2nd Curtain flash

I went to watch a 24Hr mountain bike race over the weekend & tried to snap a few of those 'motion blur' type of shots - but not to much avail. Am i doing something wrong? I set my flash to '2nd Curtain' and, with the camera (K200d) in various modes, snapped away but without getting the desired effect. Y'know, sharp image with a bit of blur trailing behind? Anyway, i don't think i experimented enough wit respect to shutter speeds - though went down to 1/30 and stayed around 1/50 - 1/60. Maybe that just wasn't slow enough?
Anyone have any tips/advice regarding this sort of shot?

Cheers.

Do you have a photo for us, that would tell us more then a thousand words.

With panning and auto sport I'm around the 1/80 to 1/160 depending the speed of the cars, the faster they go the faster the shutter speed goes since it is simply imposable to pan a very fast car for long.

I personally use curtain flash to stop a moving subject from moving!
I think the best way would be a longer shutter speed, panning with the subject and useing the curtain flash just to freeze the subject after the blur. Or use a slightly slow shutter speed and flash if you dont want to pan.

Fraid I dont know coz ive never tryed it but ime sure someone will know and be able to help you

I did this with slow shutter speed and curtain flash, If this is the sort of thing you are aiming for.
[IMG]http://i676.photobucket.com/albums/vv129/titchgamer/hol09/IMGP1542.jpg[/IMG]

After reading this post I asked (bribed) my dog to take part in a experiment. I found that using second curtain flash works best with using wide angles (to gain some real estate), slow shutter speeds and low light conditions. (the darker, the better the effect shows) I hope this is what you mean. It's not spectacular, but the best I could manage.




Data: K10D with DA 18-55 MK II at 18 mm. Built in flash set at second curtain. Manual metering at background, deliberately under exposing by - 1 ev. 1/5 th sec. at F10. ISO 100. Handheld with a lot of praying.

HTH,
Martin.

PS, she was already on her way down from the jump, when I pressed the button.

I'd say don't pan if you want to get the trailing blur. The motion of the subject should be frozen by the flash burst, not by the subject staying in the same place in the frame as produced by panning. Experiment with shutter speed, a faster stutter speed will produce less trailing blur, but it's all down to the speed of movement across the frame by your subject.
K10D, 105mm Sigma, Metz 58AF-1, half a second on 2nd curtain synch.

Thanks everyone. Yeah, i didn't pan as i was looking to get some motion blur behind the moving subject (THeoretically 'frozen' by the flash). I don't have any examples as none of my attempts worked lol .... anyway, i think i was on the right lines but a) Wasn't dark enough for the flash to have any real effect, b) Probably needed to go down a little more on shutter speed and c) I need a willing and friendly dog to experiment on! (Nice one Malo!) - close to the effect i was looking for.

Cheers everyone

A very interesting topic thank you all.