Has Anyone Had Luck Getting A Flash To Trigger Without HSS Above 1/180th

levelred · 06-11-2010, 03:06 PM

Originally posted by amoringello

The plain fact of the matter is that Pentax cripples their equipment and some people are looking for a way to make this work -- without switching to other brands of equipment that do not coddle and babysit their users into pure textbook approaches to photography.

agreed...

FullertonImages · 06-11-2010, 06:29 PM

I've been wanting to do this a lot more lately. One of my biggest gripes with Pentax is the 1/180th sync speed. I used to fall into the "it's only 1/2 a stop, what's the big deal" camp. But now I've changed. When you're dealing with trying to control ambient light, maybe 1/2 a stop isn't a huge deal, but it might make the difference between barely holding a sky in, and not, or the difference between needing a ND filter or not to hold an f/2.8 aperture. Butthat I can live with. My real problem with it is shooting fast moving subjects in broad daylight, when you don't have enough flash power to make the flash 3-5 stops over the ambient midday sun to eliminate the motion blur caused by 1/180th. There's a a big difference in motion blur between 1/180th and 1/250th. That half a stop makes a big different with not having you mountain bikers be ghosted.

FullertonImages · 06-11-2010, 06:33 PM

I've got something I want to try though, and see if I can at least sort of cheat the system. I have elinchrom BXRi studio heads, and they have a setting where you can program the slave cell to ignore whatever number of pre-flashes hat you need it to. So, all I need to do is putit on learning mode, then take a high speed sync shot, and then it will figure out that it need to ignore all but the last flash that it just saw. Then I should be able to just use my AF540 as a master to set it off. But I would still be limited by line of sight. It's worth a shot though. Even if I could just use that to sync at 1/320th with big power coming from the Strobe, it would be sweet. I'll let everyone know if/how it works.

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06-11-2010, 03:06 PM	#16
levelred Forum Member Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: DFW Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 65	Originally posted by amoringello The plain fact of the matter is that Pentax cripples their equipment and some people are looking for a way to make this work -- without switching to other brands of equipment that do not coddle and babysit their users into pure textbook approaches to photography. agreed...

06-11-2010, 06:29 PM	#17
FullertonImages Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Boulder, CO Posts: 883	I've been wanting to do this a lot more lately. One of my biggest gripes with Pentax is the 1/180th sync speed. I used to fall into the "it's only 1/2 a stop, what's the big deal" camp. But now I've changed. When you're dealing with trying to control ambient light, maybe 1/2 a stop isn't a huge deal, but it might make the difference between barely holding a sky in, and not, or the difference between needing a ND filter or not to hold an f/2.8 aperture. Butthat I can live with. My real problem with it is shooting fast moving subjects in broad daylight, when you don't have enough flash power to make the flash 3-5 stops over the ambient midday sun to eliminate the motion blur caused by 1/180th. There's a a big difference in motion blur between 1/180th and 1/250th. That half a stop makes a big different with not having you mountain bikers be ghosted.

06-11-2010, 06:33 PM	#18
FullertonImages Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Boulder, CO Posts: 883	I've got something I want to try though, and see if I can at least sort of cheat the system. I have elinchrom BXRi studio heads, and they have a setting where you can program the slave cell to ignore whatever number of pre-flashes hat you need it to. So, all I need to do is putit on learning mode, then take a high speed sync shot, and then it will figure out that it need to ignore all but the last flash that it just saw. Then I should be able to just use my AF540 as a master to set it off. But I would still be limited by line of sight. It's worth a shot though. Even if I could just use that to sync at 1/320th with big power coming from the Strobe, it would be sweet. I'll let everyone know if/how it works.