Freezing movement: fastest sync speed of RZ67?

markbarendt · May 17, 2012

Holly said:
I should clarify: I'm not after frozen bullets through water balloons (although that would be fun) but just
have a model simply moving from position to position on the spot, and she's mostly motionless as I'm shooting
but on the occasions when she's still turning around or what have you, there's blur in the hands and arms.
So it's not as if I'm trying to capture insane micro miliseconds of action but more trying to solve the reason
why a really slow moving model still has blur.

The only reasons I can see for motion blur are that the part that blurred moved a significant distance and was lit long enough to blur or the camera moved and the subject was lit long enough to blur.

It is truly rare, in my experience for any flash setting to last long enough to provide a blur for most non-racing human movement.

I used to do baby photography with strobes and would have the kids crawl from the back ground to mom who was beside me at the camera. Some of these babes were really quick and active and it worked great.

The trick, if you will, was making the ambient light irrelavant. When the strobes didn't fire the frame was essentially black and the background was a white backdrop and floor.

Using zone system language, ambient white was placed about zone 1 or 0.

DesertNate · May 17, 2012

Why are you trying to use ISO 50 for fast movement? As modern films go, 50 is a rather low speed. If you're shooting slide film, you could always switch to Provia 400x and keep much of the same look while allowing for much lower power out of your strobes.
I am assuming here that you're using monolights. If so, shut off the modeling lamps and set your shutter to its max speed as the RZ is a leaf-shutter camera and syncs at all speeds.
I hope you sprung for the high power monolights, as that's what is going to provide the shortest duration. Since it's a woman's arm that's blurring, and not a bullet, you should be able to get away with ordinary equipment and still stop the movement.
Posting a photo is more valuable to a forum than 1000 words.

Holly · May 23, 2012

DesertNate said:
Why are you trying to use ISO 50 for fast movement? As modern films go, 50 is a rather low speed. If you're shooting slide film, you could always switch to Provia 400x and keep much of the same look while allowing for much lower power out of your strobes.
I am assuming here that you're using monolights. If so, shut off the modeling lamps and set your shutter to its max speed as the RZ is a leaf-shutter camera and syncs at all speeds.
I hope you sprung for the high power monolights, as that's what is going to provide the shortest duration. Since it's a woman's arm that's blurring, and not a bullet, you should be able to get away with ordinary equipment and still stop the movement.
Posting a photo is more valuable to a forum than 1000 words.

I'm not using ISO 50 for fast movement:
I should clarify: I'm not after frozen bullets through water balloons (although that would be fun) but just
have a model simply moving from position to position on the spot, and she's mostly motionless as I'm shooting
but on the occasions when she's still turning around or what have you, there's blur in the hands and arms.
So it's not as if I'm trying to capture insane micro miliseconds of action but more trying to solve the reason
why a really slow moving model still has blur.
I'm using it for rich colour and fine grain. I get how ISO works.

Holly · May 23, 2012

polyglot said:
worse, an engineer with PhD...

Ah that would explain it

Another similar option (if it's compatible with the photo you're trying to achieve) is to reduce/remove anything that soaks up light, like softboxes or flags/gobos. Direct flash can look nasty, but it is very power-efficient and I bet you could run at minimum power and some decent DOF that way - if testing at min power gives you the short exposures you need.

I'm afraid it's really all about softboxes and brollies at the moment. I did have the fuzzy hands thing when using bare flash with snoot
in previous shoots though.

Doing a one-light test is a good thing to try, especially if (as you say) you have a digital back to play with such tests. In fact, such a thing makes all this testing much faster/easier.

I wish I had a digital back, my god! The frustration it would remove! But I will add the one-light test to the list of things to rule out.

In that vein, you should still try to borrow a speedlight (hotshoe flash) and test with that because they often have shorter durations than studio strobes. And definitely test with the strobes at lower powers.

Actually inherited a daggy Hanimex CX330 flash from my grandfather's collection, it's crap but oddly endearing. Will test out some
on-camera flashes as well. Hope I will be reporting back with very sharp frozen pictures soon!

Mainecoonmaniac · May 23, 2012

Sometimes the shutter speed doesn't matter if the scene is in total darkness. What matters is the duration of the strobe. Generally, the lower the strobe setting, the shorter the flash duration. Am I wrong?

polyglot · May 23, 2012

No maine you're right but three pages late.

lxdude · May 23, 2012

Holly said:
Hope I will be reporting back with very sharp frozen pictures soon!

Well, you are heading into winter there...

Mainecoonmaniac · May 24, 2012

I'm old and slow

polyglot said:
No maine you're right but three pages late.

Sorry for being 3 pages late in responding. I'm old, slow and Mainegy

Freezing movement: fastest sync speed of RZ67?

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