Jlrimages

I don't have one, so I'm not sure. But the owners manual should have that info.

If I understand you correctly, you are getting the flash to fire, and are getting a decently exposed image. But the issue is that you have a dark viewfinder prior to exposure, which keeps you from composing the image, correct? If so, you need to go in to the menu, and turn off the exposure preview for the EVF. When exposure preview is on, you see what you would get without flash. But if you turn that off, the EVF increases the gain of the EVF independent of the pending exposure.

In manual mode, flashes can be fired in one of two ways. You can attach pc sync cables from the camera to the flash, or you can use a wireless trigger. If you go wireless, then each flash needs either a receiver or an optical slave to fire the flash once it gets the signal from the trigger in the hotshoe of your camera. Some flashes have an optical slave built in - if not, you can buy a small attachment that has a slave cell in it. An optical slave reads the flash of a triggered light, and fires along with it.

Does the Fuji flash have an optical slave? Some, though not all, flashes do. If it does, you can set its power level as you would in manual mode and the slave will fire the flash.

Are your off camera flashes TTL capable and set to TTL mode? I have the v6 mark I units, and they work fine with my old Nikon SB-24s and SB-28s. Even though you can't use TTL to control the exposure, the flash needs to be set to TTL so that the trigger can send a squelch signal to the flash to control its power output.

Any Canon compatible TTL cable will work. The position of the pins on the Fuji and Canon hot shoes match, thus enabling you to use any Canon compatible cable. I bought the cheapest Canon compatible ttl cable from B&H, and it worked fine with the Nissin i40 speedlight.

If you are using speed lights as your lights, particularly when you are using lights from different manufacturers, it is worth it to invest in some basic, manual only triggers that have a hot shoe on them. That way you always have a method of connection if a speed light doesn't have a 3.5 mm jack or a pc port. I don't know much about the different Yongnou triggers and their comparability capabilities . But Phottix has some rock solid trigger/receiver units. So does Cactus. And the Cactus v6 triggers sync up to 1/1000 sec which is nice if you have a Fuji x-100 system which can sync at any shutter speed.

To use the EF-X500 flash off camera in TTL mode, you need a flash on camera that can send the TTL signal to the EF-X500 to get it to fire at the proper power. Currently, the only way to do that is with another EF-X500.

I haven't seen an EF-X500, but if there is a pc port or 3.5 mm jack port, you should be able to connect a pocket wizard to the flash. But since pocket wizards are manual only triggers, your settings are dependent upon the exposure you want. You'll need to meter the flash and set accordingly, or take test shots and adjust using the histogram. You need to shoot in manual mode, with shutter speed at or below the sync speed of the camera.

What power setting did you have the Einstein set to? And how did you trigger multiple flashes in the same exposure before you set the camera to bulb? Unlike some speed lights, studio strobes usually don't have a stroboscopic function to generate multiple firings in one exposure. (Some new Elinchrom strobes have this function now, but normally it is used to capture subject movement, not build up exposure - I don't believe the Einsteins have that function.) I shoot with studio strobes often, and I can't imagine a situation where I'd need to add multiple flashes from a strobe of the Einstein's power in order to get a proper exposure at 100 ISO.

Aswald said "I guess, this issue exists with other formats too. Perhaps it is more significant as previously most medium format cameras rely on leaf shutters. Would HSS be a possible solution to this issue? Granted HSS itself has issues." Yes, one of the significant differences between medium format and 35 mm based systems is almost total reliance on focal plane shutters in the 35 mm world. There are a few fixed lens cameras that use leaf shutters (Leica Q and Fuji x-100 series as an aps-c example), but all system cameras are focal plane shutter cameras. For them, HSS is the only option. But, HSS is, at best, a partial solution. According to Profoto, their B1 strobe, which supports HSS, loses one stop of flash power for every stop above the flash sync you go. So, if you use the B1's HSS function with the Fuji, to get to 1/1000 sec from Fuji's 1/125 sync speed, you lose three stops of power. That just turned a 500 w/s strobe into a speedlight. By contrast, the Hasselblad X1D, can sync at 1/2000 sec with no loss of power. Yes, leaf shutter lenses are more expensive, but, lighting gear, especially lighting gear that is light and portable, is very expensive. So, for those photographers who use lighting gear on location, the cost of the leaf shutters are well worth the price. It's no more expensive for them, and it cuts down on the bulk that they have to carry on location.

