Hs Photography v12

High-speed photography
for beginners by Pascal Bovet

Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Part I the basics 7
Gear 8
Photography basics refresher 12
Lighting 18
High-speed techniques 32
Part II behind the scenes 44
Splash in glass 45
Pouring wine 55
Pouring whiskey 61
Bubble burst 72
Vegetable in tank 82
Deodorant 92
Inflaming Match 99
Drop in a glass on android 105
Smoking bulb 111
Milky Music 117
Bonus: Smoke photography 127
Part III when things go wrong 135

Introduction
High-speed photography
Ever since I saw the first high-speed photos, I was fascinated by those images and
wanted to understand how they were created and create such images myself.
But what is high-speed photography?
According to Wikipedia:
“…In common usage, high speed photography may refer to either or both of
the following meanings. The first is that the photograph itself may be taken
in a way as to appear to freeze the motion, especially to reduce motion blur.
The second is that a series of photographs may be taken at a high sampling
frequency or frame rate…”
In this book I’ll cover the first meaning mentioned above: freezing a very short mo-
ment of time in a picture. To create a series of photographs or a high-speed video, as
know from such series as “Time Wrap”, you need special camera equipment and the
methods from this book will not work.
Probably the most popular subject in high-speed photography is the collision of wa-
ter drops. But, as those setups often require such special hardware as triggers and
dropper, it is out of scope of this book. Nevertheless, you can use the methods and
knowledge from this book to create drop-collision images.
Beside water-drop collisions, there is a variety of easy subjects that can be captured
when you understand the basics of high-speed photography.
The aim is to freeze the motion in a picture. Depending on the speed of the motion,
an exposure time of 1/500th of a second may be enough, but there also are occasions
when you need much faster exposure times than what you can achieve with your
shutter. High-speed photos often have a real exposure of as low as 1/40’000th of a
second.
Introduction
About this book

If you see high-speed images for the first time, you may think that those images
aren’t photos, but rather they were created on a computer. A lot of people assume
that you have to use expensive special equipment to create such images. Just a mi-
nority knows that this is a special type of photography.
For all those reasons, I decided to write the High-speed photography 101.
My name is Pascal Bovet and I’m working as an Innovation Engineer. In my spare
time, I take pictures, especially high-speed photos. As a photographer, I am com-
pletely self-taught … meaning that the information in this book is to the best of my
knowledge and represents the way I create my high-speed images. There may be
other approaches and ideas on how to tackle certain scenarios. I’m not saying that
my approach is the only or even the correct one; if you have any feedback I’m glad
to hear from you.
In this book I want to show which techniques are used in high-speed photography.
Some of those techniques were used 70 years ago by high-speed photography pio-
neers such as Harold Edgertone.
High-speed photography for beginners 4

About this book
I’m not sponsored by any trigger manufacturer, nor by anybody else, so I’m not go-
ing to try to sell you the most expensive trigger system (which may be good, no
doubt, but $400 is $400). Because this book is targeting beginners, I’ll describe the
methods and equipment I used to start (I’m still using some of them). I’ll give you a
brief overview on my equipment and some suggestions if you don’t have all of the
necessary equipment.
As mentioned, you don’t need expensive equipment. All examples in this book have
been done without the use of any electronic triggers (e.g., sound triggers). With the
correct technique, anyone can take high-speed photos. For starters, a regular cam-
era and an external flash is all you need. More on this later.
In the second part of the book is some behind-the-scenes information where I ex-
plain in detail how specific images were created. Those images range from simple
setups with one flash to more advanced setups with multiple flashes. I tried to use
examples that easily can be reproduced. I hope I can encourage you to do some
high-speed photography yourself, because it really is not that complicated.
This is the first edition of High-speed photography for beginners. If you have the im-
pression that some information provided in this book is not correct or you have addi-
tional topics that should be covered, please give me feedback. Also, if you should be
interested in helping translating this book into other languages, please contact me.
If you would like to have a look at my images or interact with me, my images can be
found on my homepage, on flickr and on google+.
Copyright
All photos, illustrations and text in this book are the property of Pascal Bovet and
protected by copyright. You may not reproduce, translate, or publish any text or im-
age without prior permission.
Website
For this book, I created the following website:
http://www.highspeedphotography.info
On the website you can find additional information and all the links provided in this
book.
Contact
In case of questions, suggestions, or feedback, you can find me on Flickr and Google+
or at the email address below.
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pascalbovet
Google+: https://plus.google.com/118293936299293705220
500px: http://500px.com/pascalbovet
Homepage: http://www.pascalbovet.com
Email: book@highspeedphotography.info

