Studio Techniques - Strobe

Studio Techniques

(Unit content 2)

There are many studio techniques that you could pick up in a studio. 

Like -  camera movements, differential focus, lighting ratios, freezing movement, motion blur, etc.

Here is a link that I found useful about lighting ratios. http://digital-photography-school.com/lighting-ratios-to-make-or-break-your-portrait

This time, I'm going to talk about how to freeze an action/movement. This is just one technique that I've learned in class. This topic is called...

Strobe Photography/High Speed Photography

Energie by Karjul's Photostream

Basically High speed photography is a technique of capturing motions (that's not visible to the naked eyes) with a very fast shutter speed or with strobe light. - What's strobe light? - As I mentioned in an earlier post, strobe light is a lamp that produces very short, intense flashes that has the ability to catch very fast actions. So, the extremely fast flashes of light and the duration of the flash that stops the action.

To freeze a movement you can use more or less any SLR camera and you can either use studio head/flash head or speedlite. Speedlite could be better to use because the speed of the light is way faster than the studio light's. You should need a flash trigger too that just pops on the hot shoe and all it does whenever you take a picture, it fires the flashes and illuminate your subject. Also, use a tripod to eliminate camera shake.

If you decided to use flash, it should be essential to be in a dark room as it allows you to set up your camera at a long exposure (5-10secs). It's recommended to use beauty dish/es for these type of images because it has the quality of light and it produces nice and crispy images. 

A scientist called Harold "Doc" Edgerton is widely considered by many as the father of high-speed photography. He invented the strobe which is the foundation for most high speed still imaging today.

Harold Edgerton's photographs proved that the speed of photography can be captured using the speed of light instead of shutter speed.

Harold Edgerton

Before I started capturing my own strobe photographs, I've been looking at other photographers' images, their techniques and the equipments they've used. 


Pomegranate Splash by Muhammad Ahmed

Blue Wall by Martin Gatz - (2 Vivitar 285 HV at 1/32 power. One from the left and one from above. All with snoot. No Photoshop tricks.)

Also, here are two videos about how to take high speed images. One's with flash and one's without flash.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUtrNJN_4zY  - flash
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89gdrdGUkSQ  - none flash

The next post will be a research of Photographer Edward Horsford who has perfected the art of photographing exploding balloons full of water. He freezes them as they leave his hands to explode.

"I'm trying to create works that are interesting and highly unique."