How to Freeze Motion In the Photography Studio Using Flash
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- Опубліковано 31 жов 2021
- Action freezing examples include a dancer jumping and long hair blowing with a fan as we examine flash duration and how much you need to overpower the ambient light to freeze action in the studio or on location.
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Rough Transcript
Well as you saw at the beginning of this video, I've been conducting flash duration tests this week for todays video.
But before we get into the results, we have to set the table.
Flash tubes emit pulses of light each time you take a photo, often with the burst being more intense in the beginning and then trailing off over time. The length of time that light is emitting from the flash is known as the flash duration. You can imagine this if you recall the effect of being blasted in the face with an on-camera strobe while posing for a photo. Flash duration can be expressed in two ways - t.1 and t.5. t.5 is when the intensity of the pulse reduces to 50% of its maximum intensity and t.1 is when the pulse drops to 10% of the maximum. The graph from Sekonic, demonstrates the relationship. T.1 numbers are far more useful to me than t.5 numbers, because they more fully represent the information but there isn't a formula to convert t.5 specs to t.1.
Flash duration specs for your light will most likely be in your manual.
Sync speed
The fastest your camera can send a signal to a flash normally and have it fire while the shutter is open is known as the sync speed.
In the studio, your camera’s sync speed isn’t much of an issue unless you have a lot of ambient light in the room. Typically if you’re adding so much flash to your scene that an exposure without that flash at the same settings would result in a black image, the only thing freezing motion in your frame is the flash duration. So effectively the flash duration becomes the shutter speed.
However, if you are using flash at 1/200 of a second, a common sync speed, with moving subjects outdoors during the day or in a bright room, you can get blurry images regardless of your flash duration because the ambient light will have an effect on your exposure, so you will want to either overpower the ambient light or you will want to use a shutter speed that can freeze motion on its own, but the only way to do that is high-speed sync and that is a whole other video.
I first learned of flash duration in the late 90’s when I was just a spry 18 year old photographer and I wanted to light an NBA arena. The older photographers I knew said you need a duration of 1/2000 or faster and you need to overpower the ambient by two stops in order to freeze basketball. I never ended up lighting an NBA game, but I did use this knowledge for college basketball, pretend basketball and minor league hockey. I just assumed what they said to be true and over the years I have questioned wether or not their advice was accurate.
So in a few moments we're going to investigate how fast your duration needs to be to freeze a dancer jumping through the air and how much you need to over power the ambient while photographing a model with long hair blowing in the artificial wind. Knowing your flash duration can also be important for applications other than extreme movement. I have seen motion blur in my frames when I was photographing models just posing in the studio and my flash duration was longer than t.5 1/1000 of a second.
Reducing the power output of your lights, unusually results in faster flash duration, but some models, like the Profoto D1, have their fastest flash duration at full power, so consult your manual to learn what power settings will result in the fastest duration and slowest duration for your light. But for most units, the fastest duration for your light will be at minimum power. So the brighter you make the flash the slower the duration will become.
Music: Evolution by Bensound bensound.com/ - Навчання та стиль
High quality content, as always. Thank you very much! Congrats from Brazil!
Muito Obrigado! My Pleasure.
This information is incredible to know, and presented so clearly. Thank you so much, I've been so confused by this concept.
You're so welcome! This used to be one of the hardest thing for me to explain, but doing it over and over in person at my workshops really helped me to clarify the information. Of course doing this experiment really helped too.
Thanks for that clear explaining John!
Thanks Denis! Glad it was helpful!
Your presentation cleared up how flash duration actuay works at different settings, the best! I'm so much more confident having this information, thank you.
That is great to hear! I love when the process of making a video helps me and others in the future!
Fascinating! The detail available from sensors today really changes how we (older folks like me) thought about everything. I totally get that you're teaching how to reliably get the screaming detail that some clients want in certain photos with frozen motion, but to my taste, the first, most "blurry" photo of the model with the fan blowing is hair is the best photo of them all.
I just have OCD 😂 Do you prefer the motion or the pose?
Yes, getting frozen motion of long hair blowing in the wind, certainly does add impact to your model.
Thank you for this John
No problem. Thank you Samuel!
Thank you, John, for being one of the few UA-camrs I watch who actually replies to posts and connects with their subscribers. I often see people commenting on the topic of a video and asking the presenter questions, which never seem to be answered. I understand there are thousands of subscribers if not millions, so replies have to be kept to a minimum, but I rarely see replies from other UA-camrs. It is nice to this in this post. Cheers!
Thanks James. It's my pleasure! If people are going to take 10-15 minutes to watch and comment, the least I can do is take a minute to respond.
exceptional breakdown. You are a teacher. Thanks.
Thanks Brian! I really appreciate it!🙏🏼🙏🏼
thanks John - great info
You bet! Thank you!
Wow this video helped me out immensely thanks JG
That’s great to hear! Thanks!
Very nice details!
Thank you very much!
This was really valuable information, and very clearly presented. Thanks for this - I haven't seen this presented anywhere else in this manner. Much appreciated!
