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Leaf Shutter in Lens: Shutter Speed + Flash Sync
The ability to use flash at any shutter speeds is a compelling advantage of the leaf shutter (shutter in lens) used in the Ricoh GR and certain other compact cameras, like the Sigma DP Merrill line and others (but Sigma DPM lacks built-in flash).
With a leaf shutter, the flash can sync at any speed. However, there is one downside: the leaf shutter can only open and close so fast in order to fully expose the entire diameter of the lens diaphragm at once, and so it has some limits based on aperture. The limits are as follows:
f/2.8: 1/2000 second
f/3.5 or f/4: 1/2500 second
f/4.5 or f/5.0: 1/3200 second
f/5.6: 1/4000 second
Superb engineering forethought: because the Ricoh also has a built-in ND (neutral density) filter of 1 and 2/3 stops, the 1/2000 limit at f/2.8 is not much of a real-world limit at ISO 100: in exposure value terms that is like shooting at 1/6400 second at f/2.8 at ISO 100! Hence fill flash can be used under virtually all conditions at any aperture. Without a built-in ND filter, the hassle factor goes up (add a filter to the lens).
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Ricoh GR with fill flash at -1.7