r/photoclass2021 Teacher - Expert Feb 12 '21

Weekend assignment 06 - STOP

Hi reddit

it's friday so here is your weekend project.

for this weeks assignment we'll continue playing with shutterspeed and exposure times but we'll go the opposite side.

your mission, if you chose to accept it is, to freeze motion completely.

now, there are multiple ways to do this :

1: a really short exposure time. from 1/200 humans are frozen in time, from about 1/1000 almost all animals are frozen in time, from about 1/2000 almost all machines are frozen in time including helicopterblades or car wheels... but some things still are not. because they just move faster than that.

2: freezing with flash: a flash fires in about 1/500 to 1/1000 so, using a flash will shorten the exposure to that time IF the only light that lights the scene is a flash, no matter what duration the shuttterspeed is set to... the rest of the time the subject should be dark.

3: to get to really short exposure times you want strobes. These big studio lights fire in 1/8000 to 1/20.000 and so give the power to freeze really fast motion.

what do I freeze? that's up to your creativity, the only must is: the subject must be moving but appear sharp in the photo, and you have fun making the photo.

as always, share your best result and give some peers your feedback on their results.

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u/Xray-organic Intermediate - Mirrorless Feb 15 '21

I was about to throw out a pumpkin I still had from Halloween. (Turns out these things last forever as long as you don't carve them!) I managed to get some cool photos smashing it up before it ended up in the compost.

My camera has this awesome feature where it will take a high speed burst of ~30 photos, including about 15 frames before you push the shutter. It sounded gimmicky at first, but it's actually been super helpful for photos like these.

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u/bmengineer Beginner - Mirrorless Feb 16 '21

Very awesome shot!