Flash and Exposure Modes

Depending on the exposure mode you have selected, your choices of flash mode change.

In this article we'll briefly discuss the flash modes available for each of the exposure modes.


In Green mode the only 2 flash modes available are Auto Discharge and Auto Discharge with red eye reduction. Remember the Green mode is a hands off mode where the camera takes complete control of the image capture and leaves little if anything the photographer can adjust.

In Program or P mode the possibilities for built-in flash modes are quite extensive. The flash modes available are Flash on, Flash on with red eye reduction, Slow Sync, Slow Sync with red eye reduction, Trailing Curtain, and Wireless modes.

• Slow sync modes make the camera expose for the ambient light so you don't have to have that black night time background like in many flash shots you see.

• The Trailing Curtain mode fires the flash right before the shutter curtain closes thus illuminating the subject in front of any motion blur recorded by the long exposure time and produces the illusion that the motion trail is behind the subject as it's moving.

• Wireless mode lets you control off camera slave flashes.

In Sv mode you have all the same flash modes available as in P mode.

In Tv mode you only have Flash on, Flash on with red eye reduction, trailing curtain and wireless modes available. You don't need any of the slow sync speeds since you set shutter speed yourself and don't want the camera to adjust it for ambient exposure.

In Av mode you have all the flash modes available in P mode.

In TAv mode you only have Flash on, Flash on with red eye reduction, Trailing Curtain, and Wireless modes. I'm going to have to experiment more with flash in TAv mode. I'm not sure it's a mode suited for flash photography, especially TTL flash. More to follow on this subject.

In manual mode you only have Flash On, Flash On with red eye reduction, Trailing Curtain, and Wireless, the 4 basic flash modes.

Bulb mode is the same, only the 4 basic flash modes.

X sync has only 3 flash modes available, the Trailing Curtain mode has been removed.

Next we talk details about the Pentax AF 360 FGZ Flash.