Daylight balanced fillflash

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Is daylight balanced fillflash doable on the Pentax 67 or 67II?

-- Chris Georgiopoulos (chrisgeorge@bigpond.com), July 30, 2000

Answers

With a sync speed of 1/30, it has it's limitations. You will either need an abundance of watt seconds or use one of the leaf shutter lenses. The 90LS can still be found on the used market and the 165LS is still produced. Good luck, Tony

-- Tony Clark (tcphoto@earthlink.net), July 30, 2000.

Hope this answer is not too late for you. I purchased the 165 LS to get around this problem, but there is another, considerably cheaper, solution that I read about a while ago. I have used it myself with a P67 and it works well.

Suppose you are taking a portrait of someone in shade under a tree and want to balance it with a sunlit background. With the camera held with the longer axis of the photo vertical (portrait) the top of your subject's head will probably not come higher that 3/4 of the way up the picture. Set the shutter speed to 1/60 and take the picture. If you have held the camera correctly (more later) and exposed correctly you will have a perfect picture.

With care you can even go one step further and use 1/125 as long as your main (flash lit) subject comes no further than 50% up the picture. An example might be flowers on a balcony with a sunlit landscape/cityscape behind.

In these instances the flash is no longer in sync, but it leaves an unlit area at the top of the picture that is not seen. You can also use it with the camera held in landscape mode if you are feeling creative.

There is a snag - you have to remember which side of the picture will not be lit by the flash and I have forgotten - not having used the technique for a couple of years. You have to make sure you hold the camera the correct way up. I will try it out again shortly, but perhaps someone else who may use this technique can remind us.

Tony

-- Tony Cunningham (cmserv@wxs.nl), August 07, 2000.


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