Re: [Leica] Studio Flash Photography with M6 TTL

["Roy Zartarian" <royzart@connix.com>]

Given the 1/50th sync speed of the M family, I'd mount the camera on 
a tripod and expose at 1/30th.  That way the ambient light would open 
the shadows a bit.  That's the approach I took with my last protrait 
shoot (tho I used an R8, older 90 elmarit which has fantastic 
portrait qualities at f/4, and a single studio head into an 
unbrella). Also, having the camera on a tripod provided more freedom 
for me to work with the subject.

You don't mention the type of film you're using, but if it's color 
neg, I've found  that slight overexposure doesn't hurt.

Roy

On  1 Jun 99 at 20:06, The Adler Family wrote:

> Dear LUGers,
> 
> I have recently bought a M6 TTL, Summicron 35 and Elmarit 90, all
> new. As this was a *somewhat* impulsive purchase, I must now sell my
> Nikon and Contax systems. The Contax sale poses no problem, but I do
> use the Nikon system to generate some income from portrait studio
> work. I use 3 Nikon flashes with umbrellas and backdrop for this
> paying work.
> 
> My dilema is this; I would like to continue to do an occasional
> portrait shoot using my Nikon flashes in conjunction with the M6. I
> use a Sekonic meter to measure incident flash and then manually
> adjust flash output. The Sekonic measures incident light from the
> flashes either at 1/30sec or 1/60sec shutter speed. I consider
> 1/30sec too slow for portraits (people tend to blink, twitch, not to
> mention my espresso shakes) and the M6 has a synch speed of 1/50
> (frankly, I think this is a rather unusual synch speed, but that's
> another thread). The Sekonic meter will show me incident light in
> increments of 1/10 of a stop (e.g., f8, f8 & 1/10, f8 &2/10).
> 
> My theory as to how to adjust flash output using the Sekonic to
> correlate to the 1/50 synch speed of the M6 is as follows. Let's
> take this example: I want to take the shot at 1/50 f4. Because 1/50
> is 1.2 times the amount of exposure achieved with 1/60, I want the
> Sekonic to show, at a speed of 1/60, an f-stop that is 0.2 times
> wider open than the f-stop of the camera: that would be f2.8 + 8/10
> stop. Assuming that the 1/10 stop indicators on the Sekonic
> represent increments of light flow (not diameter), is my theory
> correct?
> 
> Of course, I'll be shooting some rolls to test this out, but I
> thought I'd run it past the experts to see if I was making a
> material blunder.
> 
> Thanks in advance for any help you can give.
> 
> Bob Adler
> 
>