Photographers only, please. Question about guide #'s, aperture, and shutter speed.?

In the olden days of film cameras, there was a sync speed that you need to use as a minimum to catch the shutter fully open. You pretty much had to stick with that and be happy, unless you were ready to experiment with the setting.

In digital, I haven't bothered to figure it out! The camera always does it for me with the TTL flash I'm using. I have the options of slow sync, front curtain and rear curtain sync, but I seem to be able to set any speed I want. The manual says that 1/250th is the fastest I can use, so I guess I never tried anything faster than that. I see they say that the camera will reduce to 1/250 if I try to set anything faster anyhow. This sounds like 1/250 is the proper sync speed then for the D200. My D70s manual says that 1/500 is the fastest and so does the D50. Maybe the heavier shutter of the D200 takes longer to get moving. (haha)

The thing about flash exposure is that the light is so bright that almost nothing else matters. As long as the shutter is open long enough to give a full frame exposure, the image will be made by the extremely brief flash of light. If you use slow sync, as you might outdoors or at night, you will have control over more things, but in a studio, I don't imagine that would be a factor.

If you are using digital, it's free, so just go for it and see what works. If you are using film, set the camera on the lightning bolt and it will work. You can figure out what that speed is (usually 1/125 for vertical travel metal shutters or 1/60 for horizontal travel fabric shutters) and use anything slower. If you have a leaf shutter, it might sync as fast as 1/500th.

Personally I always use the aperture priority mode first and let the camera determine what the shutter speed should be and then adjust it to get the picture I want.

I'd worry more about your depth of field. For portraits I use a f/4.0 to a f/5.6 to get shallow enough depth of field to soften the background but deep enough to keep all my model's features in focus.

Fellow Canon 50D user here, but you don't need a 50D to learn shutter speeds. Part of the holy trinity of photography my friend; the shutter speed, the aperture and the light. 8000 means the shutter speed is 1/8000 second long. That's pretty quick. That's going to stop any movement whatsoever. 30" shutter speed means 30 seconds long. Imagine how much movement (motion) can take place when the sensor is capturing information (light) for 30 seconds. Careful though, too long a shutter speed and all you'll get is a white screen (too much light), to fast a shutter speed and you'll get a black screen (not enough light). Pro's know the right mixture. But this might help too...

hard point. look into on yahoo or google. that will can assist!

well ..I don't think you will find a so called corect formula for this just because the relation between shutter speed and aperture it is not something static. Depends by your needs ...sometimes you want a fast exposure and if you don't care about depth of field you take the smallest f number. ... so ..do some experimets ..keep the records about each frame settings ...and decide ...

I let the camera determine the shutter speed needed. If you do it manually, the camera histrogram will tell you.

It depends on the ambient light levels also. Your camera should have a max sync speed listed in its manual. I would use the maximum speed. As flash is in the milli second range, a longer shutter speed should be unnecessary.

I haven't done any flash photography myself in a VERY LONG TIME but it seems to me that once you connect the flash to the camera, the camera automatically sets the shutter speed at 1/60 or 1/128 or something like that. I would assume the guide number has already taken that into consideration.

See if the answer is here:
http://www.connectedphotographer.com/issues/issue200405/00001288001.html