{"id":1003006,"date":"2010-01-25T09:02:35","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T14:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/?p=1003006"},"modified":"2010-01-24T15:15:53","modified_gmt":"2010-01-24T20:15:53","slug":"high-speed-sync-doesnt-work-on-a-canon-50d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/photography\/2010\/01\/25\/high-speed-sync-doesnt-work-on-a-canon-50d\/","title":{"rendered":"When High Speed Sync Doesn’t Work on a Canon 50D"},"content":{"rendered":"

After months of consulting multiple manuals, books, forums, and experts, I finally figured out why my Canon 50D + 580EXII flash wouldn’t work in high speed sync mode. That is, when I turned on the flash the maximum shutter speed was 1\/250s. No matter what I set the ISO, shutter speed, mode, or aperture to, I could never get shutter speed faster than 1\/250s. No matter what mode and settings I applied to the flash and\/or camera, as soon as the flash was ready, shutter speed dropped to 1\/250s. (I could easily take pictures without flash at speeds faster than 1\/250s as lighting conditions and settings permitted.)<\/p>\n

If you’re encountering this problem on a 50D (and likely other Canon models) here’s what you (probably) need to do:
\n<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Turn the camera on. The flash does not need to be attached. <\/li>\n
  2. Press the MENU button<\/li>\n
  3. Rotate the Main (top) Dial to select the orange camera menu<\/em><\/li>\n
  4. Use the Quick Control (back) Dial to select “C.Fn I Exposure”<\/li>\n
  5. Press the setting button (the one in the middle of the Quick Control Dial)<\/li>\n
  6. Rotate the Quick Control Dial until you see option 7, Flash speed sync in Av mode. You will probably note that option 2, 1\/250s (fixed) is selected.<\/li>\n
  7. Press the setting button. <\/li>\n
  8. Rotate the Quick Control Dial to select either option 0, Auto, or option 1, 1\/250 – 1\/60sec. auto<\/li>\n
  9. Press the setting button.<\/li>\n
  10. Press the MENU button.<\/li>\n
  11. Press the MENU button.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    You can now use high speed sync as advertised. <\/p>\n

    I think the default is option 0, Auto. However if you’ve ever chosen option 2, 1\/250s (fixed), then high speed sync is disabled. I suspect I did this last summer when I was mostly shooting bugs at night, and using flash for main light rather than birds in daytime with fill flash. <\/p>\n

    For me, this means I can finally use fill flash for bird shots. This is a huge help with backlit subjects, and when you’re looking up at a bird into the sky it’s almost always backlit. These two shots of a Downy Woodpecker demonstrate. The left has fill flash shot through a Better Beamer. The right doesn’t. Both were ISO 400, f\/5.6. The left was shot at 1\/800s; the right at 1\/640s in Av mode.<\/p>\n

    \"withandwithoutfillflash\"<\/p>\n

    You can sometimes lighten up the shadows in the non-flashed shot in Photoshop\/Lightroom or equivalent if you’re shooting raw and it isn’t too dark, but the sky gets blown out and you pick up a lot of noise. This one didn’t come out too badly, but I still prefer the shot with flash, and many photos are not this salvageable:<\/p>\n

    \"Cleaned<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    After months of consulting multiple manuals, books, forums, and experts, I finally figured out why my Canon 50D + 580EXII flash wouldn’t work in high speed sync mode. That is, when I turned on the flash the maximum shutter speed was 1\/250s. No matter what I set the ISO, shutter speed, mode, or aperture to, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[143,123,249,250],"class_list":["post-1003006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","tag-50d","tag-canon","tag-fill-flash","tag-high-speed-sync"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1003006"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1003019,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003006\/revisions\/1003019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1003006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1003006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1003006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}