Having gotten spoilt by the convenience of TTL flash with my Nikon gear, I'm having trouble re-learning non-TTL flash technique with my all-manual M4-P. Could you experts out there enlighten this Leica newbie on the technique of using an Olympus S20 on a Leica M4-P (with a 25mm f/4 lens, a handheld meter and ISO 400 film)? Specifically, I'm looking into taking flash pictures of people in a very dark interior environment (like a dimly-lit church or temple) and want to have the subject and the background illuminated. Many thanks in advance!

-- Hoyin Lee (leehoyin@hutchcity.com), April 17, 2001

Answers

Method 1: The S20 on-camera, with the wide-angle diffuser, will illuminate your subject correctly if you keep in range and set one of the 2 apertures on the camera that the flash directs you to for the film you're using. Use whichever aperture also lets you use a shutter speed that gives the correct non-flash exposure for the background. You will probably find that shutter speed is quite slow, and you'll need a tripod to avoid the background being blurred by camera shake.

Method 2: Buy a Vivitar 283 and a long coiled PC cord for it. With the SF20 in the hot-shoe and the Vivitar plugged into the PC socket, set the auto control on the 283 so you get the same aperture you're using on the S20. Hold (or have someone else hold) the Vivitar above your subject and pointed at the background.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), April 17, 2001.

I would second the vote on getting a different auto-flash unit, and the 283 or an older Nikon SB would be an excellent choice. These units will have a broader f-stop range to select from in auto mode than your S20, and the auto functions on these units will give very accurate exposures in most circumstances and are easy to use -- set the aperture on the flash to match your lens and fire away!

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), April 17, 2001.

Flash can only expose correctly for a narrow range of subject distance. The original question was how to get the subject AND the background illuminated, and the only way to do that is either to drag the shutter for the ambient background or use multiple flash units. Using any auto flash you'll only get proper exposure for what the sensor sees in the central area of where it's aimed.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), April 17, 2001.

Jay:

I was attempting to imply that balanced exposure is easier to accomplish with auto-flash if the unit has a braod range of f-stops to select from. Obviously, you must first meter the ambient exposure, then match the flash to the f-stop you set on your lens -- preferably an aperture that also allows sufficient shutter speed to keep the background from blurring and still synch with the flash unit. Unfortunately, this is the biggest shortcoming of trying to balance ambient light and flash with the M system; the flash synchs at 1/50th sec and below, thus about the only good choice you have is the 1/50th setting, or possibly 1/30th. Again, a flash unit that allows for a wider range of f-settings will help out significantly by (hopefully) offering an f-stop that will keep you in this narrow range of shutter- speed options with the M.

As someone else in this forum pointed out in an earlier thread, you can cheat the system a bit in a fill-flash situation by turning the camera vertical, release side up, and using 1/125th sec. The flash will synch with the top half of the frame, leaving the bottom half exposed only by the ambient light -- and if the ambient exposure is close to accurate, you should have an acceptable overall exposure with no harsh demarkation line.

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), April 17, 2001.

I use the nikon SB28 on my M4P on auto with quite good result. In a dim enviorment the differance between ttl and auto is not all that important. Also find it to be much easer to focus the rangefiner then to use the af of the F5 or to manuly focus . To get the back groud in either case you will be at 40/50 of a second at f4, noreal differance between the nikon or the leica , and the SB28 resike time much faster. chuck

-- Charles Stirk (ccstirkjr@yahoo.com), April 17, 2001.

PS, the vertical 1/125-sync daylight fill-flash trick is mine, leftover from Nikon F, F2 and F3 days as well as Leica. The example of this thread, shooting a flash subject in a dark church, is the exact opposite of daylight fill-flash. In this case, where you need equal flash on foreground subject as well as background, the vertical trick won't work because it depends on daylight illuminating the part of the frame that's cut off from flash by the shutter curtain. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that a second flash, triggered either by the pc socket on the camera, or a peanut slave, is the best way to handle this situation, unless you're prepared to use a tripod and get your subjects to hold still (to avoid ghosting with the flash). Why? Because even if you have a flash where you can set a really wide auto-aperture (like a Nikon SB-24,5,6,8) like f/1.4, so a handholdable shutter speed like 1/30 or 1/50 could be used to bring up the background, at that aperture the DOF is so shallow the background would be blurred. To get the church sharp in the background, you would need to choose a medium to small aperture, in which case your shutter speed would be too slow to handhold and if the subject moved you'd get a ghost image. In the example Mr. Lee proposed, I would definitely use a second flash.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), April 17, 2001.

It seems to me that if you are going to go to the bother of slaving a second strobe, and need to do it with some regularity, you'd be better off using your Nikon (F100, F5 or N90S) with two SB28 strobes, the second one (and a third, fourth or fifth as well!) all being IR or cable-controlled by the onboard TTL computer!

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), April 17, 2001.

You guys are great! Many, many thanks for your wonderful responses to my question. Your to-the-point users' advice is a hundred times more useful than what I've been trying to understand from books on photographic techniques. I will try out your suggestions--multiple flash and using a SB-28, which I happen to have. The main issue is really the M4-P's slow 1/50 second flash-syn speed, a royal pain, in fact. If only the next new Leica M model has 1/250 second flash-syn speed, and matrix-TTL flash metering . . . .

-- Hoyin Lee (leehoyin@hutchcity.com), April 18, 2001.