Lighting for strobe light shots?

[ezwriter]

Trying to shoot an egg falling, in a strobe effect. Have two cheap strobe lights, (the kind that flash rapidly, not flash photog ones, not sure
what they're called) .
But the egg is not coming out bright. (black cloth background)
Got the lights about 1.5 ft away, tried both lights but still no good.
Using Time setting , f/5.6. Tmax 100 film,35mm.

ideas? thanks

 

[markbarendt]

Time is fixed by the duration of each light pulse.

It is a low contrast scene so plus development may help.

Moving the lights closer will help if that is possible.

Opening the aperture would also help if DOF allows.

 

[adelorenzo]

Basically what you have to work with is wider aperture, faster film, increasing light power or moving the lights closer.

 

[Chan Tran]

Basically what you have to work with is wider aperture, faster film, increasing light power or moving the lights closer.

That type of strobes would flash thousands of times per minute so it can't be very powerful. You would need larger aperture or faster film. Besides what you do is a multiple exposures so you may not need a lot of exposure per flash. I would certainly test it with unbreakable egg first.

 

[David Brown]

I did a similar thing in high school physics (43 years ago). We were photographing two balls - one dropped vertically and the second identical ball kicked out horizontally at 90 degrees. It proved that they both fell and landed at the same rate.

It took some experimentation to get the exposure right, but it can be done. Opening the lens up to f2.8 and going to 400 speed film will give you 4 more stops. That's a lot, especially if you're already getting some image, just not enough.

For what it's worth, when Harold Edgerton was pioneering how to do this at MIT; he, too, had to make test exposures and process individual sheets of film before dialing it in.