Keith
The best camera is one that still works!
Product shots don't work very well without one of these new fangled electronic things! 😀
Why do leaf shutters work so well with strobes?
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Product shots don't work very well without one of these new fangled electronic things! 😀
Mcary
Veteran
They really aren't superior. Yes leaf shutter do allow you to sync at higher shutter speeds then a focal plan shutter but this generally a 1-2 stop difference.
Leaf shutter = All shutter speed up to camera/lens max shutter speed usually 1/500th or 1/1000 (rare cases 1/1600)
Focal shutter = All shutter speeds up camera max sync speed usually 1/200 or 1/250th
So what does this mean in real world/practical terms?
Say you're shooting a portrait and want to place the sun behind the subject/model so it acts like a rim/hair light and use studio strobe(s) to provide main lighting.
Lets start with your D700 which for example gives you an exposure for the back ground of F-11 @250th(max sync) speed. Now if you were shooting with a leaf shutter you'd be able to use F-8 @500 or F 5.6 at 1000. So what if you want to use a larger aperture such as F 2.8 or F-2? then with either system you'd need to use ND filters 4-5* stop filter with the D700 and a 2-4* stop with the leaf shutter
*Estimate
Sparrow
Veteran
... hot lights sir! hot lights is what artists use
Keith
The best camera is one that still works!
DavidKKHansen
Well-known
To sum it up a bit...
Analog camera leaf shutters: You can sync at all speeds, but usually the top speed is 1/500th.
Digital camera leaf shutters: Read the manual. It's possible to sync at all speeds, but some times this can only be achieved with a smaller aperture.
For example, a digital leaf shutter may not be fast enough to open and close at 1/4000th of a second with an f/2 aperture. If you want to sync at that speed you'd have to close the aperture down. Or chose a slower shutter speed if you absolutely must use flash with f/2.
The fastest lenses I've seen with a leaf shutter is an f/2: Konica AF, Fuji X100(s) and Sony RX1(R)... anyone seen a faster lens than that?
Analog camera leaf shutters: You can sync at all speeds, but usually the top speed is 1/500th.
Digital camera leaf shutters: Read the manual. It's possible to sync at all speeds, but some times this can only be achieved with a smaller aperture.
For example, a digital leaf shutter may not be fast enough to open and close at 1/4000th of a second with an f/2 aperture. If you want to sync at that speed you'd have to close the aperture down. Or chose a slower shutter speed if you absolutely must use flash with f/2.
The fastest lenses I've seen with a leaf shutter is an f/2: Konica AF, Fuji X100(s) and Sony RX1(R)... anyone seen a faster lens than that?
willie_901
Veteran
Keith,
With a wire sync cable, the X100/100S leaf shutter can sync up to 1/4000. I think this speed depends on the characteristics of the flash. Wireless triggers reportedly sync at slower speeds. I would expect your DPM to have the same ability.
Old style flash bulbs are round and used different reflector shapes (typically dishes). They also have a different color temperature and lower effective GN ratings (although GN is only defined for electronic flashes). Otherwise light is light.
With a wire sync cable, the X100/100S leaf shutter can sync up to 1/4000. I think this speed depends on the characteristics of the flash. Wireless triggers reportedly sync at slower speeds. I would expect your DPM to have the same ability.
Old style flash bulbs are round and used different reflector shapes (typically dishes). They also have a different color temperature and lower effective GN ratings (although GN is only defined for electronic flashes). Otherwise light is light.
Solinar
Analog Preferred
Ezzie
E. D. Russell Roberts
The X100 cheats. The mechanical leaf shutter can't do 1/4000s. To achieve this the sensor needs to be turned on/off acting as a shutter in itself, much like shutterless compact digital cameras. Not sure exactly how fast the mechanical leaf shutter is, but most likely not much quicker than 1/1000s. I would suspect other leaf shuttered digital cameras use this sort of 'hybrid' shutter technique as well.
But the result is more or less the same, sync at all speeds (more or less)
But the result is more or less the same, sync at all speeds (more or less)
sevo
Fokutorendaburando
Bear in mind that you are not in digital (or even film AF) territory here - the majority of users on RFF are wrangling old manual focus cameras whose sync speeds are anywhere between 1/8 and 1/125. No film Leica made it past 1/125 (and even the M9 only does a odd 1/180).
It was not until the eighties that (starting with the Nikon FM2) 35mm SLRs with sync speeds upwards of 1/125 appeared - right at the edge of the AF age, so excluding model variants there are less than a dozen of them that are manual focus. And medium format FP shuttered SLRs were even slower, maxing out at 1/60 to 1/90 even for the very latest and fastest 6x4.5 cameras (the main reason why leaf shutters dominated 6x6 and up).
sevo
Fokutorendaburando
Edison socketed bulbs were made in a wide variety of guide numbers and burn patterns. If you can give us the type number (presumably etched into the glass or stamped onto the metal socket), and the reflector you'd use on it, that would be easy to look up.
As a matter of fact, guide numbers date back to bulbs - they actually have very well-defined and highly complex GN tables and schematics. However the press generally used smaller bayonet mount bulbs, the big screw mounted ones were mostly used in studio or architectural settings, where calculations were based on light output rather than guide numbers (the latter being rather useless in complex multiple flash settings).
willie_901
Veteran
As far as I know GN is not defined for flash bulbs. That's why I took care to use the wording "effective GN". After all the appropriate exposure using a bulb is still a function of subject distance and lens aperture.
Takkun
Ian M.
I actually think it might be mechanical, though--it only achieves 1/4000 when stopped down.
Either way, that's not a flash issue, but for all photos taken at that speed.
As David Hobby, the Strobist, once pointed out, in some cameras (D1 and D70 I know for sure) do use an electronic shutter that one can cheat sync speed with.
