Page 150 - Friedman Archives

150 The “Recording” (Camera icon) Menu Settings

5.8.5 REAR SYNC
Rear Sync is an indispensable
tool for certain kinds of shots
where ambient light (with
longish shutter speeds) is
combined with flash. The
classic image is a person
running in a marathon, with a
“ghost” trail behind them.

When you use a fast shutter
speed, flash pictures are easy:
The exposure starts, the flash Figure 5-18: Invoking the Rear Sync
goes off, and the exposure function.
stops. Not too hard. But, what
if you kept the shutter open for several seconds and you wanted to use the
flash? When should the flash fire – at the beginning of the exposure, or at

Figure 5-17: Examples of Normal (left) and Rear (right) Flash Sync

The idea is that you can control leading or trailing light when you’re using
both long shutter speeds (ambient) and flash on a moving subject. Rear sync
(right) allows the pedestrian’s trail to show up behind him, whereas with
normal settings (left) the trail appears in front of him! Who wants that? For
this shot, the shutter speed was set to 1.5 seconds to capture the motion, and
the flash still went off to freeze the subject – hence we have both a blur and a
“frozen” subject all in the same shot.

(This test sequence also illustrates why photographers hire beautiful models to
show off certain features rather than using ordinary-looking people.  )

Contents of this book Copyright © 2014 Gary L. Friedman. All rights reserved.