[iClick]

Can someone please explain how to set up the 200d so that I'm able to take rear curtain flash pics? The manual was no help. I've been finding out that some top photographers keep their cameras set up this way all the time and I wanted to try it out.

I have a Metz 50 which allows rear curtain. By setting that on the flash does that automatically set the camera up too?

Thanks in advance.

[TomK]

I have a Metz 50 which allows rear curtain. By setting that on the flash does that automatically set the camera up too?

What happened when you experimented with this camera and this flash set up as per the flash manual instructions?
Did your experiments work?

[iClick]

What happened when you experimented with this camera and this flash set up as per the flash manual instructions?
Did your experiments work?

I didn't notice anything different. And I'm not sure I know what to look for.

[JeffJS]

Camera Pentax K-5
Exposure 25 sec
Aperture f/11.0
Focal Length 24 mm
ISO Speed 80
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash On, Fired

Trailing curtain sync is used to fire the flash at the end of the exposure. I use it in a situation like the above where I want a trail (the lights) tracing a moving object and the flash at the end freezes the moving object. If you are using a 'normal' exposure time, like 1/180s, you aren't likely to notice any difference when using trailing curtain sync. The above was done with a Metz 58 AF-1. The K5 fires a pre-flash for exposure measurement (I think that's why anyway).

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Last edited by JeffJS; 07-11-2011 at 01:50 PM.

[Just1MoreDave]

I didn't notice anything different. And I'm not sure I know what to look for.

Set up flash for rear curtain sync. Put camera in M mode. Set shutter speed to 1 second or longer. Shoot. You might see a P-TTL preflash when you hit the shutter. If rear curtain sync is working, you should see the real flash just before the shutter closes.

[Stone G.]

Set up flash for rear curtain sync. Put camera in M mode. Set shutter speed to 1 second or longer. Shoot. You might see a P-TTL preflash when you hit the shutter. If rear curtain sync is working, you should see the real flash just before the shutter closes.

To elaborate a bit (because I was in the same situation with my K200D, and it took a while for me to understand the directions of the K200D manual):

You will need a flash that supports the Pentax way of doing trailing curtain sync! The camera body will need that information from the flash and not vice versa.

Example: I have a Metz 44 AF-1 that would be happy to operate in trailing curtain mode, provided that the camera body tells it to do so --- and that's exactly what my K200D won't do. If on the other hand I had had a genuine Pentax external flash, I could just set that flash up to this sync mode and the body would respond accordingly.

[iClick]

Set up flash for rear curtain sync. Put camera in M mode. Set shutter speed to 1 second or longer. Shoot. You might see a P-TTL preflash when you hit the shutter. If rear curtain sync is working, you should see the real flash just before the shutter closes.

Thank you. This is exactly what I needed. I tried it and I saw the two flashes. I'm assuming that it worked.

[sandilands]

Another 2 cents on this. I don't know about K200, but the only Pentax way to get rear curtain sync on the K7 is to shoe mount a AF360/540 and set it to rear curtain.

See one of my previous posts for a work around using a sunpak grip. I expect it will work on any Pentax with a pop up flash that supports rear curtain.

Finally there is a significant need for rear curtain when shooting models. When using long exposures for the background and a fill flash on the model, the model tends to re-pose once he/she sees the flash. If the shutter is still open for the long exposure we get ghosting. With rear curtain, the model holds the pose during the long exposure, the flash fires at the end of the exposure and the model re-poses for the next shot.