I never use a flash, so I must admit I'm a bit ignorant on the subject of flash photography. How do you use a m6 and cheapo flash to get that "strobe/blurry" effect in photos? For example, let's say you're photographing a guy walking at night. In the photo, he'd be properly exposed and there would be little motion trails, blurriness around him. I just thought I'd do a little experimenting for fun and so far my photos have been washed out because they were overexposed. Thanks.

-richard

-- richard le (rvle@bellatlantic.net), November 15, 2000

Answers

I tried this years ago by using a one-second shutter speed. The flash froze the subject, and the shutter collected the fuzz. However, at night, the fuzz was mostly light sources that were in the frame, such as auto headlights, streetlights, etc. The subject didn't have much fuzz connected with him. I suspect that what we see today is not done with cheapo flash guns, but with more sophisticated weapons that can pump out more than one flash every ten seconds, which is what my old Vivitar was able to do. Also, if you've been experimenting with print film, maybe printing it darker would reveal something like what you hope to see.

-- Keith Nichols (knichols@iopener.net), November 15, 2000.

This effect is nice if it is desired, but with the Leica M, it is sometimes the way the picture comes out anyway due to the slow flash sync speed. The effect is called ghosting, and happens because the ambient light is strong enough to register on film as a blur... as well as the flash, which is usually sharp due to the short duration of the strobe.

If you could set the flash sync to the more readily available (on SLRs) 1/250th of a second, ghosting would be reduced since the time that the ambient light would be exposed would be very short. The 1/50th of the Leica M, is over two stops slower, thus allowing 4 times the light to hit the film... aside from the flash. In any ambient light other than total darkness, there is a chance for ghosting, whether you want it or not. If you want it, find a good subject, make sure there is some light and set you exposure for a manual setting that has a shutterspeed of 1/50th or slower. Set your auto flash for the f-stop of your exposure, (or maybe one stop less for a more natural look), and shoot the shot.

I don't use my Leica M for flash, so I don't know which curtain the flash will fire on, first or second, but it will determine the position of the blur streak... in front or behind the moving subject.

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), November 15, 2000.

If you were using manual flash (which you should have been in this situation), then the photo was overexposed because you didn't set the aperture correctly. If you were using automatic flash for a photo of a guy walking at night, then the reason why is was overexposed is obvious. The automatic flash was trying to light up the whole outdoors.

If you want the strobe/blurry effect, set the aperture for the manual flash exposure, and then set a slow shutter speed that meters correctly for the evening ambient light.

As someone mentioned, the M6 doesn't have second curtain sync, so the trails will be "ahead" of the subject rather than behind.

-- Joe Buechler (jbuechler@toad.net), November 15, 2000.

Thanks for all your responses. I was shooting some DJs at a club tonight and did some experimenting. We'll see tomorrow how they turned out.

-- richard le (rvle@bellatlantic.net), November 16, 2000.

The reason some of the more sophisticated recent SLRs have "rear curtain synch" is to fire the flash upon release of the 2nd curtain, rather than the traditional 1st curtain release. This causes the ghosting to trail the flashed image, rather than lead it. This is more typically effective.

-- Ken Shipman (kennyshipman@aol.com), November 16, 2000.