HIGH-SPEED PHOTOGRAPHY – Topic 4

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When you see an image where the subject matter is frozen in time in a way that you would not have been able to see it with the naked eye, like a piece of fruit dropping into water, milk splashing, a balloon popping etc, the technique that was used is called High Speed Photography.

I'm sure you've seen the images in magazines and on the web of a drop or a piece of fruit and a splash of water frozen in time, and you may have wondered how the the shot was achieved. For studio shooting, you do need to have a very dark room with very little ambient light. Normally, you would set the shutter speed to around 1/30 sec. or so. That's why it is very important that the room is very dark and free from ambient light, as at 1/30 sec., too much ambient light would enter the shot. Aperture can be set at around f11 or whatever you choose for your subject matter. You may be looking at these settings and wondering how on earth anything can be captured at high speed with that scenario! The secret is that it's the studio strobes that freeze the action, and not the camera settings!

If you don't have an assistant, you need to work with a remote control and with your camera on a tripod, freeing up your other hand to make the splash. It will take many attempts to achieve the result you want, unless you have a specialized piece of equipment called a sound remote which will trigger the shutter and strobes the second that a sound is detected!

To see an example of a shot I made in the past, check out this image available for license as stock on Alamy here.

Because my small home studio is in a bit of disarray at the moment, it would have taken me few days to clear it up enough in order to set up for this type of shoot, and because the Topic was not listed as High-speed STUDIO photography, I chose to get away from my computer and small studio and head to the beach in order to shoot another type of High-speed photography. The ocean is just a few blocks away and I have never deliberately tried to photograph the ocean at high speed, so this was my chance!

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Image ©Diane Macdonald. All Rights Reserved.
^{Click on the image to view full screen!}

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Camera	EOS 5D Mark II
Lens	EF100-300mm f/4.5-5.6 USM
Exposure	11/6400 sec; f/10; ISO 1600
Post-processing	Adobe Photoshop® CC 2018, Adobe Camera Raw

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The techniques for studio shooting and outdoors shooting are totally different! When shooting high-speed outdoors, you truly are shooting at the camera's high speed setting – at 1/1000 of a second or even faster (my camera can shoot at 1/8000), so you do need to have a camera that is capable of shooting at such high speeds!

Image ©Diane Macdonald. All Rights Reserved.
^{Click on the image to view full screen!}

Camera	EOS 5D Mark II
Lens	EF100-300mm f/4.5-5.6 USM
Exposure	1/8000 sec; f/7.1; ISO 1600
Post-processing	Adobe Photoshop® CC 2018, Adobe Camera Raw

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I used my trusty old (circa 1990) 100-300mm Canon EOS zoom lens with broken autofocus, which made it quite a challenge to use with fast moving waves. But being challenged tends to make me determined to get things done, so I didn't let it hinder me. I placed myself on the beach beside the Jacksonville Beach Fishing Pier, extended the zoom to 300mm, set the ISO to 1600 and shot using aperture priority. As a result the waves hitting one of the posts on the pier were frozen in time to between 1/6400 1/8000 of a second!

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Image ©Diane Macdonald. All Rights Reserved.
^{Click on the image to view full screen!}

Camera	EOS 5D Mark II
Lens	EF100-300mm f/4.5-5.6 USM
Exposure	1/8000 sec; f/7.1; ISO 1600
Post-processing	Adobe Photoshop® CC 2018, Adobe Camera Raw

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I hope you will enjoy these water sculptures! I chose High-speed photography as my fourth Topic in Task 3 of the Sndbox Summer Camp Photography/Filmmaking Quest. The third task for the @sndbox Photography Quest is to photograph at least 5 out of 8 different topics and to write about them and how they were captured. Read about it here.

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For those interested in participating in the #wiwcontest, you can find the rules for and the theme for this week here. Be sure to join us! All SBD from that post will be shared with the 3 winners!

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Thanks for taking the time to read this! I appreciate it. Please check out my photography-101 account here for tips and tutorials about photography.

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