Flash Sync and Leica

[JHAG]

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Apart M8, Which Leica Digital has a flash sync ?

I mean it for studio shooting.

Is there a way to use the little D-Lux 3 for that purpose ?

[mgcd]

R8/9/DMR... had it first...

[Guest tummydoc]

Apart M8, Which Leica Digital has a flash sync ?

I mean it for studio shooting.

 

The M8 does not have a standard PC socket. One must buy a cheap, generic hot-shoe adaptor for that purpose, which then precludes TTL function as well as accessory viewfinders.

 

Is there a way to use the little D-Lux 3 for that purpose ?

 

Peanut slave triggers on the studio flashes, triggered by the D-Lux 3's pop-up flash?

[wparsonsgisnet]

Johan, if you're setting the studio flashes at some rated power, like 1/2, 1/4, and so one, you could take some test exposures and set the camera where you need it to be.

 

When I do studio, I do this, using the 10-sec delay to get into the pic so I can evaluate the exposure. I also use a WhiBal card.

 

I started a thread on studio shooting some time ago and got the wonderful advice to set the front lights 1/2 to 1 1/2 stops below the back lights. It works well; I just set the M8 to 1/250, f5.6, and use an HSHS shoe to connect to the lights.

 

The HSHS adapter has a pc-sync socket on it.

 

I also bring a laptop to the shoot so that the subject(s) and I can evaluate every few dozen shots.

[JHAG]

Some very;) good ideas here.

A warm Holiday salute to everyone.

[dick roadnight]

Peanut slave triggers on the studio flashes, triggered by the D-Lux 3's pop-up flash?

 

The D-LUX 3 does not have a flash socket or a hot shoe, and the pop-up flash triggers the studio lights, but the studio flash does not register in the picture - you can see the studio flash in the viewfinder, so it seems that the camera is in viewing mode when the studio flash fires, but not when the pop-up flash fires!

 

I have tried every mode and option I can find.

 

The flash fires when you push the button (and the pop-up flash works) and the exposure seems to starts a few seconds later.

 

Is it possible to set the camera so that it works with Studio flash?

[wparsonsgisnet]

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The D-LUX 3 does not have a flash socket or a hot shoe, and the pop-up flash triggers the studio lights, but the studio flash does not register in the picture - you can see the studio flash in the viewfinder, so it seems that the camera is in viewing mode when the studio flash fires, but not when the pop-up flash fires!

 

I have tried every mode and option I can find.

 

The flash fires when you push the button (and the pop-up flash works) and the exposure seems to starts a few seconds later.

 

Is it possible to set the camera so that it works with Studio flash?

 

Dick,

 

Functionally, the strobes are working, if you use the popup flash to set them off.

 

I believe the D-lux 3 is doing the little electronic dance that my D2 did. When you look thru the evf, you have a live monitor. When you press the shutter, the circuitry does a little dance: changing to "capture" mode, capturing an image, displaying it, and storing it.

 

In actuality, you do not capture what you were seeing in the evf. The little dance introduces some lag into the capture process. This is most apparent if your subject is moving.

 

Therefore, digicams that offer live viewing can't show you the studio flash in the viewscreen -- because the viewscreen image is static and out of date at the time of the capture. You, however, can see the studio flashes fire around you, and you can view the result in the review screen. The image that gets captured to the disk will include the studio flash contribution -- you can evaluate after the fact.

[dick roadnight]

Dick,

 

Functionally, the strobes are working, if you use the popup flash to set them off.

 

I believe the D-lux 3 is doing the little electronic dance that my D2 did. When you look thru the evf, you have a live monitor. When you press the shutter, the circuitry does a little dance: changing to "capture" mode, capturing an image, displaying it, and storing it.

 

In actuality, you do not capture what you were seeing in the evf. The little dance introduces some lag into the capture process. This is most apparent if your subject is moving.

 

Therefore, digicams that offer live viewing can't show you the studio flash in the viewscreen -- because the viewscreen image is static and out of date at the time of the capture. You, however, can see the studio flashes fire around you, and you can view the result in the review screen. The image that gets captured to the disk will include the studio flash contribution -- you can evaluate after the fact.

 

Bill Thank you for replying - I have to photograph one of my wife's ballet students tomorrow for her application for the Royal Ballet school...

 

The strobes are working,

 

the pop-up flash triggers them

 

The flash from the pop-up flash exposes the picture, but the flash from the strobes does not... it seem that the D - Lux 3 makes two exposures, one for the flash, and one, a little while later, for the ambient fill-in. It seems that there is a tiny delay in triggering the strobes, and this makes them fire between the two exposures. (when, it seems, the camera returns to viewing mode).

 

I can get a strobe exposed picture by firing the flash mannually during the exposure.

 

The image that gets captured DOES NOT include the contribution of the Elimchrom Strobes.

