Being Digital Rear Curtain Sync Sometimes when life’s a blur, it’s a good thing BY MICHEL GILBERT & DANIELLE ALARY Rear-curtain sync mode image: shutter speed
of 1/2 second and an aperture of f/16 at ISO 100 -1 EV. The camera, a D800, Nikkor 16mm f/2.8 fisheye in a Nauticam NA-D800 housing with Zen
230mm dome port. As the fish swam by we swam in a circular motion while tripping the shutter
Flash Sync Generally speaking, strobes are synchronized to go off as soon as the shutter is opened. Technically it’s a little more complicated than that but you get the idea and in most cases this type of synchronization works perfectly well. Happily we kick our fins from subject to subject without devoting more brainpower to the fundamentals of strobe sync. Now imagine that you are working at a very slow shutter speed, like
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1/5th of a second. If you have a moving subject, such speed will induce blur, sometimes in the form of streaks that convey a sense of movement or speed in the picture. In normal sync, the strobe will go off at the beginning of the exposure.
This means that the streaks will appear in front of the subject, giving it an unnatural look. To overcome the problem photographers asked engineers to devise a synchronization mode that would trigger the flash right before
Magazine
echnology does not always lead to new creative possibilities. But occasionally it does. Being creative means taking some risks, experimenting to find a
new approach and one interesting twist to strobe-lit photography is rear-curtain synchronization, a.k.a. second curtain sync.
the closing of the second curtain. Now wait a minute, what curtain, we never talked about curtains? Well, this ain’t no Town and Country magazine, so read on.
Second Curtain Sync In dSLR cameras, the shutter used to be a curtain that moved up and down or sideways. Modern cameras use a series of blades that perform the same task. When you push the shutter release button, the blades start moving and an open slit travels in front of the sensor. Now imagine that curtain and press the shutter
release button: the first curtain moves and uncovers the sensor. The time during which the curtain remains open is the shutter speed. Once the desired exposure is met, a second curtain closes and blocks the light falling on the sensor. In traditional sync, the flash goes off as soon as the
first curtain is completely open. In second curtain or rear-curtain sync, the flash goes off just before the second curtain closes.
Photos: Alary/Gilbert Sub-Images
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