Weird shutter speed / flash timing

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Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Mar 9, 2016
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Anyone have a term describing what seems like a weird relationship with, I'm assuming my shutter speed and the remote flash I'm using that creates pictures like this? Only seems to happen if I select a shutter speed greater than 1/200

DSC_0763_zpsodc4he3f.jpg
 
Anyone have a term describing what seems like a weird relationship with, I'm assuming my shutter speed and the remote flash I'm using that creates pictures like this? Only seems to happen if I select a shutter speed greater than 1/200

DSC_0763_zpsodc4he3f.jpg
More than likely your max shutter sync is 1/200, which isn't uncommon. You'll have to slow it down a bit to avoid that. If you drop the ISO and choke down the aperture you won't get a blur since the exposure will only last as long as the flash does.
 
This black under exposed area fill more or less of the frame depending on the shutter speed. As soon as it gets faster than 1/200 it will incrementally fill the frame with this darker underexposed area. So not something I can eliminate with other settings if I wanted faster shutter speed than 1/200? Not sure why I'd want faster shutter speed, just curious. Has definitely seemed like aperture is the biggest contributor to exposure.

So reducing aperture is going to reduce exposure (I think), reducing ISO compensates for that?
 
This black under exposed area fill more or less of the frame depending on the shutter speed. As soon as it gets faster than 1/200 it will incrementally fill the frame with this darker underexposed area. So not something I can eliminate with other settings if I wanted faster shutter speed than 1/200? Not sure why I'd want faster shutter speed, just curious. Has definitely seemed like aperture is the biggest contributor to exposure.

So reducing aperture is going to reduce exposure (I think), reducing ISO compensates for that?
The black area is the physical shutter blocking some of the light because of the delay to your (I assume) wireless flash. The faster the shutter, the more it'll block due to this delay. If you keep all of your settings exactly the same, but remove the flash from the equation, you'll likely have a nearly all black, or very underexposed image. Dropping ISO and using a smaller aperture would help "freeze" the image by only allowing the exposure during the flash cycle. If you use the flash with an open aperture and high ISO, it may cause ghosting because the slower shutter will allow more ambient light, and then create a "secondary" exposure when the flash fires. That's how club photographers get images where the people are frozen but the lights are all blurry.

If you're not using manual mode, it may be worth playing around with that. That's how I got my best shots, by changing 1 variable at a time until I got the effect I was looking for. Letting the camera do the work with aquariums is more tricky in my opinion.
 
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