I have owned a number of leaf shutter lenses over the years, most on cheap rangefinders like the Canonet. There was a short period of time where you could ditch the SLR, ditch the interchangeable lens, and pay very little money for beautiful 1/500 flash sync. It really does open up an entire world. I went around outside with some gels and complementary filters. I had no idea that leaf shutters had gotten three times faster.
That said, 1/500 is actually very good at close-ish portrait distances, like 3 meters or so. Take a typical flash unit with GN 36 and ISO 100 sensitivity. Underexposing ambient light by one stop in direct sunlight means about 1/500 at f/11, so you need a guide number of (3 meters) x (11 f-number) = 33.
Incidentally, digital cameras with electronic shutters can do this much cheaper, but for various reasons nice cameras do not generally use electronic shutters.
And you can get leaf-shutter lenses for fairly cheap. You can even get fantastic, beautiful leaf-shutter lenses with sharp images and big apertures for cheap. Old photo studios have been getting rid of them in the switch to digital. These lenses are amazing, they just don't work with the camera system you want to use them with.
>Incidentally, digital cameras with electronic shutters can do this much cheaper, but for various reasons nice cameras do not generally use electronic shutters.
I admit that I haven't thought about this for a while (I don't actually use flash a lot) but my impression was that most focal-plane shutters are rolling shutters or moving slits of some sort; at high speeds there's no point where the frame is completely open. Whereas leaf shutters have that at all speeds.
Most of the leaf-shutter lenses I have are for my old MF and LF film cameras. He's right about them being like watches. One real issue with using older lenses is that there aren't a lot of good repair folks left who know how to service them. I've got a real nice vintage Konica rangefinder with a busted shutter and there's literally one guy who might have the parts.
Some electronic shutters are global, and they work like leaf shutters. The D40 is like that and you can officially sync at 1/500, but I have used flash at much higher speeds like 1/2000.
The D40 sensor is not great by today’s standards, though.
That said, 1/500 is actually very good at close-ish portrait distances, like 3 meters or so. Take a typical flash unit with GN 36 and ISO 100 sensitivity. Underexposing ambient light by one stop in direct sunlight means about 1/500 at f/11, so you need a guide number of (3 meters) x (11 f-number) = 33.
Incidentally, digital cameras with electronic shutters can do this much cheaper, but for various reasons nice cameras do not generally use electronic shutters.
And you can get leaf-shutter lenses for fairly cheap. You can even get fantastic, beautiful leaf-shutter lenses with sharp images and big apertures for cheap. Old photo studios have been getting rid of them in the switch to digital. These lenses are amazing, they just don't work with the camera system you want to use them with.