Second Curtain with 450D and 430EX2

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Slicker

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Paul
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Hi,

I have a question about second curtian flash on my 400D.

I thought the whole point of this would be that the flash would only fire with the second curtain.

If I set my flash to second curtain, I get two flashes - one at the start and one at the end...

Is that right?

Paul
 
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If you're using TTL - yes as the first is used to calculate the flash exposure. When first curtain firing you still get two flashes, just it is very difficult to tell them apart.
 
ah ok..... I thought I would just get the one flash...

if I turn ETTL of will I just get one?
 
Slicker said:
if I turn ETTL of will I just get one?
Click to expand...
I think so.. but obviously then you'll need to manually select the flash power. Easy to try though ;)
 
The first flash is the pre-flash used for E-TTL exposure calculation. It goes out immediately after you press the shutter release, before the mirror rises and way before the shutter opens, so never appears in the image.
 
Don't get too enamoured with second curtain sync on a canon.

When you develop your skills and want SCS off camera, Canons get very frustrating as you can only get it with a bit of a roundabout and awkward hack.
 
Kris said:
Don't get too enamoured with second curtain sync on a canon.

When you develop your skills and want SCS off camera, Canons get very frustrating as you can only get it with a bit of a roundabout and awkward hack.
Click to expand...

Second curtain sync is not the magic bullet that some folks seem to think it is and when used inapporpriately it just causes problems, but here's the hack for it off-camera, using an optical slave to fire the radio trigger. Or you can also get it with full E-TTL using a Pocket Wizard Flex.

IMG_4870-1.jpg
 
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the reason I was trying to get the second curtain to work was I was at a party and was trying to take some pictures where I got some motion from the people in the backround and then used the flash at the end to freeze the subject....
 
Slicker said:
the reason I was trying to get the second curtain to work was I was at a party and was trying to take some pictures where I got some motion from the people in the backround and then used the flash at the end to freeze the subject....
Click to expand...

If you use normal x-sync, the subject gets frozen at the beginning of the exposure, followed by the movement. So unless the direction of the movement is both important and predictable - which it usually isn't - the result is effectively the same.

Also, with second curtain the delay in the flash firing makes is very hard to time the shot to capture spontaneous expressions and gestures. And further, with a longer shutter speed there's a tendency for the subject to move after the pre-flash fires, thinking that the picture has already been taken.
 
ahh,, al handy comments... maybe I was just trying to be to complicated!!!
 
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