• Home
  • Reviews Index
  • Best Gear
  • Inspiration
  • Learn
  • Disclaimer
  • Staff/Contact Info
  • Media Kit
  • Membership
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Education Field Instructional

A Quick Introduction to High Speed Flash Photography

Chris Gampat
No Comments
01/17/2015
3 Mins read

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer TriggerTrap Flash Adapter review black and white (1 of 1)ISO 2003.0 sec at f - 6.4

High Speed flash photography is one of the funnest things that you can do to creatively capture motion that otherwise isn’t very visible to the human eye. We’re talking about split second moments that otherwise can be even tough to capture for standard cameras. In a way though, high speed flash capabilities can make most ordinary cameras much more capable.

Here’s a quick introduction to high speed flash photography.

The Parameters of a High Speed Flash Exposure

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Paul C Buff Einstein E640 monolight (7 of 10)ISO 2001-50 sec at f - 2.8

To begin with high speed flash photography, you’ll first need to nail down a couple of key terms and understand how they relate to one another and can combine to create the photo that you want. For the most part, they’re the very basics of exposure, which you can learn about here in under 10 minutes. But these rules tend to change a bit when it comes to working with flashes.

Shutter speed: the shutter speed on your camera tends to be about controlling the amount of ambient light in the image overall.

Aperture/F-Stop: this controls the amount of light from the flash that actually hits the image, as well as depth of field

ISO: controls the overall sensitivity to the scene

Flash exposure: this is all determined by how much power the flash is outputting. Sometimes you can’t control it very much, like in the case of shooting with TTL lighting.

These are the four basic elements to creating an image with a flash included, but in this case there is another parameter: flash duration. The flash duration is what essentially stops the fast movement in the frame.

It’s About Flash Duration

F8, 1/6th of a second and ISO 250. F8 was used to ensure that when Jordana was moving about that I'd get that area in focus. 1/6th was used to capture the motion of the hula hoops. A fast flash duration is what stopped the fast moving motion otherwise.
F8, 1/6th of a second and ISO 250. F8 was used to ensure that when Jordana was moving about that I’d get that area in focus. 1/6th was used to capture the motion of the hula hoops. A fast flash duration is what stopped the fast moving motion otherwise.

What is flash duration? The flash duration is just how quick the flash fires. Luckily, it’s simple enough to figure out and works like shutter speeds. Shutter speeds work in fractions of a second, and so do flash durations. For what it’s worth, studio strobes and monolights tend to have a faster flash duration than hot shoe flashes. It’s important to check this tech spec on the light that you’re getting.

In situations where flash is added into the scene, the shutter speed controls movement capture and ambient light while the flash duration stops the fast moving subject. Theoretically, it can allow a photographer to handhold a camera and shoot for an entire two seconds or so because the flash will stop the fast moving motion. In fact, we were able to create the opening image in this article by shooting at longer than two seconds–but the fast flash duration helped quite a bit.

In the image above, we used it with the second curtain flash method.

Getting Creative

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer TriggerTrap Flash Adapter review images (4 of 12)ISO 2002.0 sec at f - 6.4

When it comes to applying this creatively, there are a whole host of options that you can do. Many photographers try to capture eggs cracking, bullets travelling, liquid splashing, etc. Using the TriggerTrap flash adapter is one simple way to get these types of images done, but then again there are much more complicated setups like the Milky Pinups and Liquid Heroes projects.

aperture f-stop flash duration flash photography high speed flash iso Shutter Speed
Shares
Written by

Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
Previous Post

Six Realities That You’ll Need to Embrace as a Professional Photographer

Next Post

What 7 Concert Photographers Wish They Knew When Starting Out

The Phoblographer © 2023 ——Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
  • Home
  • Our Staff
  • Editorial Policies
  • Media Kit
  • Membership
  • App Debug