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Re: [OM] Super FP flash

Subject: Re: [OM] Super FP flash
From: "John A. Prosper" <prosper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 09:03:27 -0500 (EST)

On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, Tomoko Yamamoto wrote:

|According to Shipman, the F280 is the electronic equivalent of an FP
|flashbulb.  In the FP mode, the F280 can "spread out" the light to occupy a
|longer time, say 1/40 second.  The light emitted is not continuous, but it
|is pulsed on and off, 20,000 times per second.  To the film, this light
|appears to be continuous light.
|
|A number of people seem to be complaining about the weak power of the F280.
| In the FP mode, the F280 is meant to be used in daylight.  It is not
|intended to be used to make the indoors at night look like  daylight for a
|long period of time.  I would think all the on-camera flashes have
|limitations.

The complaint was not so much against the F280 as a general
purpose, consumer grade flash per se: it is that there is no
pro level Super FP flash.  Those who use flash seriously
(for portraiture, wedding photography, location work, etc.)
tend to require a certain level of power to function
effectively.  With a guide number of 91, the F280 is
decidely non-pro for traditional serious flash photography.

For serious flash usage, you want a flash with enough juice
to allow one to consistently use the sharpest apertures
(i.e., f/5.6, f/8, f/11) in order to produce the finest
photos.  This needs to be true even if one is employing
umbrellas, reflectors, diffusion boxes or more sophisticated
light modifiers where the flash output is bounced off or
filtered through another surface (thereby attenuating the
light output even more).

Olympus released a pro level flash with the T45; so it was
reasonable to expect them to follow suit when Super FP was
introduced with their flagship cameras or, at the very
least, provide support for major third party flash vendors
(eg., Metz, Sunpak, Quantum) by supplying them with enough
details so they could support Super FP with the Olympus
modules for their flashes.  This is just another way of
supporting the OM system as a professional camera option.
But Olympus seemingly gave up on serious pro 35mm support
and marketing several years ago. :-(


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