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01-28-2011, 07:46 AM   #31
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The thing I don't understand is, why can't Pentax allow the flash signal to be sent when using higher shutter speeds than 1/180th? How hard is it to add an override to the menu to allow this, and allow us to deal with any black bands that occur? Call it "Override Safe Sych Limit?". It can't be expensive to add this.

How do other brands approach this?

01-28-2011, 08:40 AM   #32
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QuoteOriginally posted by 1banger Quote
my real concern is stopping motion. Not ambient light issues.
If your concern is stopping motion, you don't understand how flashes work.
Do this exercise...fire up a house fan so you can watch the blades spinning. Set your shutter to 1/30th. Put the flash on your camera and fire it at 1/4 power. Do you see the blades get frozen in time?


QuoteOriginally posted by Digitalis Quote
Have you actually watched the shutter of the LX5 in action? It follows exactly the same sequence that a leaf shutter does. All I know is that there is a leaf shutter mechanism in there, and think about it the LX5 is a premium compact, what makes you so sure it wouldn't have a real shutter in it?
Which video are you talking about?
And yes, I'm 99.999% certain the Panny LX5 does *not* have a leaf shutter. Most P&S cams do not. They do have an iris though so that might be what you're seeing. Leaf shutters aren't exactly cheap, even for a high end compact. They're mechanical devices.
The only current digital cameras I know of w/ leaf shutters are medium format bodies...
And they max out at 1/500 sec (because they're relatively crude mechanical mechanisms compared to focal plane shutters :-)
Leaf shutter - Camerapedia
01-28-2011, 09:39 AM   #33
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Kenyee wrote:

QuoteQuote:
If your concern is stopping motion, you don't understand how flashes work.
Do this exercise...fire up a house fan so you can watch the blades spinning. Set your shutter to 1/30th. Put the flash on your camera and fire it at 1/4 power. Do you see the blades get frozen in time?

You don't get it, I want to freeze faster motion than a fan blade. Try stopping a water drop spash at 1/30th, not to mention unwanted ambient.. Jeez...
01-28-2011, 04:15 PM - 1 Like   #34
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QuoteOriginally posted by kenyee Quote
And they max out at 1/500 sec (because they're relatively crude mechanical mechanisms compared to focal plane shutters :-)
you have some reading to catch up on. The leaf shutters in the Schneider lenses made for phase one digital medium format camera, these leaf shutters can obtain synch speeds of 1/1,600th*. And leaf shutters aren't what I would call crude at all, especially since they can accomplish what an overcomplicated device like the FP shutter cannot, being able to synch at all speeds. Packard shutters are crude.

*which happens to be the fastest synch speed I can get out of my LX5 - though at those speeds reliability with my wireless trigger from Elinchrom isn't all it could be,But I hear they have remedied that.

QuoteOriginally posted by 1banger Quote
You don't get it, I want to freeze faster motion than a fan blade. Try stopping a water drop spash at 1/30th, not to mention unwanted ambient.
look, learn to control lighting to get the best results instead of expecting a camera to do all the thinking for you. I think you need to alter your approach to this problem, plenty of people have found a ways around things like this using hardware with more limitations than your average sub $1,000 DSLR. I can stop a drop of water with a sync speed of 1/60th without issue. I could even pull it off at 1/8th if I wanted to, if you knew how to control light and how how flashes stop motion you could have saved a lot of our time on these forums by attacking the problem, not by complaining ineffectually about something that in the end, has next to no effect on what you are trying to accomplish.

I did this with just one AF540 FGZ at 1/16th power with a synch speed of 1/60th:



Last edited by Digitalis; 01-28-2011 at 04:40 PM.
01-28-2011, 04:58 PM   #35
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QuoteOriginally posted by Digitalis Quote
you have some reading to catch up on. The leaf shutters in the Schneider lenses made for phase one digital medium format camera, these leaf shutters can obtain synch speeds of 1/1,600th*
Totally different from what's in cameras...and still slower than a FP shutter which is easy to get 1/2000 from. Notice that we don't have those LS lenses in DSLRs? Only in MF cameras? That's because massive FP shutters are too slow in MF cameras.

