How should an external flash be sincronised to a digital camera?

Question by John S: How should an external flash be sincronised to a digital camera?
I am using a basic digital camera but want to use an external flash. If I fire the flash the same time as the shutter the camera does not see the flash, What delay should I have for it to see the flash?


Best answer:

Answer by c.dude
When you say basic digital camera I am assuming its a point and shoot.

a point and shoot does a pre-flash either to reduce red eye or to meter ( for automatic settings)

to use an external flash you need to set the camera's flash in manual mode such that it fires only once
and set the external flash to optical slave mode so that it sees a flash go and fires at the same time.

most DSLR's have a sync speed of 1/250 i.e. shutter speed has to be slower than 1/250th of a second
however the point and shoot camera's have a leaf shutter and are able to sync faster than that.

what you need to do is find that manual flash mode

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