photographing moving hands on a watch help

[boogi11]

Hi all,

I have recently purchased a 500d and have been experimenting with various functions and ideas.

I am keen to play with motion blur, but i am struggling with the second hand on a watch.

im trying to get a pic of 30secs of travel on the second hand, but the camera cannot pick it up, i get no blur or anything. when i go for a 3 sec shoot i have suceeded in the desired effect, but i cannot extend it out further, i have tried with a white and a blue faced watch.
i had more success with the blue watch as the second hand flicks( as in sharp movements between the seconds, as opposed to the white watch with a continuous movement.

any tips or ideas would be appreciated

 

[Alastair]

A remote shutter timer (c.£16), set to give 10x 3 second exposures on a 60 second interval. Stack the resulting images. At 30 seconds you're underexposing the second hand (compared to the face).

The difference between the ticking and the sweeping second hand is that the hand stays still in the same place for longer when it ticks.

Edit: corrected interval time, it may need some experimentation. I've lost my shutter timer so can't test this.

 

[TCR4x4]

As above or use strobing flash to get the same result. A flash every second or every 5 seconds for 30 seconds will do it.
As can be seen by an image I took a few years ago.



30 seconds by TCR4x4, on Flickr

 

[kman]

Hi all,

I have recently purchased a 500d and have been experimenting with various functions and ideas.

I am keen to play with motion blur, but i am struggling with the second hand on a watch.

im trying to get a pic of 30secs of travel on the second hand, but the camera cannot pick it up, i get no blur or anything. when i go for a 3 sec shoot i have suceeded in the desired effect, but i cannot extend it out further, i have tried with a white and a blue faced watch.
i had more success with the blue watch as the second hand flicks( as in sharp movements between the seconds, as opposed to the white watch with a continuous movement.

any tips or ideas would be appreciated

its just a matter of balancing the aperture/iso with your intended shutter speed. Important to keep the camera on a tripod and on a timer or remote release.

A macro lens, manual focus onto the seconds hand to make sure it's sharp (or at least its motion blur).

Here's a 1sec macro shot:

and a 30sec shot:

 

[tdodd]

Boogi, I don't think it can be done with a single exposure. You will need to take perhaps 30 x 1 second exposures and then blend them together. The reason is as follows....

If you set your exposure so that the watch face is correctly exposed over a period of 30 seconds that means you are only capturing light very slowly indeed, giving it 30 seconds until you have enough light for a correct exposure of the whole face. But the second hand doesn't stay in one place. Each second, or part of a second, it moves around the face. It doesn't stay in one place long enough to register at all. It will be so underexposed that it will be invisible.

If your second hand ticks in one second intervals, as opposed to sweeping, then by combining 30 exposures of 1 second the second hand will be exposed correctly in each position for one second along with the rest of the watch face.

If you have a sweep second hand then by combining 30 x 1 second exposure you should see a faint indication of the second hand. However, you might get better results by combining 60 x 1/2 second exposures.

I don't know what software would be best to do this. I'm sure Photoshop could be used, or possibly some star trails software.

If you try to do this by strobing a flash at 30 x 1 second intervals then your second hand will only get an exposure of 1/30 of the correct amount if you want the watch face to be exposed correctly. i.e. it won't work. Exposure blending/stacking is the way forward, I think.

kman's 1 second macro shot shows the problem perfectly. At the centre of the watch face the second hand shows up quite well, because even with the slight movements around the face the second hand overlaps with itself from one shot to the next, accumulating exposure in one place throughout the duration of the exposure. But look at the tip of the second hand. Assuming ten ticks per second, which looks about right, the tip is only getting about 1/10 of the exposure it needs in each position. It is so faint that it is almost invisible. With a 30 second exposure it would be completely invisible.

 

[*Babs]

Wow - TCR4x4 and kman - your shots are fantastic! I've done a 200sec exposure on a clock before, but this is something else!

I doubt I have a lens to manage this though.

Yet!

 

[tdodd]

Ah, thinking about it further I see that kman's 30 second shot makes cunning use of the luminous parts of the second hand so that part of the hand is self lighting rather than relying on reflected light, but you can't see the hand itself, just the traveling luminous disc.

 

[TCR4x4]

Wow - TCR4x4 and kman - your shots are fantastic! I've done a 200sec exposure on a clock before, but this is something else!

I doubt I have a lens to manage this though.

Yet!

I think mine was done with either the sigma 105mm macro or the tamron 90mm macro. On my phone so can't check the exact details. You could do the same effect with most lenses, just won't be as close as a macro lens gets.

 

[kman]

Ah, thinking about it further I see that kman's 30 second shot makes cunning use of the luminous parts of the second hand so that part of the hand is self lighting rather than relying on reflected light, but you can't see the hand itself, just the traveling luminous disc.

Yep thats correct.

Another possible way is to use a small led torch to light paint the hand as it goes round.