Perhaps there are good reasons why a photographer should sometimes want to limit the flash sync speed of their camera to – for example 1/60s – but I can’t for the moment think of a single one. Any suggestions are welcome.
Of course using slow shutter speeds with synch is at times a useful technique, but something quite different. There is no problem in using flash with a synch setting of 1/250 on an exposure of 30s – and the results would be identical to those with any other synch setting.
Back in the old days, slow sync speeds were often a problem when using flash, particularly once we moved away from flash bulbs to electronic flash. Back in the 1970s, the cameras I was using – Leica M and Olympus – had horizontal travel cloth shutter blinds in its focal plane shutter that could only manage 1/50 and 1/60 respectively. This slow X-sync speed was one of the limitations of the OM series (including the OM4 – my favourite 35mm film SLR – and I still own two, though it’s now probably ten years since I used them) despite its revolutionary (at the time) off the film through the lens flash metering which made flash so much more usable.
Cameras using vertical metal FP shutters had a shorter travel for the blinds and could also manage a faster movement, allowing higher flash sync speeds – often 1/125 in the 1980s, though at the expense of louder and more noticeable shutter noise.
The Nikon D700 (and D800E) offers flash sync in normal X-synch mode at up to 1/250, with special FP modes of 1/250 and 1/320. But custom setting e1 lets you select synch speeds – down to 1/60th. It shouldn’t be confused with CS e2, which sets flash shutter speeds from 1/60s to 30s, as the slowest shutter speed that will be used in P or A modes when using flash.
For normal use on my camera I set e1 at 1/320(FP) and e2 at 1/60. I can’t see any point in using a lower synch speed than the maximum, and I’d like to be able to set a faster slowest speed than Nikon allows to avoid blurring in some images rather than have to remember to do this manually. For most purposes we can simply forget sync speeds now, as these cameras will also synch at higher speeds using ‘Auto FP high speed sync” with the SB800 and other units that implement this though the manual seems very confusing on this. But it just works, even at silly fast speeds like 1/2000. So why have a custom setting at all?
The last few of times I’ve been out working, I’ve been unable to get fill flash to work with the D700, getting over-exposure all the time. It’s taken me quite a while to work out why, though the answer was simple and obvious once I took the time to sit down and think about it. But in the middle of a fast-changing situation you don’t have time to think, and it wasn’t obvious that things were going badly wrong on the kind of occasional quick glimpse at the images on the back of the camera.
When I got home, I’d take a few test images and find that the camera and flash were both performing perfectly, and forget about it. Fortunately it hadn’t been vital to use fill, and I’d got by without it. But this morning I decided I really had to sort it out.
My first thought was that it was a problem with the flash (and I’ve had a lot of problems with flash units, with two needing expensive repairs and a third being being beyond economic repair in the past year.) So I started by resetting all settings on that. I made a few test exposures indoors and things seemed to be fine, so then I went outside where the light was considerably brighter. And noticed that when I turned the flash on the shutter speed dropped right down to 1/60. I couldn’t understand why, nor why their was a ‘HI’ in the control panel – and then I realised.
Most of the time I’ve used flash in recent weeks, a shutter speed of 1/60 has been more or less what I might have chosen if I’d been making manual settings. Possibly 1/125 or even 1/250. But the camera was still set at a high ISO and I was now in pretty bright light – the kind of conditions where I might want to use fill.
I’m sure I didn’t deliberately choose to set 1/60 as my flash sync speed, but possibly did so by mistake, thinking I was setting CS e2. Or just perhaps a load of electrons ganged up on me and decided to change it behind my back. It’s something that often seems to happen when I use the computer, and modern cameras are just computers with a few analogue bits tacked on.
But I do wonder if the choice of sync settings is one that is there simply because it is easy for Nikon to implement and adds yet another ‘feature’ – even though it makes the manual fatter and understanding and using the camera tougher – or is there really some point to it?
What flash are you using? The D700 will default to 1/60 flash sync in P, A or “pictogram” automatic exposure modes unless the lighting is too bright, in which case the camera will increase the sync speed. The reason Nikon did this is because they consider 1/60 a good compromise speed allowing ambient background exposure to be captured if the lighting is dim.
If you do a little digging in your D700 instruction manual (see page 305), you will find a custom setting that allows you to set the minimum sync speed in all autoexposure modes, i.e. you can setup the camera so that the sync speed will be at least 1/125, or 1/200, or 1/250, etc.
Nikon SB800.
Would perhaps be nice if it worked as you say, but in P mode if you set 1/60 for CS e1 (p305) and the light is too bright for the minimum aperture on your lens (f22) it simply overexposes rather than give a shorter exposure. That’s exactly what caught me out as I tried to say in the feature.
Don’t know what “pictogram” AE modes are btw. Not listed in the manual index.
p421 it says that the default for CS e1 is 1/250. 1/60 is default for CS e2 and both these are reasonable values, though e2 at 1/60 only for normal & wide angles with static subjects. You have to compromise for ambient by altering the ISO rather than the shutter speed.
The custom setting that lets you set the minimum sync speed is e2 – though it only works in P and A modes (and then only if you haven’t set the flash to one of the two ‘slow’ options.) Its on p308 in my manual.
The note on p305 tells you how to lock the shutter speed to the max sync speed – not ‘at least’ the sync speed. Again I think it is a fairly pointless ‘feature’ – generally its easier just to set the speed manually to the max sync speed. But hard to think under what circumstances you would want to do this anyway, particularly as in FP mode you can synch at higher speeds.
[…] protest in Cleaners at Clifford Chance. It wasn’t a great problem. Later, as I described in Too Much Control? I found the problem – an incorrect setting for Custom Setting e1, the flash synch […]