Brad, The general rule of thumb for hand holding is 1/focal length. So if you are shooting a wide angle lens, slower than 1/60 should be doable. You should practice a bit and check your results to make sure. You should always be congnizant of the DOF of the image you are taking. By being in control of your aperture, you can affect the focus area as you desire - many times for single people you want shallow DOF, but for larger groups you deep DOF - got to make sure nobody is too soft.
The general issue for high speed flash synch is for daylight flash fill. The sun is quite bright and shooting at a slow flash synch may not be possible or would give such a deep DOF as to destroy the desired image. By having a higher synch, you have more opportunity to control your DOF. Bruce Sunday, October 27, 2002, 1:15:25 AM, you wrote: BD> Thanks for the reply Bruce, BD> Ok, let's see if I'm following so far. What I explained in my email about BD> the behaviour of the camera and flash is completely normal?I'm glad for the BD> info on the older cameras and TTL. I totally understand the flash results. BD> Ok, now the harder part. Ok, wide aperture, more available light in. Got BD> it. Is that acceptable? DOF would not be good if you had say, fast film, a BD> powerful enough flash, and a big area you wanted to capture. So at that BD> point is it normal to set the aperture you want? From all I've heard and BD> read, generally you don't want to hand-hold below 1/60s, should I be able to BD> hand-hold, with confidence, a shutter speed of 1/30 with flash (as flash BD> does freeze some motion)? I just don't know, it seems everyone finds a BD> higher shutter-sync speed to be better, with the MZ-5n it was 1/100, BD> considered sort of bad, and the MZ-S has 1/180, better, but not like some BD> that have 1/250 or 1/500. I guess you can see I'm a little uncomfortable BD> shooting at a low speed. And am shy when it comes to flash. I generally go BD> a bit overboard in any situation. Or am I still missing the point about the BD> ambient light? BD> Brad BD> ----- Original Message ----- BD> From: "Bruce Dayton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> BD> To: "Brad Dobo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> BD> Sent: Sunday, October 27, 2002 2:13 AM BD> Subject: Re: Ok, the most stupid question from someone who should know BD> better (ie HELP NEEDED) >> Brad, >> >> Just so you know, in the old days, TTL was kind of poor. The reason >> was that flash synch speed was always used automatically by the >> camera's program setting. This generally meant that your flash >> pictures ended up with the subject well lit but the background >> somewhat blacked out. In more recent years, Pentax, among others, has >> changed the program so that it will try to use the slowest hand >> holdable shutter speed it can based on the focal length of the lens >> attached. By doing this, you let in as much ambient light as possible >> and use as little flash as possible to get a properly exposed image. >> The net result is that the backgrounds are not blacked out, but appear >> more natural and less like a flash picture. This is a good thing. You >> had to kind of manually do that on the old SuperProgram body because >> it always wanted to set the camera to 1/125 even though you had a >> fairly wide angle lens on that could of been held at 1/30. >> >> Hope this makes sense. >> >> >> Bruce
