Why does this work?

[Spinners]

I have been shooting with my novatron setup for quite awhile now. I aslo use a minolta light meter. Heres my question. i am currently practicing twin lighting setups.

i setup my main light at F8 and my second light at F5.6. The main light (F8) reads F8 @ 500 on my minolta meter. Heres what blows my mind.. and need some help with. My maximum flash shutter sync speed is 200, so i have to use this setting. Amazingly, the picture comes out perfect @ 200, 100, 60 and so forth. the only difference is the background.

Now i have heard that slowing the shutter speed down is called "dragging the shutter" which is really neat for bringing out the background. My question is.. why doesn't the shutter speed effect the main subjects exposure? But yet, if im shooting without lights, the shutter speed does matter? is it becuase of the bright flash? if this is so, then should i just disregard my meters time setting?

thanks!

[PaulB]

The flash is at such a high speed that the shutter speed is not that important - except, as you have discovered, for the background.
Typical flash duration could be anywhere from 1/1000th to 4000th. of a second - so in these circumstances a shutter speed of 1/200th. is forever!

[scotgasch]

When your flash is your aonly source of light then the shutter speed does not matter to get a proper exposure. The only time it would come into play is if it got slow enough to read the ambient light (if any). The way I think of it is that the flash IS the shutter when it is the only light source. Hope this helps!!!