Are we still talking about the Panasonic LX5? There's no way that has a leaf shutter IMHO (still 99.999% certain)...show me proof and make me eat my words please
p.s., the reason I know it's electronic shutter is it's very popular w/ strobists (along w/ the Gxx and Dxx I mentioned...been in those debates on that group too )
01-28-2011, 05:00 PM   #36
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QuoteOriginally posted by 1banger Quote
You don't get it, I want to freeze faster motion than a fan blade. Try stopping a water drop spash at 1/30th, not to mention unwanted ambient.. Jeez...
Digitalis has proven my point pretty well
Do the exercise if you want to understand why....
01-28-2011, 05:18 PM   #37
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QuoteOriginally posted by kenyee Quote
Totally different from what's in cameras...and still slower than a FP shutter which is easy to get 1/2000 from
but can the FP shutter synch at 1/1600th?...no it cant, score one for the leaf shutter.

01-28-2011, 05:21 PM   #38
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QuoteOriginally posted by Digitalis Quote
You don't get it, I want to freeze faster motion than a fan blade. Try stopping a water drop spash at 1/30th, not to mention unwanted ambient.
QuoteOriginally posted by Digitalis Quote
I did this with just one AF540 FGZ at 1/16th power with a synch speed of 1/60th:
Yep, cut the ambient and you can even do that with a 60 second shutter speed. Its nice when you have complete control of your environment.

But I would sure love to have 1/500 shutter sync speed to stop a little more action where I don't have as much control over ambient light. Try shooting martial arts or similar and you'll get more motion blur than may be acceptable at only 1/180. ... and Yes, where I shoot flash is allowed, but they will/can not turn down the ambient lighting.
01-28-2011, 05:31 PM   #39
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QuoteQuote:
You don't get it, I want to freeze faster motion than a fan blade. Try stopping a water drop spash at 1/30th, not to mention unwanted ambient.
FYI, gonna take one hell of a camera to photo something faster than a fan blade.
Wish I could find more info on the camera that did these - certainly no DSLR!!

Otherwise, as stated many times, you're just going to have to kill the ambient light and use high speed flash to stop the motion...
01-28-2011, 06:01 PM   #40
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Pardon my ignorance, but my understanding is that flash duration is what freezes motion, not flash sync speed. So what the heck does sync speed have to do with stopping motion in a studio where the photographer has complete control over the ambient light?
01-28-2011, 06:02 PM   #41
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QuoteOriginally posted by amoringello Quote
YBut I would sure love to have 1/500 shutter sync speed to stop a little more action where I don't have as much control over ambient light. Try shooting martial arts or similar and you'll get more motion blur than may be acceptable at only 1/180. ... and Yes, where I shoot flash is allowed, but they will/can not turn down the ambient lighting.
If flash photography is allowed, wouldn't a ND filter help in this case? Perhaps a convenient Cokin ND filter that you can pop in/out of its holder as needed without worrying about screwing it on/off.
01-28-2011, 06:43 PM   #42
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QuoteOriginally posted by jake14mw Quote
The thing I don't understand is, why can't Pentax allow the flash signal to be sent when using higher shutter speeds than 1/180th? How hard is it to add an override to the menu to allow this, and allow us to deal with any black bands that occur? Call it "Override Safe Sych Limit?". It can't be expensive to add this.
First, it would make no difference, since the shutter is moving at a finite speed (1/180th). All you would be getting is an unexposed band, with exactly the same exposure time as you'd get at 1/180th second.
This can be a hard concept to get one's head around, and most people seem to misunderstand it.
Second, they could add the moon to the camera, and all that would happen is there would be more things to go wrong, people would still complain, and they would also be complaining about the extra cost.
01-28-2011, 06:46 PM   #43
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QuoteOriginally posted by Hound Tooth Quote
Pardon my ignorance, but my understanding is that flash duration is what freezes motion, not flash sync speed. So what the heck does sync speed have to do with stopping motion in a studio where the photographer has complete control over the ambient light?
Nothing at all.
01-28-2011, 09:13 PM   #44
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QuoteOriginally posted by Digitalis Quote
but can the FP shutter synch at 1/1600th?...no it cant, score one for the leaf shutter.
You're making weird arguments. Show me proof the LX5 uses a leaf shutter...
01-28-2011, 09:28 PM   #45
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QuoteOriginally posted by kenyee Quote
You're making weird arguments. Show me proof the LX5 uses a leaf shutter...

There is no way I could definitively demonstrate this without pulling one apart...let's just agree to disagree on the shutter of the LX5.

I will point out that although there aren't any leaf shutter lenses for DSLR cameras there are many cameras out there from the 35mm film era that used leaf shutters. Granted, almost all of them were range finder type cameras*. The fact is that some of them could synch up to 1/2000th


*The Voigtlander ultramatic SLR springs to mind, also the Kowa SET-R, another SLR developed in 1968 used one, but it never took off because the mechanism being so small made it a bit unreliable.

Last edited by Digitalis; 01-28-2011 at 09:40 PM.
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