Wow! Glad it was helpful! I feel like this is one of the hardest concepts to explain and I have been meaning to make this video for a while now.
@@JohnGress Very glad you did, and it's something I've avoided shooting because I found it frustrating and difficult to understand. Now I have the tools to make it happen!
Thank is great to hear!
Very useful information
Glad you liked it!
Brilliant.
Thanks!
A tight script... no rambling war stories -- which is refreshing -- and you didn't jump cut the hell out if it -- also refreshing. Nice indeed. Thank you for taking time do to this. This is my first time on your site and I will likely be back. Oh, I did learn something is this short example of your teaching style. Again... nice video work and straightforward style.
Thank you so much! I hate jump cuts too and you’ll rarely see me do it. I hide all my mistakes under the photos. 😄
That is right. Knowing how to set your lights and camera setting make a big difference in freezing your subject.
And I am sure stopping something like water droplets requires even shorter duration.
@@JohnGress qwqqqq2qwew az es kmn
Excellent information… our 2 year old model doesn’t like to sit still and I’ve been wondering about getting less motion without having to use HSS. Thank you very much. 🙂
Those pesky 2 year old models! Thanks!
I started using flash heads when I was 18 (I'm in my 50's now), and got a very basic kit of two 160w heads to learn with. I soon bought a soft box and a very poor quality boom arm, and set about learning to use them. I still remember having a friend pose for me when the weight of the soft box on the crappy boom arm toppled over and started falling towards my friends head. I can still remember the look on her face as it started tipping towards her......luckily I caught the stand in time........but it still makes me laugh, all these years later. I was always tripping over the cables too, because space was limited in my kitchen......so that bit at the end cracked me up.
Ha! It’s a great argument for battery powered lights! I started off with similar gear and I can remember every time that a boom fell over and broke something🤦🏻♂️
Wow! finally a well produced and informative UA-cam on freezing action well done!
Wow! Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed it!
Lates 80s, wow, me too, I was Monte assistant, but he didn’t teach me about the photography business . Thanks for sharing
You are so welcome. Thank you!
Excellent tutorial ! be safe from loose cord.👍👍
Thanks! It's a great reason to own more battery powered lights.
Mazing video thanks, so easy to follow and understand. How did you know how many stops over the ambient you were? Was it just a case of finding the exact point where ambient light is eliminated and then move up two stops any which way you choose?
Thanks! I used the meter to tell me what the ambient light was, but I also could have taken a properly exposed image without flash to determine the ambient light, and then counted the difference in exposure between the ambient light and the flash.
great Video John (again). Hot topic.. Without knowing how many times Fernando had to jump, I am impressed by your and his precision. It's just as you state: The challenge is, to determine how frozen a movement should be. It seems really difficult to me to get a precisely controlled blur of movement and only of the body part you are aiming for. On the other hand, (ultra-)short flash duration are associated with a high loss of light output. (except obviously with Profoto). One can ask oneself whether the goals can be better achieved with LED light and fast shutter speeds. But there again other concerns have to come to the photographer's attention..
Thanks Arthur. To shoot with the LED lights I was using in the same conditions at 1/4000 f7.1 you would need to shoot at ISO 400,000. If you moved that light into the softbox above him you might be looking at 1/4000 f7.1 ISO 50,000. Lets say you shot at f4, the feet would be out of focus and lets say you used the Nanlight Forza 500. You would still be looking at around ISO 12,000. Which is why stopping motion with LEDs as well as you can stop it with flash isn't really possible. If you want to do it with hard light, then it could be viable.
Also thank you for your kind words about the precision. He jumped 3-4 times every time I changed the exposure and it took maybe 40 jumps to figure out what our approach should be. One think I didn't consider is I was taking the photos at the apex of his movement which means he might have actually been moving slower at that point than on his way up or down.
I really got my timing down while shooting baseball and trying to get the ball on the bat during hits.
Hi there, thanks for sharing your knowledge. Great content! I‘m asking myself if I could achieve similar results by setting the exposure to 1/500s? Wouldn‘t this freeze the subject perfectly as well and make the strobe settings not that crucial for over all sharpness? Or could you please help me to understand what the visual difference would be than in the result? Many thanks in advance!
1/500 would most likely mean you would be switching the stobes over to HSS and that would also likely cause a reduction in brightness. But more importantly 1/500 couldn't freeze the movement. Maybe 1/2500 could do it, but back when I was shooting football the ball and fingers weren't frozen at that shutter speed.
Super useful to see this test with numbers vs power outputs, I'm facing a mixed light situation and not super happy with freeze mode (Profoto D2 1000ws), cause the ambient is still leaking in and blur the further details. I went to freeze mode instead of Hi-speed cause I can't have the subject available for a long time (sport celebrity) and needed to take as more shots as possible without him repeating the action vs me shooting only a few frames per action (hi-speed can't recycle as fast as freeze mode but overpowers ambient ofc). Still, in this extreme case, next time I would probably rely on Hi-speed with a slower but more syncronized pace between my finger and the ideal pose. Or go for a battery pack (Pro10 or 11) so I can freeze at a proportionally higher output capability from the unit.
