I was suffering from chronic “un-inspiration” this morning. Many of my photos for this blog are actually taken the day of – I know, crazy – so I’m usually pressed for time. (Makes it more of a challenge, don’t you think?) I started thinking along the lines of window lighting, but the question was still “what exactly should I photograph?”
Then our hammered dulcimer in the corner caught my eye and I called on my younger sister Aimee (who is an excellent dulcimer player) to help me get some shots of the instrument in action. I decided to use some flash instead of window light – even though the dulcimer is right next to a window – so that I could better capture the movement of the hammers while maintaining a good level of sharpness.*
Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre; make melody to him with the harp of ten strings!
~Psalm 33:2
*I set the flash unit to slave mode and perched it on an elevated music stand with a diffuser attached. My shutter speed was set to 1/20 of a second. The flash froze the hammers, but the slow shutter speed allowed for some motion blur in the shot. This technique is also used in portraiture when you have very little light to work with. Have your subject stay very still, set your flash unit to 1st curtain (meaning it flashes the moment the shutter is opened) if you can, and use a slower shutter speed than you normally would in order to pull in as much light as possible. EDIT: After reading Josiah’s comment, I realized that this shot could have been improved by using 2nd curtain on my flash. That way I would have captured the hammers at the culmination of the downswing with the motion blur following behind.
9 Comments
Wow, very nice, Benjamin! Hey, don’t worry, I think many of us are guilty of waiting until the day of. :)
I am curious, however, why exactly you used first curtain? I use second curtain almost exclusively as it seems to give me the best results for action shots like this.
Very cool!
Thank you both. Josiah, you just go me thinking… I’m not sure why I chose 1st curtain since, as you say, 2nd curtain would be a better choice for this type of shot. Thanks for the advice!
Wow!!! this is an awesome shot! Love it!
Fascinating! Musical instruments are fun to photograph.
On another note, I’ve been visiting this site lately on my iPad, and now I’m on a PC. The iPad shows a site with a different blog design (and involves swiping! :) ). Did y’all tailor the site for an iPad visit? I’ve noticed another site that does that, including /ipad/ in the URL.
Hi Melody,
You got it! There is an iPad only version of this site that is designed to emulate the feel of an iPad app. It is still somewhat buggy as the plugin was just released but I think it looks kind of cool. :)
Nice =).
Wonderful job capturing the motion! So, in reference to your note about the curtain, when would you use 1st curtain? I have read about it but could not really understand what difference using 1st or 2nd curtain really made (but I haven’t experimented much yet).
What lens did you use to capture this shot? I like using fast lens most of the time so a flash is not necessary but I have begun to love the extra color tone images have when using diffused flash!
Thank you Sarah. In hindsight I probably should have used 2nd curtain sync for this photo since I was trying to capture motion, but there are situations where 1st curtain sync is preferable. Let me explain.
The primary difference between 1st and 2nd curtain sync is timing – when the flash fires during the exposure. Let’s say you’re shooting in Manual mode at 1/20 of a second and f/5.6, trying to capture motion blur in the shot. If you use 1st curtain sync, your flash will fire at the beginning of the exposure, freezing the action, and the remainder of the exposure will blur the action the occurs after the flash fires – meaning you’ll get blur in front of your subject. Under the same scenario, if you were to use 2nd curtain, or rear-curtain sync, your flash would wait until the end of the exposure to fire, thus capturing the motion blur behind your subject. In that scenario, rear-curtain sync is definitely preferable.
So when should you use 1st curtain sync? One scenario would be when you are photographing portraits indoors and need some TTL flash to help balance the exposure and maintain sharpness in your subject. By using 1st curtain sync, you’ll lessen the possibility of them blinking in response to the camera’s “pre-flash” (which it fires to determine flash exposure for TTL). If you are manually setting flash exposure and not using TTL (through-the-lens) metering, either 1st or rear-sync will work fine.
For action shots and artistic effect, use rear-sync (2nd curtain). For everything else, it’s generally best to stick with 1st curtain.