 Jessica K. Cunningham |
Half of Photo is Black I just got a Busy Bee set from Alien Bees. The first two images came out fine. From that point on, however, I have not been able to get a picture. Half of the image is always black. It follows the way my camera turns - on the bottom when I hold it level and on the side when I turn it to the side. But when I go outside and shoot a couple, they are fine. This may be a no-brainer to someone but I just cannot figure out what I am doing wrong. My camera is a Canon 5d, recently fixed.
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- Gregory LaGrange Contact Gregory LaGrange Gregory LaGrange's Gallery |
You've made your shutter speed too high. Sync speed is a term to describe the shutter speed that you need to have when using flash. The shutter opens, the flash goes off, the shutter closes. If you set the shutter speed too high, the shutter will start to close before the flash goes off, making part of the picture dark. If you look at a camera's specifications, you'll find its max sync speed listed. Whatever it is, that's the fastest you can set the shutter speed when using flash. Some may be 1/125, 1/250, or others.
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Jessica K. Cunningham |
Thanks! I finally figured this out after a while. I thought I had tried everything, but now, as usual, I am just like, duh!
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John H. Siskin |
Hi Jessica, I did an article on strobe sync that has a lot of information on slaving strobes: www.siskinphoto.com/magazine/zpdf/sync.pdf. Basically, the shutter has an opening and a closing curtain. In order to make a fast shutter speed, the closing curtain starts to travel before the opening curtain finishes moving, so some part of the sensor is always covered. Some manufacturers have created a longer strobe duration for a shorter sync, but I’m not sure that it’s very useful. This only works with proprietary strobes, so not with the Bees. I hope you enjoy your new strobes. Thanks, John
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