Homebody Photo Tip: Rear Curtain Flash...Whaa?

     Whaa?  That’s the reaction I had when I first learned of the rear curtain flash photography technique.

     I was watching a DVD about my new DSLR camera several years back.  It was my first DSLR and I had the camera for several months, but was still struggling to make good images with it.  Although I was familiar with the basics of exposure like f/stops, shutter speed, ISO, etc., I was confused about a lot of things:  White Balance, whaa?

     The DVD cleared up White Balance and a whole lot more for me. The DVD also introduced me to the rear curtain flash setting on the camera’s pop-up flash unit.  I was amazed at the wild and interesting results with this technique.  Armed with my new knowledge about my DSLR I burst forth into the world and started to make some better images.

     I was never a huge fan of flash, with its harsh skin/red-eyes effect that I commonly got.  However, with my DSLR I could use rear curtain flash to allow mixing of the natural light present in a scene with the flash to give a better-exposed, more realistic image.  You could also get some wild and crazy effects with it too if you played with it.

     To briefly explain rear curtain flash:  A normal flash typically fires at a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second.  It is synchronized to fire when the shutter is fully open for that brief 1/60th of a second.  It’s great at freezing the action during many normal activities.

     Rear curtain flash is synchronized to fire when the shutter is closing.  It uses a longer shutter speed, typically 1 second.   But other shutter speeds can also be effective.  The camera records the natural, ambient, light in a scene, as well as any movement during this one-second interval.  As the flash fires just before the shutter closes, it records a sharper image as well.

     Many DSLRs and point and shoots will have scene mode settings such as “night portrait.”  This is an automatic way to achieve the interesting effects of rear curtain flash.  Many DSLRs will also allow you to take full control of the rear curtain flash feature so you can experiment to your heart’s content.

     Although the two photos accompanying this post are only snapshots, I can assure you Giuliana and I had a lot of fun playing with rear curtain flash.  Give it a try.

     Kings Park Photo Club:  Meets the third Thursday of every month at the Kings Park Library at 7 PM (next meeting is on February 20, 2014).  Check out our members’ work on display at the People’s Bank, on Indian Head Road.

     Thanks for reading, if you have any suggestions for topics please post them in the comments.