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(Middle-of-the-Roader: I am trying to be sarcastic with the title. Certainly, the man is doing anything but middle-of-the-road. He is very much in the harm's way and can be run over by vehicles whisking past him at any moment, which is exactly my message in this photo. I have walked past this road junction for a couple of times and seen jay-walkers like this man and impatient drivers competing for passage. I managed to take this photo with some luck because the passers-by in the foreground left a light trail to give a better spatial and time reference to the man. I handheld the GX200 and dragged the shutter to a slow speed without blurring the man, which I am going to explain why)
Flash photography, to me, wanders a bit into a territory of its own. There are different needs and reasons for using a flash, usually when the environmental light is not enough and a high ISO setup is not desirable. It is something that takes practices to master.
Let's focus on a dimly lit setting. There the exposure is mainly made at the burst of flash light and the safe shutter speed becomes less relevant for a steady image. This means that a static subject will less likely appear blurry even if the shutter is dragged to half the safe speed because its impression on the film or CCD is made at the split second of flashing. So, the exposure combo is rather controlled by the flash output and the aperture. To dial the aperture is to control the reach of the flash light, while tweaking the flash is to tune the duration of flashing, hence controlling the output. In fact, tweaking the flash cannot make the flash light go farther. It can only control the intensity of flash light in the foreground.
If you manage to follow so far, you can make use of the shutter speed to give some special visual effects on your image in flash photography. To put it simply, the shutter speed is now the tool to control how the light trails appear in the image, adding in a sense of dynamics and time to the two dimensional photo.
First, find a place with dim environmental light so that dragging the shutter speed would not give rise to much blurry subjects in the image. Then, drag the shutter speed to suit your intention. Now, turn on the flash to the second curtain slow sync. Lastly, at the desired moment, take the picture. Experiment with a number of shots, and tweak the aperture and flash so that the flash light reaches the right distance and the lighting on the foreground is complimentary.
(This is another example showing how the safe shutter speed is less relevant in steadying the subjects in flash photography. Also, this photo shows that dragging the shutter speed with the flash on can determine how extended a trail the passers-by leave in a dimly lit setting. The light trail in the foreground is more intense than the first photo partly because the aperture is wider here)
Some tips about dragging the shutter speed: to stop a passer-by walking at a normal speed across, drag the shutter to 1/30 will freeze the action; walkikng towards, make it 1/20. For a running person across the scene, freeze the action at about 1/125 or less; running towards, make it 1/80. Starting from those standards, tweak the speed slower to blur the moving subject for the desired effect.
(Leaving Satisfied: This shot was taken at a school children gathering. I found it a good idea to set up the camera at waist level at the exit way to take candid pictures of children leaving. I needn't cue them for attention or beg for smiles. They were all so satisfied that the smiles were given natrually)
Remember to turn the flash to 2nd curtain slow sync unless you want to show a clearer moving subject before the action takes place like the photo above. As regards tweaking the flash, normally slow syncing does justice to a scene without adjustment. When turning the flash to M-mode, you will certainly want to tweak it.
There are some other interesting ways to use this simple technique, if you can call this technique. I hope to show how later.
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