Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Hi All,

I recently had some family over on the weekend and we decided it had been a while since we took a family photo.

So I setup the little make shift studio in the basement and started taking a few shots.

I have a D90 and a Elinchrome DLite Starter studio kit. Its triggered by Elinchrome Skyports. I know the sync speed of the D90 is 1/200, so i left it at that.

I did notice however that the bottom edge, or right edge in portrait, i still have a very very faint black trail still. Its not super apparent as if i was way off on my sync speed, but its still there. I kinda looks like light falloff. Its not a bad effect really in lanscape... it actually worked out for a few shots i took... but i know it shouldn't be there.

Sure I could drop the shutter speed, and I could live with it, but I just wanted to double check that at the rate sync speed i SHOULD be able to get nice clean crisp edges.... not faint black trails.

Could there be another issue that I might be missing that could be causing it? Im just a bit upset that im not really getting a full sync speed of 1/200... as stated by nikon themselves.

thanks

Even though you are at the rated flash sync speed other factors can still come into play, especially your wireless triggers. My guess would be that your wireless triggers can't fully handle 1/200 so I would simply shoot at 1/160.

second. I've seen that with 1/200 and 1/160 should clear that up.

Thats what I figured. Just wanted to make sure.
I guess I'll have to work with 1/160. Thanks for the super quick responses.

Note that some cameras are slower that their rated sync speed. The cameras ability to sync varies from serial number to serial number. Its a buyers crap shoot really (pardon the pun). There is no way to know for sure until you start pushing your sync limits.

And yes, it even happens to Nikon

Actually it's very rare for a camera to be enough slower than its rated sync to be noticable (You'd need 1/3 of a stop variance to notice it).

However studio strobes often have burn times long enough that you can't shoot them at your max sync speed, burn times are much longer for strobes than for speedlights (which tend to be around 1/1000 of a second at full power, shorter than that for lower-power bursts). Wireless triggers (especially cheaper ones) are also notorious for being on the slow side.

Unless you aren't getting full sync speed with a dedicated flash on the hotshoe, it's probably not your camera. If it is, get it serviced.