All these long exposures are fine if your subject isn't in a hurry to crawl away, but what if you need fast shutter response? Well, flash is the only answer and I have the standard Pentax AF-360FGZ. With the flash set to manual full power, angled up 45 degrees and diffused, I ran a few tests.
The Pentax 50mm was now out of the running. That left the Sirus and the Vivitar. At f8, 5cm away from the subject, the camera could run at flash sync of 1/180th. I got a comfortable f8 for this hand held shot with the Vivitar.
The bonus of the Sirus is that I can be 35mm away from the subject. The downside to this is that the flash has to work harder to cover the distance. To get this shot, I was down a stop to 5.6.
It is thus possible to take the Sirus up to f8 and simply push the RAW in post. This is unpushed. Shooting at f8 is likely what I'll be doing.
There are two extra options, of course.
The first is to angle the flash straight-on to get more power. This will affect the picture and likely produce a hot spot, but light is, as photography, to taste.
The second, of course, is to get a more powerful flash! I always have the option, should I need it, of using studio flash to do this kind of work; however, hand holding in a studio can usually imply a style of shooting where a tripod can be used; but, hey, it's an option.
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