The short flash duration, not the shutter speed, stops the action. Hot shoe flashes are needed because of the way they can switch off the power to the flash tube. Most studio flashes work by dumping the entire contents of the capacitors and thus they have much longer flash durations.
Triggering the flash at the right time is simply a matter of trial and error unless you want to invest in motion-gate or sound triggers (for bullets).
You can get strobes to snyc at any speed you just need to trick them. I've run an optical slave taped to the top of a 530 ex which is then hard wired to a power pack. (The flash is set to high speed sync). The only problem that I've run into is for every shutter speed you increase you lose an f-stop in power, so you have to bring a lot of light. From what I've read the new radio popper will do this out of the box, but still have the same problem with power fall off. The image on the front of my website was shot a 2000 of a sec, with a prophoto 7a at full power off to the subject's left.
Its difficult to answer if you keep changing the question
Flash sync speed is a function of camera / shutter design. The focal plane shutter camera can't instruct the flash to fire until the first curtain of a focal plane shutter fully opens, which typically takes about 1/500th to /400th sec. Flash fires, second curtain closes. When the shutter gets to fast the shadow of the second curtain is recorded. The specified x-sync speeds can often be exceeded, but not by any great amount. Cameras without focal plane shutters can sync at higher speeds because there's no shutter curtain to wait for.
But if you want to stop fast action with a DSLR you can use a different strategy. Reduce the ambient light so there will be no blur trail ( a totally dark room is best) use a long shutter speed, then fire the flash manually to make the action stopping exposure. In that scenario the power level used will determine the flash duration. As mentioned previous hot shoe flashes work best for this because they have shorter flash durations.
High speed sync mode, which pulses a hot shoe flash rapidly, works well for shooting at wide apertures in bright outdoor light, but its not the tool you'd want to use to freeze action.
k yearick seams to be the only person to answer the POLL
Sry i had to clarify the question everone else seams to be stuck on flash duration.
I'm asking about x-sync / studio strobe sync and what everyone is using to go beyond the standard 200 or 250 rated in x-sync.
A better question is why do you think you need a faster sync speed? Responders are "stuck" on flash duration because we are trying to make you realize that's what stops action when flash is used, not the shutter. The shutter simply regulates the amount of ambient light affecting the exposure.
Most don't try to exceed x-sync with normal shooting because there is no need for short shutter speeds most studio shots: the duration of the flash stops the action and the ambient level in the studio is low enough to prevent post-flash ambient blur trails.
Most use radio triggers for convenience and their latency often requires slowing the shutter below x-sync. There is about a thread a week here about that problem.
Heres my scenario to let you better understand my push in faster shutter speeds x-sync. When you are shooting a moving product say a dance costume in action the scenario of flash duration becomes less feasible for me because i need a lot of light for both flat and bright subject matter and the stage is 30' * 30'
Yes i can stop action but I can't allow the dancer to freeley roam a stage and expect to ge a good shot. Yes i understand how to stop action I'm just trying to achieve in a different manner. That I can afford.
I have been able to achieve this with very low cost and wanted to share but thought somebody else has to have thought of it before.
It's yearick is on a similar track as me.
I have achieved full shutter 1/8000 fully synced and the solution is so simple I thought I must be crazy.
I woke up thinking why hasn't this been posted before?
I used my canon 580ex II in high speed sync to trigger my strobes via wein slaves built on my dynalites. I turned the power on my 580 all the way down to conserve power so i could cycle as fast as my strobes and WOW it worked fully sync all the way down to 1/8000th NO BLACK LINE from shutter and should be achievable with any one's current setup.
It is that simple.
What do you think it's alot cheaper than 4 prophoto 2400ws 7a's and 6 pro heads say $30,000 bucks cheaper.
Would love to see our community benifit from this. HOpe this works for someone else out there.
And yes I am an amateur have never gotten paid for a photo yet.
I'm going to do my first photo shoot in may and the pro i used could never freeze action enough for my situation and he's been doing this for decade's 10+ years as our photographer.
1/1000th is easy with a Pocket Wizard and the 1D or D70 (or any other CCD based electronic shutter). You can even strobe with consumer cameras with hotshoes, like a G9 or G10, up to 1/1000th with a Pocket Wizard.
With a hardwire, the same 1D can go to 1/2500th of a second.
PShizzy wrote:
1/1000th is easy with a Pocket Wizard and the 1D or D70 (or any other CCD based electronic shutter). You can even strobe with consumer cameras with hotshoes, like a G9 or G10, up to 1/1000th with a Pocket Wizard.
With a hardwire, the same 1D can go to 1/2500th of a second.
Max
Is hardwire the same as trigger/recvr? Because I have achieved 1/2500th just playing around to see how high I could go with a 1d w/ ab cst and cstr 's
At 1/8000th sec the sensor is exposed by a very narrow slit formed by the rear curtain chasing the front one across the sensor.
What is suspect what happening is that flash duration of your Dynalites is much longer than 1/8000th second, but the 580exII in high speed FP mode starts the flash pulsing slightly before the shutter actually opens which gives the optically triggered Dynalites time to fire and ramp up to full intensity just as the narrow shutter slit starts whizzing across the sensor. Since the flash duration is longer than the shutter speed the Dynalite is able to illuminate the entire frame evenly just as ambient light would.
The 580exII probably isn't adding much light to the exposure, its simply acting as the advance trigger. Its a bit like the sync for flash bulbs on older SLRs like my Nikon F. Flash bulbs take so long to ignite the sync signal to fire them occurs before the shutter opened.
