Friday, August 28, 2015

Freezing motion with flash, how low can you go?





  • 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8
  • ƒ/6.3




  • 38.0 mm
  • 1/25




  • 500
  • Flash (on, fired)

  • I was presented with a job photographing kids indoors.  Kids don't like to sit still, so photographing them indoors can be a bit of a challenge.  The ceiling in this indoor space was too high to bounce my flash off of so I had no choice but to point the flash right at my subjects.  I could have taken the flash off the camera and used a cord but that required too much juggling and made it impossible for me to hold my camera with both hands.  I used a large softbox and I constantly changed the FV value to get the results I wanted.  I think I had it at -.3 for this shot.

    In the above picture my flash froze the motion nicely and I was able to get away with just 1/25 of a second for a nice clear shot.  The kid in the back ground is a blur but he was moving fast and the flash was not pointed at him.  I was not able to freeze the motion of fast moving subjects at such low shutter speeds.  I'll keep experimenting.

    I was really happy with how much ambient light was preserved while using the flash.  The entire reason to shoot with such a low shutter speed was to let in more ambient light so my pictures would not look like they were taken in a cave.

    The softbox worked well to defuse the light and the slower shutter speed called for lower flash power both worked together to eliminate and hash light or shadows on my subject.

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