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Stopping Motion with High speed Flash Photography

Chris Gampat
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03/19/2015
2 Mins read

Last Updated on 03/19/2015 by Chris Gampat

Screen Shot 2015-03-19 at 11.28.18 AM
Screenshot from the video

Seeing what’s possible when you stop fast moving motion is always very cool because you view a snippet of time that happened in a split second. The best way to do this isn’t necessarily by using a super flash shutter speed but instead by using a flash with a fast flash duration.

Gavin Hoey at AdoramaTV tries to demonstrate this in a very educational video that shows off what happens when you try to shoot a scene without the flash, with the flash, and without any ambient light in the scene. Gavin builds up cumutaviely and shows you how lower flash power usually means a faster flash duration because the flash has to fire at a faster duration.

So how does flash duration works? In lay man’s terms, what it basically does is take over characteristics of the shutter speed. If you’re shooting with a two second long exposure, the scene will let in that amount of light but when you use it with a flash that has a flash duration of something like 1/3200, it will stop the motion in the same way that the shutter would if it fired at 1/3200.

As far as your aperture or ISO goes, all that does is control the amount of light from the flash that actually affects the scene and the overall sensitivity to the light. This is part of the idea behind an item like the Triggertrap flash attachment.

The video on high speed flash photography is very fun, and you should check it out after the jump.

aperture camera flash flash duration High speed Flash Photography motion Shutter Speed
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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.