In article <56tee1$ljk@muss.CIS.McMaster.CA>, pieknydm@muss.cis.McMaster.CA says...

>Hi, I have a Cannon AE-1 and would like to shoot some photos with a zoom
>lens in poor lighting conditions indoors. As a rule of thumb I have
>learned that the your shutter speed should always be greater than the
>inverse of your focal length. That is, if you are using a 200mm lens,
>your shutter speed should be greater than 1/200, so 1/250 would be
>acceptable. Otherwise pictures may be blurry because a long focal length
>coupled with a slow shutter speed allows a greater chance for camera
>shake. I do not have a tripod. The AE-1 flah synchronization is set at
>1/60s shutter speed, however. I will be using a 205mm lens and a Vivitar
>zoom thyristor 285 flash, which indicates the aperture setting I should
>select. If I have to increase shutter speed from 1/60 to 1/250, should I
>simply adjust the aperture two stops to balance this and damn the
>synchronization, or is it safe to shoot at 1/60 with a 205mm lens?

Umm, there are two exposures of concern here, the flash one, and the
ambient light one. NEVER exceed the flash maximum sync. shutter speed
when using flash, since only part of the frame will be exposed by the
flash (the shutter will be partially closed during the flash). Since
the flash duration will likely be above 1/500th second, motion at the
1/60th sync. speed is not an issue, unless the lens is very long in FL,
and unless the ambient light exposure at the top sync. speed is less
than about 2-3 stops underexposed (bright highlights may still smear
at 3 stops underexposure for ambient light). Using a smaller stop
reduces the ambient exposure, but requires more flash power, and it
may be desireable to leave in about -1.5 stops or so of ambient
exposure to serve as fill to the flash, and to avoid inky-black
backgrounds. Hand-hold carefully, and the gain in better-looking
lighting usually offsets the slight loss in sharpness contributed
by the ambient light exposure.
Hope This Helps