The photoexcited state in superconducting metals and alloys was studied via pump-probe spectroscopy. A pulsed Ti:sapphire laser was used to create the non-equilibrium state and the far-infrared pulses of a synchrotron storage ring, to which the laser is synchronized, measured the changes in the material optical properties. Both the time- and frequency- dependent photoinduced spectra of Pb, Nb, NbN, Nb{0.5}Ti{0.5}N, and Pb{0.75}Bi{0.25} superconducting thin films were measured in the low-fluence regime. The time dependent data establish the regions where the relaxation rate is dominated either by the phonon escape time (phonon bottleneck effect) or by the intrinsic quasiparticle recombination time. The photoinduced spectra measure directly the reduction of the superconducting gap due to an excess number of quasiparticles created by the short laser pulses. This gap shift allows us to establish the temperature range over which the low fluence approximation is valid.
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