Faster syncspeed?

I'm wondering if there is a way fire the flash normally above 1/180th of a second.
The K10D automatically shutdown the trigger when it gets above that speed.
I was able to get it to fire at 1/200 by placing a p-ttl flash on it and setting it to 1/180 when you then take the flash off the shutterspeeds go to 1/200 and with a manual flash you are able to fire at those speeds.
There weren't any black lines because of the shutter so I wonder if it can take 1/250 or even faster without complications

Isn't that the High Speed Synch (HSS) function Stefan?

EDIT: Page 181 of this manual explains the settings.

HSS is available in Tv and M modes only it seems. The AF360/540FGZ needs to be set to HSS as well.

Thank you Peter but that wasn't what I was looking for.
HSS use a flash trick (it strobes) to get higher sync speed I want to use normal flash to do that.
Just see it as my goal to get black line of the shutter in my photo

I've already tried to get a faster speed by putting the P-TTL flash on HSS and put the camera on the desired speed and then take it off but that didn't work, this time the camera was smarter then me

But what's the point? A flash is much shorter than the shutter anyway, so unless your ambient light is very strong compared to the flash, the flash will be your main source of light.

Typically, flash duration is less than 1/1000 s, and on low power even shorter.

Stefan,
You can't get a higher sync speed
HSS is not a 'trick' - it's a necessity.

1/180s is the faster speed at which the leading and trailing curtains of the shutter are both open, exposing the whole of the sensor to the effect of the flash.

When the shutter speed is faster than 1/180s, the trailing curtain will start moving before the leading curtain has finished its travel. If the flash were to go off for such faster speeds then you'd only get a tiny bit of the frame exposed by flash - the rest would be black!

HSS works by 'peppering' the scene with light bursts so that the moving slit formed by the leading & trailing curtain exposes each slice of the sensor as it moves

The *ist-D could do Wireless HSS with the pop-up... but then it didn't have SR. IIRC, the current SR-equipped bodies can't do wireless HSS with the pop-up because of some power supply issues.

If you have TWO AF360/540 guns you can do wireless HSS

Matt

yes precisely, I want to ambient light to be darker and the best way to do that is increase the shutterspeed.
You can of course also lower the ISO or use a higher f-number but the problem is you then also need more flash power and that's sometimes limited.

Don't worry Matt I know about HSS and that was not my question.

I've shots taken with 1/200 flash sync on the K10D so you can go faster than 1/180
If you've a P-TTl flash and a manual flash you can do it and of the 20 shots i've taken non had a shutter on it so I wonder how far you can go.
If you can get 1/250 Pentax would be in par with many of the rest of the camera's and who knows how far it might go.

I wonder if SR is to blame since like you said if you've two P-TTL flashes you can do HSS in wireless.

ps. I'll make a photo and upload it so that you can see that it goes down to 1/200, still haven't find a way to get the trigger to work at faster speeds

Stefan,
Well, it's not really going to help you that much anyway
1/180 to 1/200 isn't even half a stop, and 1/180 to 1/250 is, what, half a stop?

For what you want to achieve, your best option is an ND filter (apart from another flash)

Matt

Because of all the talk about beer
[IMG]http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk244/Anvh/_IGP8240.jpg[/IMG]
Straight out of the camera JPG with EXIF intact.
Af540 and Cactus v4 wireless trigger.

I just see I should have focused a bit better

Yeah I know but it's still half a stop and who knows maybe it can make it to 1/320 with a couple of misses sometimes or maybe it can go to 1/400 that's already a stop.

ND filter would also Harm the flash light so that isn't on option either.

Stephan... here is a little trick:

shoot a white wall in the dark, with your flash... starting at the current synch speed and f8 and moving up in increments from there until you get a solid black frame....

now look at each frame to see how much black you got in each frame... the black is not gonna have any flash lighting anything...

if (let us just pretend for example) 1/400 of a second gets you a half white half black frame then you know how to frame your outdoor shot.... the part of the frame that is lit by your flash is where your subject you are trying to light should be.... hold your camera vertically or upside down for example so the flash lights your subject and the part of the frame you know your flash isn't going to light is say blue sky, for one example...


does that make any sense to you?

Don that was exactly my plan the only problem is the K10D stop triggering the flash when you go past 1/160 (1/180)
Normally it wouldn't trigger on 1/200 either but by change I came across this little trick.

I was hoping I could use the flash in HSS and set the shutterspeed on a higher speed and then remove the flash and use the Cactus to trigger it but that didn't work

nope no worky for me either... sorry.
my only other suggestions are:
try on camera p-ttl flash set to HS with off camera flash using a "Smart" optical slave that will ignore the pre-flash...

or use a second pentax p-ttl flash set to HS.....

An idea (which I lack the skills to test, but Stefan and Don strike me as the kind of chaps to be better at this stuff than me!)


What if you use a wired external trigger to set the camera off, then split the cable so that you can use some electrical trickery to make the trigger release both the shutter AND the flash.

You'll probably need some sort of delay on the flash trigger, but a monostable or similar with a variable timing resistor should take care of that.

Yeah that might work Don, still need a second flash for that which I don't have so can't test

Mongoose, I'm not really into electronics but your idea might work though.
I might even get a second Cactus trigger and convert that to a wireless camera trigger maybe, don't know if you can do that?

Other option would be screwing around in the firmware, I was actually planning to do this. Already looked into the firmware once but it's still an nightmare.

I'm not really sure what the end point is on this project...

sunny sixteen rule:
iso 100, 1/125 sec shutter, and f16 aperture....
any flash can be used outdoors for fill... to get a wider aperture and faster shutter combo, use a reflector in stead of flash...

so I've never had to solve this "Problem" as it has never been a problem for me.....

Why go to so much trouble?