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Re: [OM] To OM or not to OM

Subject: Re: [OM] To OM or not to OM
From: Richard Schaetzl <Richard.Schaetzl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 1999 23:04:40 +0200
Hello Ken,

I hope you weren´t offended, by my "foolish" coment. After reading your post I 
thought you intended to buy a new camera before your departure. 

KenK1ZYW@xxxxxxx wrote:

> but, the downfall is people pictures in very contrasty conditions
> (like in Greece on beach) or in this case in Armenia.
> 
> Often I can't hang a reflector on the subject, and the extreme sun precludes
> the use of f-sync of 60 (which leaves the OM2n out totally) So in theory the
> F280 w/ OM4ti should work. 

It works.

There has been some theorizing from people, who never used an F280, that
the GN in FP is to small. In my opinion they are wrong. 

What´s the typical distances we are taking people/portrait shoots? 

I think nobody want´s to go closer than 1m  and at 4m seems to be the
border for portrait style photography, longer distances tend to have
this "sniper" look.
The GN chart of my F280 show an distance of 1.8m for f/1.4-1/2000s, 0.9m
for f/2.8-1/2000s and 0.5m for f/5.6-1/2000s.

You think that´s low?
 
No, that are the _minimum_ distances you have to keep in order not to
_overflash_ your subject. 

In FP mode the flash always fires full power, only the aperture and
shutter can regulate the amount of light the film is reaching. The
camera has no shorter time than 1/2000s to regulate the flash, so one
should not come closer than this numbers indicate. In practice, the
distance to be keept, should be even bigger, because GN don´t include
natural light.
So the real danger of overflashing exist, there is no lack of flash
power.

You might object, that the GN goes really low by stoping down the
aperture. 

No problem, if you are in need to use small apertures, you always can
revert to the 1/60s-sync OTF flash photography.  
Anyway the F70 can not sync obove 1/125s, so this camera has to stop
down like any OM to sync fill in flash (no problem with an 28-200mm
lens, they are already stoped down while full open), the gain is just
one stop. BTW, even the big bucks 1/250s-sync cameras use slow 1/60s
sync for fill-in in there program modes, to better balance the ambient
light on smaller apertures.

> This has got to be the funkyest flash system with
> very little written about it from mother Oly. 

Yeah, that´s a pitty they should have explained it better, so we don´t
had to use trial and error to find out how the balancing works.
They were more succesfull in selling it to other manufactors.

> Contrast that with the N70
> (and other contemporary) flash, fill flash, front and rear curtain flash,
> auto flash bracketing, etc - don't get me wrong I'm a zuikoholic big time;
> but.......

How many of them can do automatic FP mode exposures?

You do much rear curtain flash photography? It works best with slow sync
times. Can be done with OM too (of course with OTF flash control). You can
completly avoid this ghost images and get nice blured images with FP
mode slow shutter speeds and camera on MANUAL, can the N70 do this? 

Regards

Richard


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