High speed water splash shot

I wanted to do something fun today so I decided to do a water splash shot. When you photograph water splashes, you know that you are supposed to use a fast shutter speed. Actually the maximum sync speed you have will work...you really don't have to set it up above 250th of a second. Your flash will pause the water splash moment when you press on the shutter.

I have 4 strobe lights in my studio...none of them support the high speed function. My 430ex II flashes does support it, although I need a master that would trigger them both...a master that does have high speed sync built in it, too bad I don't have that. I'm not also willing to spend thousands of dollars for high speed strobes that enable you to capture the path of a bullet...I know I'm not gonna use it that often. So I just used whatever I have.

So I set up 4 strobes. 3 with softboxes and my main light had a shoot through umbrella. 1 shot the background, 2 from each side, and 1 above. So now I have enough light to capture my subject. I set my camera in a tripod, set my aperture at f11, my ISO at 100 and my speed to 200. I set my focus to manual and then focused approximately halfway through the glass.

I dropped my strawberry in the glass and pressed my shutter release at the same time...and I nail the shot!




200/sec isn't really that bad. If you can set up flashes with High speed sync, you can actually shoot however fast you want, although the flash power will be greatly limited the faster you go, this is better though because your flash fires shorter. For shots like this, it really does not matter that much because your flash will pause that moment when you press on your shutter. My settings worked for me so I'll go with that.

BMX and skate competition and the AI servo mode

Today I was at Plymouth Indiana for the blueberry festival. A ton of things were going on in the fairgrounds like arm wrestling, cheer competitions, craft fairs etc. Though the thing that captured my attention was the BMX/skateboarding competitions.

Too bad I cannot actually get inside the ramp area, but I have my trusty 70-200 2.8 IS lens with me! I can stay outside the fence and take shots from there. The 70-200 is perfect for tracking high speed subjects. I set up my speed at 320th/sec and my focus to AI servo. This mode would let the camera track the high speed subject without locking into a particular focus point. This gives you the flexibility to track fast moving subjects without the delay if ever the camera locks on a focus point. Set your camera to burst mode for better results.

Shooting behind the fence isn't bad at all. The wires are so close to the lens that they will almost not appear in the picture because it'll be out of focus. As long as a light source is not hitting the fence, it'll not be so obvious in the shot.


























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