As mentioned previously in the introduction post to ‘Technical Shots’ some may find the information very limited, or frankly laughable. However these posts are more for me. A record of me attempting to shoot an image which ‘I’ would describe as technical.
Anyway – this idea came to me as I was leaving Sandymouth bay late one night. I’m armed with speedlites, so why not play around with them and a small waterfall. Now my idea was to create a night time version of blurred waterfall. But with a few static elements. Waterfall pictures such as this….
…tend to get a bit boring after a while (though I like them, but the effect is over used – by me as well). The alternative to this is static water shots, but these tend to be a bit harsh and they don’t convey a sense of movement.
So option 3 then. Was it’s an attempt at a hybrid of the 2 types of waterfall shot. Simply shoot a waterfall in fading light, but with 2 580 Mk II Speedlites utilising their Multi: Stroboscopic Flash feature. Hoping that this would capture the all important movement, but still have static elements. Will it work? We’ll see.
Simply put this involves the Speedlites firing a rapid burst of flash over a pre-determined time span. The maths is quite simple: Number of flashes / Firing Frequency = Shutter Speed ( 10 flashes 10 hertz frequency is 1 second – or .1 second per flash). The only limits on the number of flashes to frequency ratio is the flash output – the Speedlite manual explains it all in much greater detail than I would.
As I like simplicity (matches my phone tariff) I set the heads to 10 flashes at 10hz intervals and set the camera to 1 second as a shutter. The placing of the Speedlites was as in this bad diagram…..
Speedlites were positioned at points 1 & 2. I didn’t make a note of the head angle or flash zoom settings (sorry about that – but thinking back I did vary the flash zoom settings from 24mm to 105mm). The Speedlite in postion 1 got quite wet, so I’m glad it’s a fairly water tight unit. The camera used was my Eos 5D MkII fitted with the 17-40mm f/4 L lens. Camera settings were ISO 100, f/7.1, 1 Second Shutter, Focal Length 29mm.
So the verdict then….
…. well it’s not going to win anything, but I think it has potential. This actually was only the 4th shot of the test (out of around 15) – however as the light faded it was increasing difficult to focus, so the latter shots technically maybe better, but I’ve not done anything with them as the focus was out.
I think my brief was met, it does combine the static element, but with a sense of movement. Probably my favourite part is the base of the water fall. The multiple static elements combine to create a strange effect…..
So does it do anything for you?