Does it sounds correct to you?
Thanks, great video as usual!
In order to maximize flash duration, you need to lower the power. Limiting ambient light in that situation is also essential. If it's too bright and you can't control the it, then high-speed sync is the only way to go. In most situations where I am photographing athletes, there's a peak moment that you need to capture, so timing it with one single frame isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sure, you'll be a little bit late or a little early sometimes, but you have to do what you have to do.
Excellent content as always! Quick question, what is the base and boom you're using for the large octa around the 6:50 mark?
Thanks! Here is the stand - it's a great value! adorama.rfvk.net/qnONWO
@@JohnGress Thanks for the info, that's the exact one I've been eyeing and will purchase it today as it is on sale. Any chance you have the model for the boom attachment? Thanks!
Great to hear! Sure thing - adorama.rfvk.net/rnJb3G
I also love hypersync for freezings motion...
The gradient it creates within the image can be very problematic.
SUPER. SUPER , THE BEST
நன்றாக இருக்கிறது வாழ்த்துக்கள் R.MANOHAR-CHENNAI
Thank you so much!
Hey John how are you getting the ambient light reading?
I used my lightmeter to measure it as seen in this scene ua-cam.com/video/Y-Vy9mg3T_o/v-deo.html
Could the direction of your light have influenced your results also since it was directed mostly down (or looked it in the video) versus pointed directly at the subject?
In an ideal world if the light was located behind a camera and all of the movement was towards the camera, then the flash duration could be longer and result in frozen images compared to what you see here. But that’s highly unlikely
Yes. Light is used to highlight or defuse your scene.
Light also gives the scene mood depending on where it points and how bright it is at what it is lighting.
For example, if you want an ominous mood, set the light low and pointing up at your model.
The background light is low to pull the model out and this low light creates eerie shadows on the model.
Check out some tutorial on lighting.
Can't get how you determine how many stops are you from ambient exposure. How do you do this>?
You use your meter or test frames to measure the ambient light, then you count the number of whole f stops (or ISO or shutter speed) between your flash exposure and the ambient flight. If this doesn't make sense, searching for "exposure triangle" may help.
Wow, that’s a lot to take in, but super interesting. Your content is always different than what I see anywhere else. Hopefully not a dumb question, maybe I missed this. Are you metering ambient (it’s non-existent in the black frame, obviously). How do you know how many stops over it you are? Too much math, lol.
Thanks for watching! I know it's a lot of math! This is probably one of the hardest topics to explain which is why I am reading a script. But I guess when I wrote it, I glossed over that detail and just showed a clip of me metering the ambient light as I stated the reading. The simplest way would be to set your camera to whatever exposure you think you need for the flash duration and then take a picture without flash and see if its pretty much blank.
But, If you have a meter and you read that the ambient is 1/200 f2.0 ISO 400 then you would count up 3-stops: 2.8, 4, and 5.6. So in this example you would want to shoot with flash so that the brightness is at least 1/200 f5.6 ISO 400. Maybe a simpler way of figuring it out is to shoot a properly exposed photo without flash in manual at 1/200 (your sync speed), f-whatever you need, ISO whatever you're using. Then spin the aperture wheel up 3 stops, probably 9 clicks, and that's where you want to be or stopped down even more.
@@JohnGress very helpful! Thank you.
On 04:54 you say "but some models like the profoto d1 have their fastest flash duration their fastest flash duration at full power", while the manual for this flash states otherwise, it is at maximum capability that the pulse has its maximum duration. Is someone wrong?
This is what the d1 500 manual states. "Flash duration t0.5 min-
max power 1/1000-1/2600" So max power has the shortest duration.
@@JohnGress Yes, I found it on the official site, that's exactly what it says. Which looks very strange. It looks like a practice test is required to clarify this question.
Its clear. Min power is t.5 1/1000, max power is t.5 1/2600.
@@JohnGress This is against the laws of physics. However, until I personally try, I will not say anything.
I am confused on the example around 13min where you have a lower 1/X where X is the lower value compared to the first example. On the first example you had X much higher and froze the action.
I can't answer your question without knowing the minute and second you are referring to.
“…as well as a small sticker…”. 😆
LOL where did that come from anyway!
Real question is: what flash duration setting did you use to get rid of the sticker on the rear foot? 😂
Did it disappear at some point? 🤣
Wait a second.. the light starts at 0.1 power... doubles to 0.2... and then doubles again all the way to 1.2? this is so confusing lmao
.2 to 1.2 is a full f-stop worth of power. This is true for many light brands that don't use fractions. It's similar to the f-stop on your lens, opening up one f-stop doubles the light that comes in.
@@JohnGress ok, but what i dont understand well is.. it starts at 0.1 right? double that is 0.2.. does that doubling means also double stop?
so if im shooting f5.6 at 0.1... i would go f8 at 0.2? and then f11 would be 1.2 power?
Zzzzz