Captain America Water Drops

[weepete]

I like they way these are done, but I think the second shutter sync if your not going to try and remove the trails would look better.

 

[pisto1981]

Awesome! going to try something similar myself

 

[TimothyJinx]

Either shoot that in darker room or use HSS.

Help me out here as I don't normally shoot with speedlights.

First of all, the rooom is dark - a shot without the flash results in a pure black exposure.

Secondly, I'm not sure HSS is an option for me. I am using a 430ex2, which does support HSS, but I'm not using it on camera. And I do not have a TTL cable or any kind of compatible transmitter. So that means I am having to use the on-camera flash to trigger the 430ex2. When the on-camera flash is active, my highest shutter speed is 250. Without a cable or transmitter I may be stuck?

Thirdly, the drop itself seems fairly sharp so is this even an issue of shutter speed? The glare, or whatever it is, is there even with the drops that have not yet begun to fall. I think they may be some sort of glare bouncing back off of the large, very bright star on the background.

 

[ryanwaff]

Either shoot that in darker room or use HSS.

Help me out here as I don't normally shoot with speedlights.

First of all, the rooom is dark - a shot without the flash results in a pure black exposure.

Secondly, I'm not sure HSS is an option for me. I am using a 430ex2, which does support HSS, but I'm not using it on camera. And I do not have a TTL cable or any kind of compatible transmitter. So that means I am having to use the on-camera flash to trigger the 430ex2. When the on-camera flash is active, my highest shutter speed is 250. Without a cable or transmitter I may be stuck?

Thirdly, the drop itself seems fairly sharp so is this even an issue of shutter speed?[2] The glare, or whatever it is, is there even with the drops that have not yet begun to fall. I think they may be some sort of glare bouncing back off of the large, very bright star on the background.

Given that you said the room is dark, I am taking that to mean that you have no other light source (ambient light) in the room that could account for a light streak, or ghosting as they are sometimes called.
So the chances are that your light streaks are being caused by a slow flash duration. When you have it in slave mode off camera, what output have you dialled in? (like 1/64, 1/2 etc..) This may causing it, because the higher your flash output (the more powerful it is) the longer the flash duration will be. Thus possibly causing the ghosting. So the lower your output, the faster the flash duration is.

So if you want to give it another shot, try putting both your 430ex2 and your on camera flash at the lowest possible output settings (roughly 1/128), and adjust your aperture and ISo accordingly. Then gradually increase the power outputs and see what affect that will have to your ghosting. Remember also to have No ambient light whatsoever.

2. If the room is dark, then shutter speed will not play a role in the sharpness of the image, because there is no light to record (note however that your shutter speed does need to be slower than 1/250 in order to record the flash). The flash output will affect whether you get a perfectly frozen image, or a slightly blurred image, because it is introducing light for the sensor to capture. The longer the light duration, the more that gets recorded.

Also take a look here, a strobist tutorial on water drop tutorial with one speedlight

 

[Derrel]

Too much ambient light or you need faster shutter + hss

HSS will just make these into a blur...it's not good with high speed movement, since it's a series of very tiny micro-flashes...

I like the Captain America star in the droplet!!! looks very,very cool.

Derrel.. Come on dude.. You are really saying if he shot that with 1/2000 with HSS it will be blurry? Either shoot that in darker room or use HSS.

Robin. Come on dude. Get a grip on what HSS flash ACTUALLY looks like on motion. It is a series, a sequence, of very tiny flashes...in rapid succession...which will render any high-seed movement as a BLUR. So, yes Robin, for the second time in this same post, I am saying that if he shoots water droplets using HSS, that they will be blurry. High speed Synch is NOT one, single flash. High Speed Synch is a rapid pulsing of many very tiny flash events, at up to as fast as 199 Hertz. Before you joined TPF, we had a member who had absolutely disastrous results on a whole afternoon's worth of strawberry-dropped-into-water shots done with his Canon 1D Mark III and 580 EX-II and High Speed Synch. All his shots were....blurry..and he could not figure out why because he had used High Speed Synch, thinking it meant it was for high-speed events, like splash photos. Or, like my friend Steve, who repeatedly shot a bird landing on his bird feeder,using HSS, and called me up and showed me the pics on the web and asked me why the wings were so...blurry.

Robin.. Come on dude..

 

[Robin_Usagani]

Lol. If i set my flash to HSS and the shutter is slow... Of course it will be blurry. I was simply saying if you have the shutter at high speed and you are only capturing a falling object, it will be sharp. Go shoot a falling object at 1/2000 or faster, probably pretty sharp (flashed or not).

 

[Derrel]

For advice, the OP ought to listen to ryanwaff's suggestions in post #19, and ignore those who do not understand the technology or the science of exposure and lighting. Well-meaning but misguided technical advice is plentiful in today's internet age.

 

[TimothyJinx]

Given that you said the room is dark, I am taking that to mean that you have no other light source (ambient light) in the room that could account for a light streak, or ghosting as they are sometimes called.
So the chances are that your light streaks are being caused by a slow flash duration. When you have it in slave mode off camera, what output have you dialled in? (like 1/64, 1/2 etc..) This may causing it, because the higher your flash output (the more powerful it is) the longer the flash duration will be. Thus possibly causing the ghosting. So the lower your output, the faster the flash duration is.

Right. I have the 430 set at 1/64 which I think is the lowest it will go. If there is a way to set it lower?


Just as an experiment, I shot one with flash (1) and another with high ISO and constant light (2). I realize there are color and focus issues here but no matter...

1.
f/4.5, 1/50, ISO400


2.
f/4.5, 1/1000, ISO6400

 

[Robin_Usagani]

Sighh.. You are truly an ass derrel. Nothing I said was wrong. You are just a troll.

 

[o hey tyler]

This was taken with HSS. 1/1250s

 

[Trever1t]

very cool, I've never tried this!

 

[TimothyJinx]

Did a new experiment in a different environment. The original images were shot in my kitchen sink and I may have had sunlight coming through the miniblinds and causing the glare - not sure about that. So I set myself up in the basement and tried again. I still have ambient light - the overhead lights are on but no windows. I also don't have the same kind of water drops. I poked a hole in a plastic cup and clamped it to a light stand. But the results are quite different.

1.
2.
3.

 

[Robin_Usagani]

No macro lens eh?

 

[Derrel]

Sighh.. You are truly an ass derrel. Nothing I said was wrong. You are just a troll.

I actually PM'd the original poster and provided him with a flash duration table for the 430 EX-II, and gave him my evaluation of an ambient light check test photo he had done. His original setup has NO ambient light to speak of Robin...just a tiny little spec of ambient light at the far,far top of the frame. As I told him 99.99% of the "ambient light" registered as jet black. I actually took the time to look up the tech specs, and to send them to the OP,so he would have some precise flash duration times, for better technical understanding. Did you do that? Did you provide the OP with any off-line assistance?

You calling me an ass Robin is amusing. Basically the flash mode you told him to use is a repeating-flash mode. You are obviously very uninformed in the technical aspects of photography, since you continually suggest using repeating, long-duration HSS flash "pulses" as a way to try and get stop-motion images of falling water drops.

 

[Juga]

too many rabbits in this thread