 

I have tried almost every option, but mostly Manual f8 at about 1/125th. Is there anything I can do to make it work?

 

Thank-you (or someone) in anticipation

[wparsonsgisnet]

Bill Thank you for replying - I have to photograph one of my wife's ballet students tomorrow for her application for the Royal Ballet school...

 

The strobes are working,

 

the pop-up flash triggers them

 

The flash from the pop-up flash exposes the picture, but the flash from the strobes does not... it seem that the D - Lux 3 makes two exposures, one for the flash, and one, a little while later, for the ambient fill-in. It seems that there is a tiny delay in triggering the strobes, and this makes them fire between the two exposures. (when, it seems, the camera returns to viewing mode).

 

I can get a strobe exposed picture by firing the flash mannually during the exposure.

 

The image that gets captured DOES NOT include the contribution of the Elimchrom Strobes.

 

I have tried almost every option, but mostly Manual f8 at about 1/125th. Is there anything I can do to make it work?

 

Thank-you (or someone) in anticipation

 

Dick, can you turn off the pre-flash (is it called red-eye reduction?). If you have a simple flash from the camera, the strobes should fire so fast that the light is present in the image.

[dick roadnight]

Dick, can you turn off the pre-flash (is it called red-eye reduction?). If you have a simple flash from the camera, the strobes should fire so fast that the light is present in the image.

 

It had occured to me that the red-eye reduction pre-flash might fire the strobes too soon, so I set the flash to forced flash on.

 

As I had tried everything else, I tried it with the red-eye reduction on... and it works!

 

It seems that, with red-eye reduction on, the main flash happens in the main exposure (the duration of which you can adjust to include the strobe flash).

 

I think I will sleep better now.

[fuchs]

The D-Lux built-in flash fires a pre-flash to evaluate proper exposure TTL, a fraction of a second before the actual exposure happens

 

This pre-flash is what fires your studio strobes, so they are actually recharging when the picture is taken.

 

You must find a slave to attach to the studio strobes that takes into account this pre-flash and triggers them at the onset of the second, real, flash from the camera's built in unit. There are some of them on sale at the usual places. You have to ask for a "digicam synch flash slave" or something like that.

 

Or, you can use any camera with a flash hot shoe. There are really few out there these days, but the Canon G9, Ricoh GX100 and Nikon P5100 are the best options for a lot of reasons.

 

If the D-Lux-3 (or any other digicam, for that purpose) offered a full-manual flash mode, it would be super easy to set it to the lowest available power, no pre-flash TTL evaluation, and use it to trigger the Elinchroms you have

 

Best,

 

Ed

[wparsonsgisnet]

It had occured to me that the red-eye reduction pre-flash might fire the strobes too soon, so I set the flash to forced flash on.

 

As I had tried everything else, I tried it with the red-eye reduction on... and it works!

 

It seems that, with red-eye reduction on, the main flash happens in the main exposure (the duration of which you can adjust to include the strobe flash).

 

I think I will sleep better now.

 

Disk, I take it that you solved your problem. Now ... all you have to do is get a good shoot, right? Best of luck.

[dick roadnight]

 

If the D-Lux-3 (or any other digicam, for that purpose) offered a full-manual flash mode, it would be super easy to set it to the lowest available power, no pre-flash TTL evaluation, and use it to trigger the Elinchroms you have

 

Best,

 

Ed

 

Thanks...Yes... they could have made it more useful for professionals ... I tried to look for an option to turn off the metering, thinking that it might solve the problem, and vastly reduce the delay between pushing the shutter button and the exposure.

 

The ability to fire the camera remotely would also be a feature useful for professionals.

 

Does the M8 have these features?

 

I think that, until I sell my house and have the money to get my dream Sinar system, the solution is to get a digiback for my Hasselblad ELD!

 

Dick

[fuchs]

Dick, I am interested in your solution, especially to see if this is a workable solution to photograph people, as you are forcing a slow/very slow speed sync, ie if ambient/parassitic light does show or not into the picture

 

I doubt the capability of such setup to freeze motion, as you will be using shutter speeds of 1/3 sec or less....

 

Good luck and please post the results

 

cheers,

 

ed

[Jamie Roberts]

Thanks...Yes... they could have made it more useful for professionals ... I tried to look for an option to turn off the metering, thinking that it might solve the problem, and vastly reduce the delay between pushing the shutter button and the exposure.

 

The ability to fire the camera remotely would also be a feature useful for professionals.

 

Does the M8 have these features?

 

{snipped}

 

Sounds to me like you need a DMR

 

Anyway, to answer the question, yes, the M8 has all the features you need to use it with studio strobe; it has a modern hotshoe connection.

