Curtains and fire

So it's 2009. As we told you yesterday, the aim for blabpictures is a post a day. We'll be trying to be interesting, informative and funny. It will be mostly Canon related, but we'll also have some general photography coverage as well as posting stuff related to photography that we find interesting or worth telling you about. 

We'll be featuring 'togs, so you get to see some good pictures by other togs as well as hearing about their thoughts on photography. 

For today though, here's a little tip about second curtain sync flash and photographing sparklers.

To do shots like this, you ideally need an external flashgun. In this case, a Speedlite 580EX II. This was mounted on the camera, and the exposure was set manually to 3.2secs at f16, ISO 200. These were set manually and you do have some flexibility with the settings, you just want to aim to have enough time for your subject to complete their image, without overexposing the sparkler.

I was shooting handheld, but there is no blur because during the exposure, there was not enough light to create blur on the main subject, and the sparkler was moving anyway. The flash was set to fire as second curtain sync flash so the main exposure on the subject (the girl with the sparkler) was created by the flash at the very end of the exposure, just before the shutter closed. The flash froze her movement resulting in the sharp image of her overlaid by a treble clef (yep, that's what it's meant to be!), even with a 5 second handheld exposure.

Shot with the EF14mm f/2.8L USM lens on an EOS-1Ds Mark III. 

-blabpictures-

High speed sync

Now this, this is all kinds of crazy. And no, I'm not talking about the fact that there is a double post today. This just had to be shared....

Many of you may know of a guy by the name of Joe McNally - a truly great photographer and someone who has mastered flash on location in almost every conceivable situation. Now we like Joe, even though he shoots Nikon... But for those that see his work and think "hmmmmm am I missing something with Canon and the flash system?" The answer is no and Syl Arena is the guy to prove it to you.

How does 1/8000sec sync flash in the middle of a bright day using Speedlite 580EX II flashguns sound? Interesting? Yeah, we thought so too. It seems that Syl managed to get hold of 12 580EX II flashguns on loan from Canon USA and a bunch of RadioPoppers as flash triggers and he built a ring light on a wooden frame. Well, he's calling it a ring lite, but it's more like a square light to me - but I'm just splitting hairs.

He used the RadioPoppers to trigger the Speedlites and so get enough power output for high speed synch at 1/8000sec. Pretty cool, huh?

So why would you bother? Well, high speed sync allows you to achieve a shallow depth of field when using flash in bright daylight with a fast aperture lens. Alternatively, you can turn day into night just by upping the shutter speed so you don't record as much ambient light.

We'll do more on high speed sync flash in a future post or two, but for now, we just wanted you to see this!

-blabpictures-