Help needed please

I would like to take high speed shots of water drops .. I know its not an original idea but I wnat to learn the theory behind it.. I have a
K10D + AF360FGZ Flash and it seems the fastest I can fire it at is 1/180.. I am guessing I am setting it up wrong but don't quite understand how to do it..

Any help would be very much appreciated
Thank you
Peter

You can use your flash/camera combination at up to the maximum shutter speed which I think is 1/4000th/sec. You have to use High Speed Synch mode to achieve it. The manuals will tell you how. Make sure your camera has the latest firmware. To check, turn off the camera, hold the 'Menu' button and turn the camera on. The firmware version will be displayed and should be 1.30

HS Synch was missing from the original firmware I think.

thank you, I think 1/4000th/sec should do it all I need to do now is get a lens to keep up with it.. I do have that firmware.. I did manage to do that
I have read the manual but it is not very "Pete" friendly. I will re read it and try again.. Unless someone can explain it in a simple form for me and not "tech speak" as it is in the manual.. I often look through the manual and think that it was written for someone who knows how to do it anyhow

Thank you
Pete

hs synch is a good suggestion, but there is another way....
in a darkened room with a darker background, your "shutter speed" is controlled by your flash duration.
therefore setting your flash to it's lowest setting and your aperture (which controls your exposure with flash) wide, and shutter speed can be anywhere from 1/180 down to bulb.
) properly, you'll get "Shutter speeds" well beyond the cameras 1/4000sec top speed.

for example, i use three flashes (one pentax 500ftz, and two vivitar 283's (my viv's have a peice of wire plugged into two of the holes where the auto sensor normally resides, to "short out " the flash to it's lowest setting) to do high speed shots.

Besides, remember 1/4000 second is only 1/4000 per slice as the shutter travels across the sensor plane. It still takes much longer for the entire sensor to be fully exposed, so you will not really get the high speed you want.

The af360gz flash at, lets say 1/64th power, is about 1/20000. Plenty fast to stop any action you want. You just need to be in a dark enough room and have the flash close enough to light your subject.

So like Don says just set your shutter speed to what ever you need to kill the ambient light, if any, and use the flash to stop the action.

Last month's Digital Photo had a tuturial on taking pictures of water droplets. They used a standard lens and pop-up flash set to 1/200th at F11 (to ensure depth of field) all outdoors to get the results. They used a straw to provide the drop and suggested pressing the shutter just as the drop left the bottom of the straw with just a few cms between the straw and the surface. The results needing enhancing as they were underexposed, but not by enought to loose detail.

I still have the article. There was no mention of high speed flash sync. Though I have read about using B setting in a dark room with the flash triggered by a device that reacts to sound. Still no mention of high speed flash sync there either!

I was under the impression that a standard flash speed was sufficient to freeze a water drop.

HS sync is only useful if you have a lot of ambient light that is superfluous to requirements. Taking a picture of a person against the light is an example. You are using the flash to light the face, and you want a high shutter speed to reduce the light from behind the face. In this situation, 1/180 is too slow, so you switch to HSS.

But it's no use at all for photographing fast moving subjects because the shutter opens at different times, and you could see the subject twice!

When you take a flash picture in relatively low light, the shutter speed is irrelevant - it's the duration of the flash itself that counts, and this might be 1/10,000 of a second or less.

So sit in a not-too-brightly lit room, set everything to Manual and experiment until the light is right. The drops will seem to be stationary.

G

Thanks to all of you for the advice and guidance Ishall experiment with all of this over the weekend and if I get photos that I hope for I shall post them here
Thank you again

Peter