July 21, 2010

• Fun with Strobes.

  What a 10-year-old strobe unit from college used for parties can do. The concept: cameras can capture a sequence of motion by having the shutter go off multiple times in constant light, resulting in many pictures. Strobes work by having the light go off multiple times while the shutter remains open the entire time, resulting in many exposures for the same photo. This is the same effect to get “ghosts” to appear in photos in olden times. SCIENCE.

  

  Unfortunately, a cheap strobe unit doesn’t generate enough light over a distance so these photos ain’t coming out that awesome. During the day, ambient outside light gives the effect of a faint trail of the ball’s arc.

  

  The rest of these attempts are at night. If I had a professional strobe and a black non-reflective backdrop, you’d get a similar look like you see in science textbooks.

  

  It takes a lot of experimenting and patience to try to get anything to come out.

  

  Make sure you light from the side- if you point the strobe from the front, too much light reflects back from the backdrop and the ball’s path appears more faint if you do.

  

  Tossing the ball at the right angle parallel to the strobe is important too. Most of the times, I only got half the tennis ball to appear because I was slightly off.

  

  Not the best exposure, but the most bounces.

  

  And don’t use a white backdrop (well, possibly if you had a really dark object, but I don’t recommend it)- white’s reflective properties will blow out the object due to the background bouncing the light off the strobe.

  

  Tu modeling Da Vinci with strobe on max.

  

  In the end, I turned off the strobe and just used my camera flash manually to get this image. Try it yourself! All these photos are basic and easy!

  • 12:10 pm
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