Lenses for cameras with focal plane shutters tend to cost less, as they don't have the shutter mechanism. BUT, focal plane shutters are limited in flash sync speed. On 35 mm systems, the fastest sync speeds are 1/250 sec. Because of the bigger sensor that drops to 1/125 sec. You can occasionally get some motion blur at 1/125 sec, but the biggest issue comes from the limitation in adjusting exposure when mixing ambient light with strobes. In a flash exposure, your aperture controls how much the flash adds to the exposure while shutter speed determines how much ambient light is mixed into the exposure. With a focal plane shutter at 1/125 sync, you are pretty limited in how much ambient light you can keep out of the exposure. But with a leaf shutter like in the Hasselblad X1D, which can sync at 1/2000, you can cut the ambient portion of the exposure by four full stops over the Fuji's 1/125. That's huge. It means that you can turn a bright, overexposed sky into a dark deep blue. It means you need less flash power than you'd need otherwise, which is also huge since battery powered strobes are pretty expensive. In fact, the extra cost of leaf shutter lenses is generally made up in savings on the cost of strobes. So, when Fuji announced that their new medium format camera had a focal plane shutter, every photographer throughout the world,whose work involves flash on location, let out a collective scream "Nooooooooo!!!" Fortunately Fuji seems to have indicated that they will make adapters for some third party leaf shutter lenses, and thus it's possible that we could see leaf shutters in some lenses in the future.

I do not pretend to be an expert on lens design, but I think you have misread Ueno's statement that you quoted. Ueno' states "In order to receive the light perpendicular to the sensor, it is important to make the rear glass element on each lens as big as possible to put the light beams parallel from the outlet of light to the sensor." He DOES NOT say that a way to reduce the angle of the light from the outlet of the lens to the sensor is to increase the flange distance. In fact, in his very next sentence, he says the opposite, "Finally, the back-focus distance should be SHORTENED as much as possible to eliminate the degradation in image quality. " [Emphasis mine] As I read that second sentence of Ueno's statement, this is a separate, independent image quality factor. As I studied the diagrams in your post, it seems to me that an increase of the flange back distance will not affect the angle of light to the sensor. Draw a straight line from the point of Convergence to the sensor. The angle of that line to the sensor will be 90 degrees if the sensor is parallel to the back of the lens. As light rays leaving the lens will travel in a straight line, a ray emerging from the point of convergence which strikes the corner of the sensor will be the long side of a right triangle formed by the sensor and a line from the point of convergence to the middle of the sensor. Given that the angle of the line from the point of convergence to the sensor is 90 degrees, the other two angles of the triangle must add up to 90 degrees. So, as long as the line from point of convergence to the sensor edge and the sensor's midpoint are straight, the angle of light hitting the sensor edge will remain constant regardless of the distance between the back of the lens and the sensor. To put this another way, as long as the back of the lens and the sensor are parallel, any line intersecting both parallel lines has to cut them at the same angle. It would make no difference how far apart those parallel lines are, the angle that the bisecting line creates won't change. I noticed on your diagrams above, that in both Diagram A and Diagram C, the lines leading from the point of convergence to the sensor edge are not straight. Rather, they seem to be bent, thereby allowing the angle of the line to become more perpendicular to the sensor, but in Diagram B, the lines remain straight. Why is that? Obviously, the change in angle to the sensor seen in Diagrams A and C has nothing to do with the distance, and everything to do with whatever caused the change in direction of those lines. Again, I'm not pretending to be an expert on this, but from the information you used in your argument, I'm not sure that the conclusion regarding the flange back distance is correct.

It's not just the amount of light, but also the direction of the light that's important. The Daily Mail article linked to above indicates that the photographer had four flashes set up. The kingfisher that was caught just as he entered the water clearly is backlit as well as lit from the front. If you have that kind of set up to light the image, you aren't going to be tracking the subject. You are going to prefocus on the spot you expect the subject to come in to. The key is to anticipate when to fire the shutter.

If you look carefully at the images, you'll notice that they were lit, so you can't use the electronic shutter. While, I suppose it's possible to use the electronic shutter without lighting the image, I wouldn't want to waste capturing the bird at the perfect moment, only to find out that the natural light is insufficient.