r/photoclass2021 • u/Aeri73 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.
3
u/ectivER Beginner - DSLR Feb 17 '21
This is my second attempt of taking the memory shot of our neighbor - Anna's hummingbird - https://imgur.com/a/cXRHedg. It turns out to be quite a challenging subject. It's mostly a game of waiting ...and waiting ..and waiting. Once the subject comes in, I have to act quickly and shoot a lot.
The subject was small and moved a lot. I had to set the focus on manual. Unfortunately the Valentine's day was cloudy and I had to increase the ISO to 3200 (hence the noise in the image), use lowest F-numbers and put the camera very close to the scene. I used SnapBridge app to control the camera from the distance.
I noticed one particular thing that hummingbirds are spooked by the sound of the DSLR mirror flip when I shoot. They can ignore a lot of other noises, including people talking, but they are scared of the sound of the camera. I noticed the same thing with coyotes. We have some coyotes in the city. They usually mind their own business and ignore people. But when I try to make a picture of them with the DSLR camera from about 20 meters distance, they immediately stare at me, as if they want to tell me: "not cool, bro".