Using Flash to Freeze Action - fail

[baturn]

Derrel, the shadow of the feeder is made by the SB-800. The whole yard is in the shadow of a mountain at this time of night. but now I thought of another question. Does the zoom setting of the flash play into this at all, and in what way.

 

[robbins.photo]

Remember don't use high-speed sync for this - highspeed sync makes the flash send out a series of light pulses which for something like this wouldn't be ideal unless you wanted a series of positions of the wing to be shown instead of a single sharp wing position.

You know actually that might turn out to be a pretty cool effect actually. Kind of curious what that would look like.

 

[Derrel]

Remember don't use high-speed sync for this - highspeed sync makes the flash send out a series of light pulses which for something like this wouldn't be ideal unless you wanted a series of positions of the wing to be shown instead of a single sharp wing position.

You know actually that might turn out to be a pretty cool effect actually. Kind of curious what that would look like.

Overread is SPOT-ON: a friend of mine tried to capture black-capped chickadees coming to his feeder a few years back, using a 70-300 and Canon's high-speed synch flash...nothing but a blurry mess, since "high-speed flash" is a sequence of micro-pulses, which do NOT stop motion worth a darn. But they DO help to shoot fill-flash for portraits in bright sun, at wide f/stops and high shutter speeds.

No, the zoom head position will not affect the flash duration, but it WILL however, narrow the angle of beam spread: THAT in itself will allow you to cut the flash power down, since the flash will not be spread out over a wide area, but instead, concentrated into a smaller area.

Did you see the flash durations at 1/8 power in the chart Tirediron posted??? Pretty fast! As long as the flash covers the area, you're good.

 

[Overread]

Everyone watch the video

Especially because if you want to do what Robins suggests you'll want to check the bit on rear and first curtain sync with the flash on highspeed sync. Also because highspeed sync cuts down on flash power a lot you might find you need more flash units firing in unison otherwise ambient light will be contributing too much to the exposure and create a very blurry mess

 

[baturn]

Thanks Overread. Good info. I will definitely be trying 2nd curtain sync.