Has anyone else noticed that the 5DII does not truly since at 200th of second? I think somewhere it says it does sinc at 200th when using Canon flashes. But when I'm u sing my White Lightnings, it clearly does not since at 200th. To keep the bottom edge of the image from being inproperly lit, I have to use 160th of a second. This is frustrating and I do not understand why they couldn't make all of their cameras to truly sinc to at least 250th.
That is normal for focal plane shutters and is usually mentioned in instruction manuals. The rated sync speed is based on the fast flash duration of shoe-mount units, typically shorter than ~1/800. Large strobes often have longer flash durations and or take longer for the trigger.
BTW, I think you mean sync or synch, i.e., synchronize.
It depends on how you're triggering the flash, and what flash unit it is too.
If I used my 5d1, with cyber syncs and a 580EXII, I am fine at 1/200. If I use the cybersyncs, and a 550EX, I'm not fine at 1/200, I must use 1/160. It was as a result of the 550EX needing a hot shoe to PC sync adapter, and in the "transition" I was loosing part of the speed.
The 5D 1 and 2 sync at 1/200.
Some strobes let go at 1/5000+ of a second. Others, 1/400 or so.
Brad Alexander wrote:
Has anyone else noticed that the 5DII does not truly since at 200th of second? I think somewhere it says it does sinc at 200th when using Canon flashes. But when I'm u sing my White Lightnings, it clearly does not since at 200th. To keep the bottom edge of the image from being inproperly lit, I have to use 160th of a second. This is frustrating and I do not understand why they couldn't make all of their cameras to truly sinc to at least 250th.
As you probably know, the camera syncs the flash to fire just as the first shutter curtain opens. The maximum sync speed is that at which the second curtain has not yet begun to close when the first curtain is fully open. How high this speed can be is dependent on how quickly the curtains can travel across the sensor.
Back in the 70s, most quality SLRs had rubberized silk roller blind shutters that traveled horizontally across the film--along the 36mm direction. Because they had so far to go, it took 1/60 to make the distance. The Canon F1 and Nikon F2 had titanium shutter curtains that could be driven a tiny bit faster--all the way to 1/80 second.
But the Copal metal shutters traveled the short distance across the film, and instantly provided a sync speed of 1/125 for that reason alone. It took a while, though, before the reliability of vertical shutters achieved the reliability of the horizontal roller blind shutters.
The curtains of the 1-Series cameras have a very high velocity and make the 24mm journey across the 1Ds sensor in only 1/320 of a second. Notice, though, that the specification for those cameras is 1/250, which means that the shutter is actually still fully opened for a significant amount of time after the flash is triggered. If anything happens to cause a trigger lag, it's still safely contained within the total open time.
You could actually sync 1D cameras at 1/320, if you had some way to trigger the flash slightly earlier. That is what the new Pocket Wizard hypersync system does...it uses the TTL pre-flash signal to time the regular flash sync slightly earlier than the regular flash sync and takes advantage of the fact that the shutter is fully open a bit earlier than specified.
The consumer cameras have lower-end shutters with slower curtains. The slow curtains take a bit less than 1/250 to cover 15mm (in the 15x22mm cameras) and take 1/200 to cover 24mm (in the 5D cameras). And they just barely make it 24mm in 1/200...there is no leeway. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Meal, and that's the cost of a consumer shutter that must travel across a full-frame sensor.
If there is any lag whatsoever introduced into the sync, the fact that there is no headroom whatsoever in the 5D cameras means that the second curtain will have already started its travel.
They can make the 5D shutter sync at 1/250: Just put a high velocity shutter into it. But There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch--there will be a price to pay one way or another.
I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this but how about if Canon were to introduce a few leaf shutter lenses? I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to do. Sure, the lenses would be slightly larger and slower but they could use lens barrels the size of e.g. an 85mm L which isn't much smaller than a Leica S2 lens. I think it could be quite neat.
jamie123 wrote:
I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this but how about if Canon were to introduce a few leaf shutter lenses? I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to do. Sure, the lenses would be slightly larger and slower but they could use lens barrels the size of e.g. an 85mm L which isn't much smaller than a Leica S2 lens. I think it could be quite neat.
Hmm, and then you would use the FP shutter locked open in bulb mode with mirror flipped up? Doesn't sound like it would be very popular. Actually some hardcore marco shooters do it with a focusing rail, bellows and a leaf shutter impregnated lens.
Gochugogi wrote:
Hmm, and then you would use the FP shutter locked open in bulb mode with mirror flipped up? Doesn't sound like it would be very popular. Actually some hardcore marco shooters do it with a focusing rail, bellows and a leaf shutter impregnated lens.
Yes, the FP shutter would stay locked open in bulb mode but there's no reason why the mirror should be flipped up. The mirror has never been the problem with leaf shutter lenses on medium format cameras so why would it be an issue with the Canon?
jamie123 wrote:
I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this but how about if Canon were to introduce a few leaf shutter lenses? I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to do. Sure, the lenses would be slightly larger and slower but they could use lens barrels the size of e.g. an 85mm L which isn't much smaller than a Leica S2 lens. I think it could be quite neat.
I think the lenses would be quite a bit larger and would need some significan re-engineering. As common as leaf shutters are for medium format, notice that focal plane medium format camera manufacturers seldom provide more than one or two leaf offerings for their cameras. The Pentax 6x7, for instance, had a horribly slow maximum sync of only 1/30...yet Pentax never produced more than one or two leaf shuttered lenses.
For the people who would really use them--professionals--a leaf shutter would only give them one stop more than they get with the 1D cameras. I moved to 5D from Mamiya RZ67, which had huge shutters that X-synced to 1/400. To tell the truth, I haven't really suffered from being limited to 1/125.
Future Man wrote:
Are there really that many situations where you can't get the photo w/ 1/160 but you could with 1/200?
In most cases with flash a change in shutter speed is not to get a photo. Rather it is to adjust any naturally lit background. A faster shutter speed makes the background darker. With a fast shutter speeds such as provided with HSS you can make a distracting white wall 4 feet behind a subject disappear.
RDKirk wrote:
I think the lenses would be quite a bit larger and would need some significan re-engineering. As common as leaf shutters are for medium format, notice that focal plane medium format camera manufacturers seldom provide more than one or two leaf offerings for their cameras. The Pentax 6x7, for instance, had a horribly slow maximum sync of only 1/30...yet Pentax never produced more than one or two leaf shuttered lenses.
For the people who would really use them--professionals--a leaf shutter would only give them one stop more than they get with the 1D cameras. I moved to 5D from Mamiya RZ67, which had huge shutters that X-synced to 1/400. To tell the truth, I haven't really suffered from being limited to 1/125. ...Show more →
I don't think size would be much of a problem as a 85L, to give an example, isn't much smaller than a Hasselblad H lens or a lens for the Leica S2 system. I also don't think it would take that much of an effort as far as engineering goes. Surely it's much easier than developing new forms of IS. It's also not like they would have to put a leaf shutter in all of their lenses but they could introduce a wide, normal and short tele lens with a leaf shutter. It could be a speciality lens line like the T/S lenses.
The reason why manufacturers of FP shutter mf cameras rarely introduce more than a couple of leaf shutter lenses is that this is sufficient to cover the gap.
Also, it wouldn't be only a one stop gain. Modern electronic leaf shutters normally go up to 1/800th or even 1/1000th in some cases.
Anyways, it's not like I'm desperately hoping for Canon to release leaf shutter lenses but I think this would be an interesting idea and possibly quite a good move for Canon. With 35mm DSLRs competing more and more with mf backs for megapixels I think this could bridge the gap even further.
