Bison Bud

My general experience has been that most cameras will sync with a flash at 100th to 250th of a second. However, at times this is not really enough shutter speed to adequately freeze motion. Are there any cameras out there that could sync faster without going to some kind of lab camera that costs more than my car?

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Yes there are, although you need both a camera and a flash that supports that high-speed sync. And even then, you have go into the menus of both and enable the HSS option to get the two to run faster together than say 1/250sec.

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

The flash is going to be more brief than the shutter in most cases, especially at lower power.
If you can eliminate the ambient light, your shutter setting won’t matter
Alternatively, you can employ high-speed sync to use a shorter shutter setting than normal.
It does eat flash power, and you have to have equipment that’s capable.
More here: https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-74372-1.html

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

I use high speed sync on my Nikon D7200 with my flash. It’s a camera menu. With flash, there are two light sources, the ambient snd the flash. A high shutter speed controls how much ambient light effect you get, the flash controls how much light you get on the subject. For indoor, I use camera in Manual mode, F4.5, ISO 400, shutter at 1/200, and flash in TTL mode. For outdoors, you can run the shutter speed up to its max to darken a bright ambient light background. The flash will still make the proper subject exposure. You could use manual flash settings too if you wish. There are some good YouTube videos at Adorama and Light-Genius on the subject.

BurghByrd Loc: Pittsburgh

I can only speak to equipment I'm familiar with (Nikon and a Fuji). I expected newer mirrorless camera bodies to support it and they do (Z7ii) but the flash also has to support it and the Nikon Su5000 does. I was surprised to see that the D850 as an older technology also supports it. I did not check the older equipment (D810 and SU800 flash units but suspect they do not. So, to answer your question for less than the price of a car you do have access to high speed flash sync but couldn't tell you specifically what equipment for each manufacturer is equiped with it. Good luck.

BebuLamar

HSS was available back in the film days.

Bison Bud

Interesting replies so far! For those of you that have worked with high speed flash, what might be the upper limitations for shutter speed?

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

For my Canon 580 EX II flashes and EOS 5DIII, the limit is the max 1/8000 sec speed of the camera shutter. The same limit is likely for all EOS technology that supports HSS, that is, to the max speed of the camera. The final EOS 1v film camera also supports 1/8000 sec HSS.

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

The term you’re looking for is high speed sync (or AutoFP in Nikon-speak)
High speed flash is another animal
The upper limit is 1/8000 sec with my Nikons, but you lose a lot of power since the flash essentially is turned into a short duration continuous light source, which IS affected by the shutter setting, as explained in my link above.

It would help to tell us what you are shooting and in what setting/environment.
There may be other, better ways to do what you want.

BebuLamar

Think about it now I think the OP was searching for high speed flash with very high fps and those are expensive but the OP really wants is high speed sync.

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

It's in his title:
"High speed flash sync"
I included the high speed flash link in that particular post so he'd know there is a difference.

We don't know the situation he's shooting, so are guessing at this point until he comes back, as is too often the case.
Cheers!

CO

The old Nikon D40 had a 1/500 second flash sync speed.

As was stated by some UHH members, high speed sync diminishes flash output level.

Bison Bud

I was simply interested in being able to increase my shutter speed while using flash to a point that I could control motion blur, primarily to shoot live subjects such as puppies playing, butterflies in flight, or possibly hummingbirds, etc.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

You really have to understand how High Speed Sync works to use it effectively.

On non-mirrorless cameras the shutter is a focal plane shutter and mirrorless cameras that don't use an electronic shutter will be the same. For short shutter speeds the shutter is two leaves with a gap between them that travel across the sensor. The travel time of the shutter leaves is around 1/250 second, so for shutter speeds faster than that the closing leaf starts moving across the sensor before the opening leaf has reached the end of travel. 1/250 second is the fastest shutter speed for which the sensor is completely uncovered at any instant in time. That is the reason that 1/250 second (or whatever is appropriate to your camera) is the fastest shutter you can use with normal flash (which has a duration that is generally short but depends on the power required). If the camera allowed you to use a faster shutter speed, only a narrow band would get any exposure. The width (height) of the band would depend on the shutter speed used, with higher speeds leading to a narrower band.

To use High Speed Sync, the camera is set to a faster shutter speed. The shutter then gives a short flash, waits until the shutter moves to a new position, and gives another short flash, etc., until the shutter has completely traversed the sensor. So the exposure is obtained by a number of short exposures on one shot. That means that the effective shutter speed as far as motion is concerned is 1/250 second. The flash speed is much faster than that, so that motion is not blurred, but the image may appear segmented if there is significant motion perpendicular to the motion of the shutter leaves.

In the old days the distortion due to use of a focal plane shutter was well known. An object travelling horizontally with a shutter travelling vertically would appear to lean forward or back depending on the direction of the focal plane shutter. This was commonly observed on large format cameras where high shutter speeds were only available by use of focal plane shutters.

Note that the flash speed depends on the power. Short bursts of light from the flash will necessarily be moderate to low power.

For things like puppies and kids, I would try to use normal flash, maybe with low ISO to reduce ambient exposure. If these are in bright sunlight, you might be better off using higher ISO, shorter shutter speeds, and forget the flash (although it might help to reduce harsh shadows).

Bison Bud

See there, a person can really learn something here when they ask some reasonable questions! The knowledge base on this site is indeed impressive. Thanks for a quick lesson in focal plane shutters and flash photography. There is indeed a lot to learn about making the most of using a flash and in sparking my interest even more. Good luck and good shooting to all.