Photography is totally dependent on light, and this resource is most sought after by photographers when photographing an object or person, but situations of good lighting are not always present and at the moment the photographer must use his creativity and experience.
It is because of these challenges that attractive and highly innovative techniques arise, such as slow sync flash, a new look at low-light scenes, but that can still produce beautiful photos.
For this to happen, however, you need to know this technique in depth and know exactly how it works.
See this article what slow sync flash is, how it works, and also follow some basic steps to achieve that effect on your photos.
, or slow-sync flash, in Portuguese, is a technique used in photography to capture low-light images. The main goal of this photographic style is to use ambient lighting along with the flash to get a spectacular photo.
To understand exactly how it works, we need to talk a little bit about capturing images in low-light environments. When there is low light in the photo, you have two options: use the flash or reduce the shutter speed.
When you use the flash, the subject of your photo freezes when the shutter is released for light to penetrate, as a result, the object or model remains illuminated, sometimes too bright, and the background is completely dark.
In the case of shutter speed, you leave the shutter open longer for more light to penetrate, so you can take advantage of any lighting bulb in the scene to illuminate your photo, the disadvantage of this option is that it doesn’t work with moving subjects, only with static photos, as it produces blur when the object moves.
What if you could combine these two options into one technique?
This is exactly what Flash. La’s Slow Sync technique does allows you to use the flash, to control the exact moment when it will be fired by the camera, at the same time as the photographer is able to change the shutter speed.
Thus, Slow Sync Flash is nothing more than synchronizing the flash with the opening of the shutter and its speed, you take advantage of the lighting that already exists in the room to illuminate the background of the scene, since the flash makes the main subject very clear.
When you’re synchronizing the flash with your digital camera’s shutter, you have two options: the back curtain or the front curtain.
But what does this really mean?
When you set your flash to the first curtain (or front curtain), it will fire immediately when the shutter is opened, that is, as soon as you press the camera button, the flash will also fire automatically.
In the second curtain (or rear curtain) the opposite happens, the flash will only fire when the shutter curtain is closed, which usually happens a few seconds after pressing the camera button.
And how does that affect your photo?
Basically, if you want a frozen and well-lit theme, you have to use the first curtain, if you already want to get a blurry effect on your photos, that is, a trace of light and movement, better the second curtain.
In fact, the slow sync flash is usually related to the second curtain and not to the first curtain. Precisely because this effect allows a plus?Blur? In your pictures.
Now that you know what this photography technique is all about, it’s time to learn how to do it.
Before proceeding with the step-by-step procedure, keep in mind that cameras may have different settings for this purpose.
Some have this function in night mode, party mode or any other automatic shooting mode, others, as is the case with DSLRs, allow manual adjustment of all these elements as described below. Refer to your camera manual to see what your case is. Is!
Let’s move on to the steps!
The first thing to do is to choose a low shutter speed, so that the camera sensor is exposed to light for a long time, the lower the speed, the longer the shutter stays open and the more light enters the camera sensor.
Generally, the indicated setting is that the shutter speed is less than 1/60.
The next step is to synchronize the flash of your camera with the opening of the shutter, here we will use the concept of curtains, which we have already seen in this article.
If you want a blur in the movement of your images, set it so that the flash fires with the second curtain or the rear curtain. This setting is available on most external flashes and is represented by an icon similar to this one. >>> ?.
Simply press this button twice and your flash will sync with the second curtain to get the slow sync flash effect.
Most of the time, when the photographer intends to capture this effect, much of the scene is expected to appear in the photograph, so it is best to use a wide-angle lens to increase the camera’s perspective.
Then, in addition to the main theme that appears prominently in front of the camera, you can also capture part of the background of the scene.
Any experienced photographer knows that low shutter speeds require the use of a tripod; In fact, any small camera movement can completely ruin your images on this type of scenario.
So, if you want full control of camera movement, use a tripod to repair your equipment, on the other hand, if you want to take the opportunity to have lovely and spontaneous blurs in your image, hold the camera in your hands. Anyway, it depends on the desired effect!
Are you ready to get your hands dirty and get the Slow Sync Flash effect on your images?Share your experiences below.