rear, front, rear-front sync flash?

babygodzilla

Hi,

I am not sure of the effects of Rear, Front, and Rear-Front sync flashes. Can someone give an example of when to use each one?

Thanks

babygodzilla

anyone?

rwells

First curtain sync will be used for most of your flash photography. It means that as soon as the first curtain is fully open, the flash fires.

Second curtain sync is normally reserved for flash shots where you would like to have a moving object blurred with a long(ish) exposure, but freeze your subject at the end of the exposure.


EX: It's late evening and you are shooting cyclist riding by and they have lights on their bikes. You could just use your flash with First Curtain Sync @ your X-sync speed, but that would give you a static, completely frozen subject.

Now, if you were to use a slow(er) shutter speed and Second Curtain Sync, your image would have nice streaks of light from the bicycle's lights and the rider/bike would be sharply frozen when the flash finally fires right before the shutter closes.

I'll not go into all the variables involved here, you can search for that, but the above is a general overview. Here's a picture about like I used in the example.

Hope that helps...

mtbparker

Here's a link I found a while ago that gives a good, quick explanation with example photos.

http://www.shortcourses.com/use/using6-2.html

Hope this helps,
Tom