Mickey,
I think you misunderstood a few of my points here. I have not endorsed the
use of the OM-2 as a flash camera. The original question posed to me was
about slow sync with TTL, and while thinking about this I found a solution
*not* involving the OM-2. Wayne H. has come up with a more general solution
for this, so I'm left in the dust.
However, a side effect of the double-camera solution is very interesting.
Think about two cameras (with lenses) pointed at an object. You decide you
want to have 1:1 flash and ambient. Set both cameras to auto, same
aperture, same ISO. Set flash on one of the cameras, and set compensation
on that camera to 1 stop under. Fire both cameras at once. Voila, the
exposing camera integrates light OTF untill correct exposure has been
reached, and during exposure a flash contributes half the wanted light.
Here I've deliberately omitted that the ambient will also be measured by
the flash camera (1/60 of it), so highest accuracy will be for dimmer
ambient lighting.
You could accomplish the same thing with Normal Auto, IF you point the
flash (or rather sensor) straight at the subject. You could also accomplish
the same thing IF you always knew the effective guide number of the flash
(Read: IF you own a flash meter). Personally I think there's a lot more
people owning two or more bodies on this list than there are people owning
flash meters!
Thomas Bryhn
At 06:01 04.11.02, Mickey Trageser wrote:
This is an interesting thought, but I get hung up on the fact that the OM2
will establish a flash to ambient light ratio that will exist to be exposed
by any other camera at the same instant. On the other camera, you can adjust
the overall exposure by aperture or film speed, but you still have the same
balance. You still don't get control of that balance at the other camera.
But you can control the balance at the taking camera by calculating the
exposure by filmspeed, guide number and distance. You can reposition the
flash without recalculating in order to intensify or diminish the amount of
light the flash contributes to the scene. But you do all this without TTL.
I don't see how going through the trouble to set up the OM2 as a TTL drone
is any easier/better than calculating exposures, using a flash meter, or
using a non TTL flash setting and counter-adjusting the aperture as needed.
I believe that any of the OM cameras will fire a flash on a PC cord at any
speed of 1/60 or less.
Frankly, the fact that the OM2 in TTL flash mode will keep the shutter open
until it's hunger for light is satisfied, is a negative in my book. I've
lost too many images because the flash was too short and the shutter too
long. For that reason, I've removed the shoe from the OM2 and only use it
for available light shooting, at which it excels, or with manual off camera
flash.
TTL flash is wonderful for portable on-site on-demand flash control built in
to the camera and flash. It's far more reliable that the on flash non TTL
auto modes. At its introduction the OM2 TTL flash was a breakthrough. But
the OM TTL flash system is not designed to support fill flash, so it's all
manual and semi-automated workarounds. But I deal with it as I need to. For
me, I put auto fill flash and its variants in the wonderbrick culture. I
don't need it, and it's not going to lure me away from the system I use.
I really like the thought process here. If someone gets this idea going, I
look forward to hearing about it.
-Mickey
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