Flash Duration To Freeze Action
One of the many amazing things you can do with flash is use it to stop fast moving things in their tracks. Unlike working with a continuous light it’s not the shutter speed that freezes the action, it’s the tiny amount of time that the flash lasts… its duration.
Basically it works like this. The more light you need the longer the flash duration, so reducing the flash power shortens the flash duration and increases it’s freezing power.
Different flashes produce very different flash durations and older design studio heads worked in a very different fashion but if you take a standard speedlight as an example, it will have a flash duration of around 1/200th second at full power and 1/10,000 sec at minimum power.
In the video below I put the theory into practice by bumping two wine glasses together and photographing the results with different flash powers
In case you’re wondering, the wine glasses are made of plastic and I drilled two tiny holes in each to attach them to the fishing line.
Gear used in this video (Links to Adorama)
Canon EOS 60D Digital SLR Camera Body Kit
Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM AutoFocus Wide Angle Telephoto Zoom Lens
Flashpoint Zoom Li-on Manual On-Camera Flash
Great tutorial as always!
This will be my next project!
I have learned so much from your videos over the past few years, keep them coming!
Thanks Gavin!
Nice post 🙂
For those interested in measuring the actual duration of their own flash unit I suggest to take a look at FlashVisio, a useful free Android app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.optivelox.flashvisio)
Gavin,
Excellent job and thank you for sharing your wisdom. I really enjoy your tutorials and learn something from each and every one.
Best regards,
Don
Hi Gavin,
Terrific video as always. Can I just ask how you attached the lines to the glasses….Thank You.
Just found my answer right there at the end of the article….Thanks Gavin.
Hi Gavin think your photos, videos & ideas are brilliant, & I have started to try them myself. I have tried the wine glasses crashing into each other, it might not be as good as yours, but never the less I gave it a try & I thought I did rather well. I was quite impressed myself, as I have not done anything like this before. You give inspiration to both me & my husband. I don’t have a home studio but what I’ve tried so far has been done in a garage. I like to doing photography that is different from the normal photos, & you sure do have some amazing ideas, & you make them look so easy to do. All thanks to you & your amazing videos. Thankyou for sharing. Regards Julie