Want a faster flash sync?
By jason mossburg
2 March 2007
I have always been very disappointed with having to settle for a max flash sync of 1/250 or 1/500 of a sec. So I decided that I would make it my own personal goal to find a way to get a faster flash sync. Since I work at a camera store it made it quite easy to test a variety of different methods to try and increase the max flash sync but no matter what I tried there was no way to get the camera to expose the picture properly. Then on one grand afternoon I was helping a customer and accidentally put a Canon speedlight on a Nikon dslr body and to my surprise it worked. After finishing up with the customer I went back to the Canon flash and tried a variety of different tests with it. What I found was that with almost any Canon brand flash you could achieve a flash sync of 1/8000 of a sec and if you already have a Nikon SB600 or SB800 the Canon flash will also work as an on camera flash in commander mode. What this means is you get a lot more control over your camera and your flash. But there is two major downfalls first you have to manually set the power of the flash and you also have to shoot in manual mode. Personally I prefer to manually set my flash power so it wasn't a big deal for me but if you aren't use to setting it manually it can be kind of tricky at first. Ok now I will tell you exactly how you get it to work. What you have to do to get them to work properly together is have your Nikon dslr in ttl mode for the flash and you set the Canon flash in either slave mode or manual mode. If you want to use the Nikon SB 600 or 800 with it you put the Canon speedlight on your cameras hot shoe mount and set the flash to commander mode manual. Then whenever you take a picture the Canon and the Nikon Flashes will both go off.
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