FREEZE THE ACTION

Jason Parnell-Brookes shows you how to capture dramatic sports images using your camera and flashgun’s high-speed sync setting

- Jason Parnell-Brookes

30 MINS We’ve all been there: you hit the pop-up flash and your shutter speed gets stuck at 1/200 sec, or you attach a flashgun and get the same thing. The flash ‘sync’ speed (the fastest shutter speed at which the camera’s sensor will be fully exposed to light from a flash) is typically 1/200 sec or 1/250 sec, and you’ll be unable to set a faster shutter speed unless you switch to manual mode. When you do this however, half the frame is dark and half is light – this is because the shutter curtains that open and close to expose the sensor to light are moving so fast that only part of the sensor is exposed when the flash fires.

So how do we get around this? By using the High Speed Sync mode on your camera and flashgun. On the Nikon DSLR we’re using it’s called Automatic focal plane flash (Auto FP). This pulses the flash many times in a fraction of a second, instead of firing once, so you get a clearly exposed image all the way through the frame. It gives the flash unit less time to recycle and so is less bright than a full-charge flash, but it makes the perfect companion when using flash to light up sports and action portraits.

1 TURN ON THE LIGHT