 

So you can:

• use a Wein safe-synch hotshoe to PC adapter and use wires to the strobes
  
• use a small flash on the M8 and fire strobes optically (no problems there)
  
• use a smart flash on the M8 and fire strobes optically (the Canon 580 EX2 is my flash of choice, because I can turn off the flash output // synch and the 580s pre-flash, when turned on, will trigger strobes without adding any light of it's own (or, at very slow shutters, I can turn down the 580 manually to provide very little fill)
  
• use a wireless trigger like a pocket wizard to trigger remote strobes with radio
  
• use a wireless trigger like a Pocket Wizard Transceiver on the M8 hot shoe to trigger remote flash *and* connect a local flash to the PW on a bracket (which also allows the m8 / flash combo to be a moveable light).

You can't--to my knowledge--wirelessly trigger an M8 to fire, since the the M8 has a mechanical shutter trigger (but I wouldn't be surprised if someone doesn't have some accessory somewhere that will do this). I wish they had put an electronic trigger on the M8 to compliment the mechanical shutter instead.

 

So you can do a lot with the M8 (or DMR) that you can't do with a PS very easily. Either are probably cheaper than a Hassy back, though it depends on what glass you need, of course

[dick roadnight]

Dick, I am interested in your solution, especially to see if this is a workable solution to photograph people, as you are forcing a slow/very slow speed sync, ie if ambient/parassitic light does show or not into the picture

 

I doubt the capability of such setup to freeze motion, as you will be using shutter speeds of 1/3 sec or less....

 

Good luck and please post the results

 

cheers,

 

ed

 

I was using 1/500th, and the shots looked like any normal studio flash pictures, so posting an example would achieve nothing. I had to use a fast shutter speed to eliminate daylight and to freeze movement - the subject was not able to hold the difficult required ballet poses like a statue.

 

It is not a good solution... I had to wrap electrician's tape round the flash to prevent the initial flash triggering the strobes, and it was not very consistent, depending how close I was to the strobes. Occaisionally the fill-in seemed weak, and I think that was when the camera flash fired one of the strobes, which then fired another, resulting in a small additional delay, so that the shutter was closed before the end of the flash. I also had reduced flash power at 1/1000 - with all of the flashes still flashing after the shutter was closed.

 

If I buy a digiback I can use it with all my hasselblad and Sinar lenses, and my pocket wizard... and the camera and flash will fire when I press the button - or when triggered by a shutter-beam - very usefull when the require pose requires a leg to be horizontal, or if you want to catch a pirouette in the plane of sharpest focus with a monorail.

[dick roadnight]

Another way of triggering studio flash might be to use the shutter sound to trigger a flash slave.

[JHAG]

Thank you, yes, good idea.

Above all, I wish to avoid the painful plugging/unplugging from camera to meter to camera to meter… etc.

That way, I missed 5 or 6 shots the other day, forgetting to replug after metering:D

[peterv]

Sounds to me like you need a DMR

 

Anyway, to answer the question, yes, the M8 has all the features you need to use it with studio strobe; it has a modern hotshoe connection.

 

So you can:

• use a Wein safe-synch hotshoe to PC adapter and use wires to the strobes
  
• use a small flash on the M8 and fire strobes optically (no problems there)
  
• use a smart flash on the M8 and fire strobes optically (the Canon 580 EX2 is my flash of choice, because I can turn off the flash output // synch and the 580s pre-flash, when turned on, will trigger strobes without adding any light of it's own (or, at very slow shutters, I can turn down the 580 manually to provide very little fill)
  
• use a wireless trigger like a pocket wizard to trigger remote strobes with radio
  
• use a wireless trigger like a Pocket Wizard Transceiver on the M8 hot shoe to trigger remote flash *and* connect a local flash to the PW on a bracket (which also allows the m8 / flash combo to be a moveable light).

You can't--to my knowledge--wirelessly trigger an M8 to fire, since the the M8 has a mechanical shutter trigger (but I wouldn't be surprised if someone doesn't have some accessory somewhere that will do this). I wish they had put an electronic trigger on the M8 to compliment the mechanical shutter instead.

 

So you can do a lot with the M8 (or DMR) that you can't do with a PS very easily. Either are probably cheaper than a Hassy back, though it depends on what glass you need, of course

 

Besides all the 'upgrade commotion' ,thankfully, there's also the daily bussiness as usual

 

My question:

 

I've got three MZ 54i Metz's. Would it be possible to put a Pocket Wizzard (which?) on the M8, connect one MZ 54i to another Pocket Wizzard (which?) and have TTL controll?

 

Could the other two MZ 54i's be triggered and controlled in 'slave-function' by the MZ 54i connected to the M8 via the Pocket Wizzards?

 

Thanks!

 

Peter

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[robsteve]

Peter:

 

You will not gett TTL with the Metz on any Leica but you may want to look into the special Metz shoe for use as a slave. With this shoe you may be able to have one of the Metz connected to the Pocket wizard, and the other two fitted with the special shoe and controlled by the one connected to the pocket wizard.