It means that the flash fires at the END of the exposure rather than at the beginning.
Imagine taking a picture of a car driving by. You use a slow shutter speed to blur the motion. If you used a flash with a slow shutter speed the motion would be stopped for a portion of the image but there would still be blur because of the slow shutter. With standard flash the blur happens AFTER the flash fires and is therefore in front of the car (the car appears stopped because of the flash) because the car continued to move forward after the flash fired. With trailing-curtain sync (also called second-curtain sync) the flash fires at the end of the exposure. Therefore the blur occurs BEFORE the flash fires and appears as streaks of blurred motion BEHIND the car which looks much more natural. The flash still "freezes" the car for the instant it fired but the blur is behind rather than in front. Confusing a bit but hopefully I've explained it enough to make some sense! ;-) HTH Christian I haven't had the opportunity to try it since getting the ist-D and AF360FGZ (my first camera/flash with the capability) ----- Original Message ----- From: "frank theriault" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 5:12 PM Subject: Re: OT: why trailing-curtain-sync is useful > Okay, time to admit my extreme ignorance right here in the open, on the > list. > > What's trailing-curtain-sync? I've heard the term, but have no idea what it > is (other than what Paul just said about shooting slower than max-sync > speed). > > There are obvioulsy at least two people on list right now who know <g>. > Would anyone care to disseminate your knowledge, as there may be others here > who don't know. > > thanks, guys, > > frank > > "The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist > fears it is true." -J. Robert Oppenheimer > > > > > >From: Paul Stenquist <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >Subject: Re: OT: why trailing-curtain-sync is useful > >Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 17:06:34 -0500 > > > >I > >On Jan 2, 2004, at 4:44 PM, Christian wrote: > >> > >>I've no idea what he was doing! I was thinking that he was panning using > >>flash and getting the blur-going-forward effect which should be solved > >>using > >>trailing-curtain-sync. > >> > > > >That's exactly what he was doing. You shoot at 1/15 or so with a flash > >that's close in exposure to ambient and you get some nice motion blur. But > >without trailing curtain sync they go the wrong way. i've done these kind > >of shots for magazines from time to time using my archaic equipment. The > >solution? You just have the driver back up. Of course that won't work when > >shooting race cars. If it does, they're probably in trouble and you might > >as well wait for the impending crash <g?. > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* > http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail > http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/bcomm&pgmarket=en-ca&RU=http%3a%2f%2fjoin.msn.com%2f%3fpage%3dmisc%2fspecialoffers%26pgmarket%3den-ca >
