Coffee splash

zipzooka

zipzooka

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187
Name
Aaron
Edit My Images
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I attempted a few splash pictures yesterday. These are the two that came out best out of a lot of misses.

At first I was trying to shoot using a slow shutter and a flash but I think it was still too light in the room and was capturing nothing. Then I had my last few biscuits and decided to try a higher shutter speed (1/400th) and they started to get better.

I will be tying this again on my next days off, hopefully with some better results and other objects/liquids.


Splash! by A_Cro, on Flickr


Snack time by A_Cro, on Flickr

Cheers.
 
The more I learn the less I know :(

I thought if the max. sync speed was exceeded then if flash was used it would create a "band" of light across the frame as the shutter would not have been fully open when the instantaneous burst of light came from the flash....

If my understanding is correct then the flash played no part in the exposure and may as well been turned off.....

Unless of course I have it round my neck....

You have removed your exif data from flickr so I cannot check your shutter speed - not that I doubt you ;) I am just trying to understand the mechanics of your exposure.

Cheers.
 
I think you might be right. I probably could have got the same shot without using the flash. Earlier when I was shooting it against the black (and indoors) I was trying with a long exposure and to capture the image with the flash. This wasn't working so I decided to go for the quicker speed but I still had the flash set up.

I've changed the exif settings so you can have a look.

I need to read up about flash photography as I have no idea at all about it. I think my first idea would have worked if i was in a pitch black room (as I've seen when looking for splash photography set-ups)

Cheers.
 
If you had used a smaller aperture (high f number) then you would have cut down the amount of ambient light registering on the exposure - this would have reduced the shutter speed down - once it got lower than 1/200th you could then have used the flash.

I don't think you necessarily need a pitch black room.

If you look at the EXIF on this shoot I took recently:

Water drop 5 by kennysarmy, on Flickr

You will see I set the shutter speed to 1/200th so I could use the flash to freeze the water drop - in doing so I had to close the aperture to f/10

Shot was taken on a fairly bright day around 4pm indoors...
 
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There's a clear darker band on the left hand side of the shot's flash exposure but because there is a good amount of ambient light too it's not as noticeable as it sometimes can be. In these images the band is vertical (because the shot is portrait orientation) and is in line with the edge of the mug.

You get a black band at high shutter speeds if the image is only lit by flash but if it's lit by both flash and ambient light you just get a darker area, sometimes you can position this in an area of your image that isn't important and it will allow you to use shutter speeds higher than your sync speed.
For example if you can position the dark band over the sky in an image the flash wouldn't be affecting that area anyway so you won't see the difference.

If you want to lower the ambient exposure, you're already at your sync speed (which might also be slower than usual if you're using wireless triggers) and you need to avoid the dark band you need to use the aperture or ISO settings and increase the power of the flash. However, increasing the flash power will also increase the duration of the flash and reduce it's motion-freezing ability. Using HSS will also increase the flash duration.
 
Aaahh ok. I thought the band was a shadow from me (I was positioned that side when I dropped the biscuit in)

My early shots were with a really small aperture (25ish I think) and a 1.5second exposure, that's when I was trying to freeze it with the flash but i was just getting a blur.

Thanks both of you for your input. I will be using your advice next week when I try to get a better shot.
 
Well it might actually be a shadow from you if you were between the flash and the mug but it does look like that when you go over your sync speed.
That might be why the biscuits are in shadow in the second one, though it may be a combination of your shadow and the over-sync-speed bar.
 
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