zero point
zero point
Back when I was doing a lot of weddings I used this technique almost every week. For altar photos of the wedding party prior to the service I would meter my lights (photogenic) for proper exposure for the wedding party. I would set that exposure into my camera. Then I would meter the background and make adjustments. As you know, the inverse square law states that light falls off with the square of the distance. since I didn't want to carry a lot of strobes to also light the background, and since the strobes I was using were aimed at the people, the light from those strobes fell off considerably before hitting the background. the only way to correct for that was to drag the shutter, which I did most of the time. So sometimes in very dark churches I was shooting at f 8 at 1/2 second or even f8 at 1 second in order to get some decent detail in the background. Of course I would have to tell everyone to hold very still during these long (for people shots anyway) exposures. And since light is additive, the low incident light didn't have much effect on the flash exposure on the people.
So yes, dragging the shutter is a very good technique for balancing between strobe and incident light.
I shoot in dim studios with flash often, many of my lenses are in Ilex #5 shutters (max speed 1/50) or barrel lenses used with Packard shutters (max speed depends on size, but generally not faster than 1/30 or so )
When using strobes at full power, the flash duration is longer than at lower power settings. It's unlikely you'll have any trouble at 1/500, and less likely slower than that. (rational is that most flash durations are in the 4th decimal place, less than 1/1000.
1/500 = 0.002 Seconds, or "two Thousanths")
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