Freezing Motion with Studio Strobes.

Bilsen

Just thought I'd report back.

A while ago I asked about freezing motion with studio strobes and I got a bunch of excellent answers. Now it turns out I can just dial down a bit with my two Interfit 300 ws monos and it works.

These two are from a dance set I shot with Cyndi this past weekend (the thread will go up next week). She is not "posing", she's dancing through the song and I clicked when I saw a good pose.

The Settings are ISO 200, f5 at 1/200th




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Nikolai

1/200s (or even 1/250s) is often not enough to completely freeze the action.
Try to catch a flying/falling object or ask your subject to jump. You'll notice a slight mothion blur, espcially on limbs - maybe not always, but more often than you'd like.

novicesnapper

Raises hand for question.

Since the studio strobes are locked at 200 shutter speed, what if he put the camera on TV (shutter priority on T3i) set @ 200, set the desired fstop and let the camera set the proper ISO?

anonymouscuban

novicesnapper wrote: »

Raises hand for question.

Since the studio strobes are locked at 200 shutter speed, what if he put the camera on TV (shutter priority on T3i) set @ 200, set the desired fstop and let the camera set the proper ISO?

Stopping motion is a function of shutter speed so the f-stop and ISO are irrelevant.

Hackbone

Shutter speed and possibly strobe length of firing. If you are in a dark room the strobe will stop the action as it can fire as fast as 1/12,000 or faster if I recall correctly.

anonymouscuban

Hackbone wrote: »

Shutter speed and possibly strobe length of firing. If you are in a dark room the strobe will stop the action as it can fire as fast as 1/12,000 or faster if I recall correctly.

Sorry Chuck. You're right. Strobe length does play a role when shooting in a dark room. Theoretically, if shooting in a dark enough room, where ambient light requires a very slow shutter to expose the model, you could use a much slower shutter than 1/200. The strobe flash will essentially freeze the motion. Shutter will not be open long enough to expose any blur.

I don't know if I have the photos anymore but a few years ago, when I got my first speedlight, I shot a bouncing tennis ball and captured it at various moments in its path by using a long shutter and a repeating flash. With each burst of the flash, the ball was captured by the sensor. I saw it in a book and wanted to replicate it. This works various similarly when you dance around in the dark with a strobe light.

Bilsen

Interesting discussion gentlemen. Carry on.

puzzledpaul

Hackbone wrote: »

Shutter speed and possibly strobe length of firing. If you are in a dark room the strobe will stop the action as it can fire as fast as 1/12,000 or faster if I recall correctly.

My thoughts turned to people like Stephan Dalton and his rigs for taking photos of insects in flight.
Whilst more commonplace now, back in the late 70s early 80s, he, together with a colleague, built gear capable of at least 1/25,000 with sufficient power to do the job @ iso 25 (K25).

pp


edit
Now @ 1/60,000
http://www.stephendalton.co.uk/section390099.html

novicesnapper

Ah thanks guys. That's what I was wondering. I rethought this last night and pretty much came to the same conclusion, guess I knew better lol...At this point, I think Bilsen is hitting the shutter speed wall. I even researched that brand of strobes to see what others were doing for a faster shutter speed. Pretty much sounds like it's not happening, due to design limitations of the Interfits. At least not on this brand and series of strobes. The images look good to me, but without looking at the high res version, hard to say for sure. Thanks for the thoughts.

The reason this interest me is, I was experimenting with my T1i and my Pixel Kings/ 430EXII's recently, to see how high I could reliably go on shutter speed. They will go to 2,000, but not reliably, at 1,600 every shot fired. Hard on speedlite batteries though, due to the extended strobing length.

Qarik

doesn't matter what your shutter speed is. if flash is the majority of your light you will freeze action no matter what.

Dreadnote

For what it's worth, I shot this at 1/250th, with an Einstein strobe that had a pulse time of about 1/12000th. Just make sure you overpower ambient by 2-3 stops and you'll be fine. Light the background separately. Although the wing tips on this bird show a tad of motion blur, I'm quite sure that your model won't be moving quite so quickly, unless of course she is a vampire in which case she probably won't show up at all.

Bilsen

Qarik wrote: »

doesn't matter what your shutter speed is. if flash is the majority of your light you will freeze action no matter what.

Qarik, based on my meter, the strobes were 95% of total light and that's close enough to wipe out the ambient.

Great discussion here. My 600D sync is 200 and I can sometimes cheat to 250 but that's about it.

I have no idea of the pulse times of the Interfits. Have to go find that data.

Dreadnote

You might find this interesting if you haven't already seen it:

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2011/10/backsplash-on-budget-jaroslav.html

novicesnapper

I think Qarik is right, mostly. Here's a clinker I took awhile back, I forgot to take down Fstop before shooting ugh. Around 7pm outside, almost no ambient. When I downloaded the set, just a few of the baby and DIL, I was stunned to see even how well this turned out, considering how badly I hosed it. Notice exposure length. 25 seconds. For it to get this much, shocked me. It was under exposed about 4 stops, so I did brighten it in post just to see. but I was stunned. I wasn't using HSS either, just regular flash length. I think the long streaks to the left are bug trails.

anonymouscuban

Yes. Daniel is mostly right. If the you are able to expose the subject without the flash, then you will get blur regardless of the flashes burst duration.

puzzledpaul

A different take - using flash (with longish ss) for controlling vibration in high-mag macro situations - by a superb practitioner.

pp

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2825

novicesnapper

A great thread, that answers questions with real examples and down to Earth explaining. This is how people learn, such as myself. Thanks to all who contributed.

Bilsen

Thanks to all who are contributing here. The entire dance set was frozen so I don't know if I was smart or just lucky.