Played hooky, did some photos

[SoulfulRecover]

I got the flu *cough* *cough* and decided to stay home from work and do some photos today. I had some problems with the black and white photo freezing the motion. My settings were 1/320th at f8 however my strobe was only at half power. Should I have cranked it up or would that have made a difference?

 

[Designer]

I can see why you stayed off work.

 

[Austin Greene]

Really enjoying the lighting on the first image, could you explain the setup used? Based on the catchlights, umbrella above and camera right? Anything else? Distance from and material of background?

As for stopping the hair, I don't see any particularly blurry bits. Are you concerned that your shutter speed wasn't fast enough?

 

[SoulfulRecover]

Really enjoying the lighting on the first image, could you explain the setup used? Based on the catchlights, umbrella above and camera right? Anything else? Distance from and material of background?

As for stopping the hair, I don't see any particularly blurry bits. Are you concerned that your shutter speed wasn't fast enough?

its hard to tell with how small the photo is posted but if you click it to view much larger you'll see that not only is the hair and earrings blurry but her face and eyes are as well. From my understanding, when shooting strobes (off camera flash) your shutter speed controls ambient light and your aperture controls the flash. The strobe is strong enough that my shutter speed shouldn't matter as long as its not too slow. Typically 1/125th to 1/250th seems to be what I use in the studio. Normally if I go over 1/250th my sync speed is off and a portion of the photo is black/grey. But I gave 1/320th and it seemed fine but it did not seem to make a difference in stopping the motion any more or less compared to 1/125th or 1/250th. So I am not sure that its a shutter speed issue? Maybe because my blinds are open and the window was directly behind me, my strobe only being half power, I was still picking up too much ambient light which caused the blur?

Ill post a pic of the light set up in just a sec

 

[SoulfulRecover]

 

[Austin Greene]

I'm a little stumped by your hair situation as well, personally I've only shot flying hair once, and the image came out fine for my purposes at just 1/160 (the 6D, while a great camera, has a horrible flash sync speed, maxing at 1/180). What was your ISO at? If going past 1/125 wasn't helping with the hair, did you try dropping your ISO and boosting your flash power to try and get more of the daylight out of the image? I suspect you did, and that closing down your aperture was the next logical thing once you hit ISO100 or L50?

 

[bingbang]

The problem is not the shutter speed, it is the duration of the flash discharge. The more the power on the flash is, the longer the discharge is, so you reached the point when a fast movement cannot be frozen. The only solution is to lower the power as this will shorten the discharge. If this is not possible because the power would not be enough, you will need more powerful flashes that can be set at a lower level, to keep at the same time a shorter discharge time and enough emitted light. I experienced the same problem. Unfortunately, my flashes are only 400 joules models, so there is no hope, except if I accept to shoot at wide aperture.

 

[Derrel]

The problem is not the shutter speed, it is the duration of the flash discharge. The more the power on the flash is, the longer the discharge is, so you reached the point when a fast movement cannot be frozen. The only solution is to lower the power as this will shorten the discharge. If this is not possible because the power would not be enough, you will need more powerful flashes that can be set at a lower level, to keep at the same time a shorter discharge time and enough emitted light.

For the majority of conventionally regulated studio-type as well as speedlight strobes, what bingbang wrote is correct. At FULL power, many strobes have relatively "slow" flash times, and even at half power, many flash units are not "all that" fast. At close range and relatively high magnification, shots like the hair-whip shot might very well show a tiny bit of blur; in this case, I think the slight blurring actually HELPS the visual effect.

On newer, IGBT style flash units, power duration works pretty much the opposite of the way it does on "conventionally regulated" flash units.

Take a look at a high-end IGBT, and ultra-fast duration flash unit:

[Video] How Much Does Flash Duration Affect Photo Sharpness? | Fstoppers

 

[SoulfulRecover]

Thank you guys for the information. My ISO was set at its lowest (the D300 goes from 200 to low 1 then low 2 or something like that) so I would assume that it basically goes 200 100 50.