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Re: [OM] Request for Flash suggestion/education / OM-2 substitute.

Subject: Re: [OM] Request for Flash suggestion/education / OM-2 substitute.
From: DBellamy2k@xxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 08:41:59 EDT
dear p.j,

 > I was tinkering with my OM-2 this weekend while shooting some wedding 
stills
 > of the flowers.  I set the camera and flash on a tripod and used TTL Auto.
 > I bounced the flash on the ceiling and it was insufficient to close the
 > shutter, so it stayed open until it was satisfied.  This produced
  excellent results in a candle-lit room.
 > How can I do this with an OM-4 or 4T? (It wants to close the shutter and
 > give me the 'under' signal.) >>

Another possibility which would again involve a bit more trouble that with 
the OM-2:

instead of going for a very wide apereture you could take normal exposures 
with a very narrow aperture (advantage: better depth of focus) without thr 
flash mounted, say go for f/16 and you might get a reading longer than 1sec 
if the light is dim.

You could have the flash already charged, hand-held, pointing the right way 
or mounted on a bracket or tripod but not connected to the camera and then 
'paint' with the flash by firing from the 'Teat' button. If you have f/16 for 
instance, for many subjects this will underexpose with the flash, so the TTL 
metering on the camera will still have a way to go before closing the shutter.

Of course there is the danger of way overexposing a subject, because the 
shutter wouldn't close fast enough if the flash was too bright firing on 
'Test'. But you could just work this out using the Guide Number and the 
aperture you are using, what distance the flash will cover compared with the 
actual distance of the subject. You could work out the rough percentage of 
illumination which will come from the flash versus the ambient light.

For this obviously you need exposures longer than 1 second, to give you time 
to fire the flash yourself! Of course, you could try it on 'B' too.

With the ambient light level you could check the exposure needed at f/2 say. 
If it is 1/15 sec, you know at f/16 it would be about 4 sec, so you know how 
much time you will have on Auto (at maximum - it will be shortened when you 
fire the flash), and then use Auto or B.

Fiddly, but it might be fun and pass a couple of hours!  ;O)

By the way, I have never really tried any of this - just in my imagination 
right now.

Dave Bellamy.
http://members.aol.com/synthchap/

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