Mcary
Veteran
Wireless triggers generally max out at 1/500th for leaf shutters and 1/250th for focal plan shutters.
Mcary
Veteran
biomed
Veteran
charjohncarter
Veteran
If you are serious about flash photography then you have to have a leaf shutter camera. Some of the new FP shutters on DSLRs will play tricks with their dedicated flashes. If you are using either mode outdoors it is just easier to use a 'Leaf.' To put it simply, to balance ambient and flash; a leaf is the best. But people are lazy now so they will not fool with GN, Flash meters, or lighting ratios. Still the serious people using flash lighting still strive for repeatable results, and that requires testing and thinking (whether it is digital or film).
Pioneer
Veteran
My Contaflex Super, with its leaf shutter, is the ultimate fill flash camera, not to mention a darned nice camera.
As for flash bulb power output, some are relatively low power but the larger ones can easily exceed the light output of today's handheld/shoe mount electronic flashes. Large studio strobes provide more light but you won't be packing those around the street!
As for flash bulb power output, some are relatively low power but the larger ones can easily exceed the light output of today's handheld/shoe mount electronic flashes. Large studio strobes provide more light but you won't be packing those around the street!
sevo
Fokutorendaburando
IIRC the Nikkorex (of 1962) was the first FP shutter SLR to have that - it was one of the key features of the Copal Square shutter over shutters with horizontally travelling curtains.
David Hughes
David Hughes
Hi,
I might as well throw in my 2d worth.
The shutter speed with a focal plane shutter depends on the width of the gap. A narrow gap for high speeds and a wide gap for slow speeds.
The flash is short and sharp and so the gap between the blinds must be 36mm wide, at least, to expose the entire film during the short flash time. As it goes, a 36mm gap means a speed of whatever they say for the camera, usually a 30th, 50th or 60th...
At one time there were slow burning flashbulbs and so the higher speeds could be used as the bulb took as long or longer for the narrower gap to cover the frame from side to side.
Looking in a mid 50's catalogue from Philips, you could use the FP or slow burning bulbs up to 1/250th.
Regards, David
I might as well throw in my 2d worth.
The shutter speed with a focal plane shutter depends on the width of the gap. A narrow gap for high speeds and a wide gap for slow speeds.
The flash is short and sharp and so the gap between the blinds must be 36mm wide, at least, to expose the entire film during the short flash time. As it goes, a 36mm gap means a speed of whatever they say for the camera, usually a 30th, 50th or 60th...
At one time there were slow burning flashbulbs and so the higher speeds could be used as the bulb took as long or longer for the narrower gap to cover the frame from side to side.
Looking in a mid 50's catalogue from Philips, you could use the FP or slow burning bulbs up to 1/250th.
Regards, David
Godfrey
somewhat colored
Most of the answer is in this thread already ... summing up:
Ignoring long-burn FP (stands for "focal plane") flash bulbs and "high speed sync" mode electronic flash (essentially the same thing as FP bulbs implemented with an electronic flash), the primary difference between a leaf shutter and a focal plane shutter is that a leaf shutter's operation achieves all the leaves at the wide open state for every exposure time. A focal plane shutter only achieves this state for a range of timings up to a limit imposed by the speed at which the shutter curtains travel across the film plane.
When using electronic flash, the duration of the flash burst can range from 1/250 sec to about 1/12,000 sec. The concept of X flash sync means firing the flash such that the entire burst of light is timed to happen within the time when the shutter is fully open so as to get even illumination across the entire frame.
A leaf shutter's fully open state happens at all shutter speeds so they can theoretically sync at all shutter timings. However, with fast lenses the fully open state can become shorter than the duration of the electronic flash with a powerful or long-burning flash unit (film or digital, it doesn't matter). This causes a fall off in illumination around the edges of the entire frame when it happens, but the whole frame gets exposed. The true sync limit is the speed at which the blades can cycle. Few leaf shutters achieve shorter exposure timings than 1/500 second (unassisted by sensor cut-off and other tricks) and there are also few leaf-shutter lenses of large enough diameter such that the fully open state cut-off is compromised, so in general you can always think of a leaf shutter as being able to sync at any speed.
A focal plane shutter has two timing modes: the first when the total exposure setting will mean that the shutter can achieve the fully open state and the second when the total exposure setting will mean a slit opening traveling across the film plane. Total exposure for ambient light is the integral over time that the shutter curtains are open over each instantaneous position on the imaging plane, which is gated by the size of the opening and the resulting weight and durability of the shutter components. But electronic flash exposure is based on the wide open state, not the same as continuous light. Shutter curtains can only traverse the film gate so fast due to accelerative loads and strength, this is what imposes the limit to X sync speeds. Most modern focal plane shutters achieve X sync at speeds up to 1/180 sec or so, some get up to 1/250 or even shorter but they're the exception rather than the rule. (Older shutters, like Leica Barnacks and Nikon Fs, had X sync at 1/30 and 1/60 sec, I remember when the first cameras with the Copal Square vertically traveling shutter came out—whee! 1/125 sec! Dang I'm getting old..) When you pass the X sync limit with a focal plane shutter, the flash exposure is abruptly cut off and only a portion of the frame is exposed with the electronic flash burst.
Modern high speed sync with electronic flash has overcome these limitations, at the expense of instantaneous power output (same as FP bulbs, by the way, which is why FP bulbs were such big things to be bright and useful) but that takes careful matching of flash unit and shutter timing control to coordinate and is limited to dedicated flash units integrated with the shutter's timing circuitry. Other tricks with sensor cut-off control, etc, also reduce the superiority of leaf shutters' ability to sync over a larger shutter time range as well.
G
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