stuff, and basically, this discovery also killed what was SUPPOSED to have been a prompt roll-out of the HyperSync stuff for Nikon flash equipment.

I was not too aware of your use of E-TTL flash. I have a 5D and 20D 580 EX-II flash and eight or nine lenses, and have used the 580-II in E-TTL mode, and am aware of the odd inconsistencies in Canon's flash metering with that flash and those two cameras. Drawing comparisons between Canon and Nikon often gets me into trouble, but honestly, I think the color-blind Canon bodies (all of them except the newest 1D series models and the 7D and 60D-era cameras) simply do not have enough information to make the right metering choices in AUTO modes, the way the Nikon bodies do with their 3D color matrix metering and color-aware flash meter sensing...but you and I are not the only ones to complain about Canon's E-TTL flash metering performance...it's one of the company's weaker areas, IMHO. And NO, the issue of direct flash metering being "okay" versus bounce flash being "stupid" is not only your problem--it is CANON'S problem. The problem rests with the equipment, and not with you.

Kinda' sad for PocketWizard to have bought a whole batch of fairly low-RFI Canon flashes, and developed their hardware, marketed it, and then released it, and then discovered that the RFI levels of various Canon flash units was all over the map, depending on various factors. If they had done more widespread testing, or testing on units from around the globe, I think right now we'd hear a LOT about the HyperSync technology, but the rollout and then immediate misfires and the huge problem with RFI was a dealbreaker.


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