Pentax 67ii in the Studio

[2WK]

A friend of mine has a 67ii and is going to let me use it for a upcoming studio shoot. The thing I am curious/worried about is the 1/30 flash sync. I am planning on using it with strobes and I am wondering about the outcome. Will I be getting a lot of blurry shots etc. Can any of you share you experiences with this setup? I have read that there are leaf shutter lenses available for this system, but tracking one down is a whole other story.

Thanks!

 

[redisburning]

what lenses is he lending you?

maybe you'll get lucky and he has one of the 90 or 160 LS lenses.

otherwise you will need to use the strobe as your primary light source. you won't have to worry about blur because of how flash works but your choices on bringing in ambient light will be quite limited without a leaf shutter lens.

 

[keytarjunkie]

what lenses is he lending you?

maybe you'll get lucky and he has one of the 90 or 160 LS lenses.

otherwise you will need to use the strobe as your primary light source. you won't have to worry about blur because of how flash works but your choices on bringing in ambient light will be quite limited without a leaf shutter lens.

Exactly. 1/30 doesn't matter if you're only using strobes. If you're mixing in any ambient light, you will probably have some problems. The leaf shutter lenses are the solution, but then you're limited to just those two.

 

[Keith]

The strongest tripod you can get your hands on IMO ... the heavier the better!

 

[redisburning]

The strongest tripod you can get your hands on IMO ... the heavier the better!

this is my SOP whether Im shooting Leica or 4x5 tho.

I just got a MASSIVE bogen 3047 three way head that weighs as much as some entire cheap tripods Ive had the "pleasure" of using and I love it. Makes me want to buy a nice heavy Pentax 67 to go with it although it's currently serving duty under my Sinar.

 

[2WK]

Thanks guys. He does't have any of the LS lenses. He has the 100mm macro (which I am excited about), and 75mm 2.8. I think.

I have pretty solid manfrotto, and yes i will only be using strobes.

 

[sevo]

Flash, I presume? For stroboscope shots you'd want much longer exposure times, to the order of seconds.

If you are using flash in the studio, the slow sync times on the Pentax 67 are quite irrelevant - what registers on film is the flash exposure (of around 1/200-1/5000 second). The flash head modeling light usually is proportional to the flash intensity at 1s exposure time (a tradition dating back to the time when no affordable flashmeters existed) - even at 1/30s that is five stops off the flash, low enough to be irrelevant (at least if you aren't photographing subjects as difficult as baton twirling).

It can be a problem for fill flash in outdoor settings, where the background exposure will often have very visible motion blur at 1/30. Some 80s/90s fashion photographers habitually shooting flash-lit street locations made a background of motion blurred cars their hallmark, but most of them preferred a Mamiya RZ for these situations.