What is “Sync Speed”?

Most people who use flash understand that your sync speed is the maximum shutter speed with which you can use flash.  What people generally don’t know is why.

“My camera goes all the way up to 1/8000th of a second, so why can’t I use flash past 1/250th?”

Well, this is really all down to how your shutter works in a DSLR.  The types of shutters in DSLRs are called “focal-plane shutters”.

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“Do you photograph babies?”

My reply to the question posed in the title of this post is usually something along the lines of, “It depends.  What type of baby?”

Then the conversation tends to go one of three ways.

The first two answers are the obvious ones.  I either hear “a little boy” or, not surprisingly, “a little girl”.

The third answer is my favourite, and the one I seem to hear most often;  “It’s a baby [insert random non-human species here].”

It’s not that I have anything against kids, you understand, but if you want the absolute best photographs of your new children, go find somebody who’s good at photographing babies and LOVES doing it.

The images will be worth it!

When it comes to animals, however, it’s a whole different story.

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Calibrating an iPad Display!

So, this is interesting, and while datacolor have had a Spyder option for a while, its calibration is limited to its own software (unless it’s changed since I last took a proper look at it).

This new offering from X-Rite, released in March, looks rather good, though, and it seems it has an API that allows other app developers to add support for the profiles it creates (meaning other software can show your images correctly, too – Hello? Lightroom Mobile? You listening, Adobe?).

There are, however, a couple of things that annoy me slightly about it, although one kind of negates the other (for me anyway).

Continue reading Calibrating an iPad Display!