About this book
Special thanks
I would like to use this section of the book to thank some people who helped me to
make this book possible.
First of all I have to thank my girlfriend. She let me spend countless hours in my base-
ment and in front of my screen, and also for motivating me during the whole process
of creating this book.
Daniel Glauser and Christian Cueni. Two former colleagues and friends accompanied
me from my first steps with a digital camera and shared the same passion for pho-
tography. Thanks for sharing that passion and so much knowledge with me.
Ramun Berger, who loaned me his trigger to create my first high-speed image.
Very special thanks, also, go to my friend Hannes Holenweg for helping me with all
the electronic equipment, answering hundreds of questions about electronics and
hours of discussion on high-speed photography and this book.
Ilkka Harmanen for many discussions and improvements to the book and also Stefan
Walther for many graphical advices.
Otto Dimitrijevics, the designer who had a lot of patience and spent numerous hours
in designing and layouting this ebook.
A big thank you also goes to the numerous people who liked, faved, shared, or com-
mented on my images and surely also to you, the reader of this book.

Part I
the
basics
1
Gear
Camera
One of the most asked questions is: “What camera are you using?”. The answer may
not be what you expect and may surprise you. The short answer is: You can use any
camera to take high-speed photos, it doesn't need to be a special camera with ultra-
high shutter speed nor need it be a full-frame camera. Most likely you can use the
camera you already have. I’ve done high-speed photos with many cameras, ranging
from regular DSLR cameras, to mirror less cameras, to phone cameras (namely early
iPhone and early Android), to 40-year-old 35mm film cameras. Each of those camer-
as has little differences and some of them are more comfortable to use than others.
You can find examples of where I used different types of cameras in the second part
of this book. But first let’s have brief look at different cameras.
Modern DSLR/mirror less cameras

Modern DSLR and mirror less cameras are the best choice for high-speed photog-
raphy because they give you the most control. It is a big advantage if your camera
lets you control the settings yourself. Because high-speed photography is a special
setup, “Full automatic mode” is not the best one to use.
Very often I use bulb mode or exposure times of few seconds, so it is definitely help-
ful if you can set your camera to a mode which supports long exposure. If your cam-
era doesn’t support long exposure, you don’t have to panic now; but let’s be honest;
you will need some additional patience.
Another useful feature is manual focus-
ing. Some of the techniques I describe
will require very low ambient light, which
means that your auto-focus most likely
will not work or your camera will refuse to
take the picture. Most cameras in this cat-
egory will let you set the focus. It comes
in very handy if your camera has some
manual-focus setting mode that let you
use the display as magnification. This will
allow you to set the focus more precisely.
Chapter 1 • Gear
How many megapixels are needed? Really it doesn’t matter. Even the cheapest cam-
eras you can get today will have enough resolution and do the job. I like to quote
Zack Arias who said: “Master the gear you have before you get anything new.” No
doubt more expensive cameras will most likely have an edge on image quality, but
ask you if it is worth it to spend some extra money.
So let’s summarize. For high-speed photography, the most important features are
long exposure settings and manual focus.
Compact cameras (Point & shot)

Compact cameras are a bit tricky because especially cheap models don’t provide
that much control. They are limited on the number of options, especially in respect
to focus and exposure time. The chances are high that you’ll not be able to use this
kind of camera because of its limitations. If your compact camera supports manual
focus and long exposure times, it will definitely work.
If your compact camera doesn’t let you
control the focus, you can try to prefocus
by pressing the shutter halfway down.
However, it may be that this also will lock
aperture and exposure time, which could
mean that we’ll not get the desired result.
If your camera doesn’t let you control
the exposure time manually, there might
be some picture-effect modes. Try using
night scene or firework, which could do
the job.
It highly depends on the model you own whether the camera is suitable, partly suit-
able, or not suitable at all for high-speed photography. If you are in doubt, refer to
your manual to check if the camera supports long-exposure or picture-effect mode.
Android phone
I’ve taken high-speed pictures with an iPhone and an Android phone. At that point,
the Android was superior to the iPhone. The main disadvantage of the iPhone was
that I could not manually set the focus. Therefore, the picture was more or less out
of focus.
Another downside of both phones was
that they didn’t support long exposure.
The exposure time of the Android was
somewhere between 0.5 and 1 second
whereas the iPhone was limited to 1/15th
of a second.
But even with those limitations, I was
able to create high-speed images with
both phones. There are many apps that
let you adjust parameters of the camera.
Surely the quality was not up to the qual-
ity of a DSLR, but it shows that the camera
doesn’t matter too much.

Chapter 1 • Gear
Film camera
The big advantage of many film (film in the sense of “analog” photography) cameras
is that they support bulb mode and manual focus. Film cameras have been used for
years to create high-speed photos, namely by Harold Edgerton and many other pho-
tographers. So there is no reason why we could not use them today to capture stun-
ning high-speed photos.
The main disadvantage of using film cam-
eras is that you don’t have any immediate
feedback. So, you can’t quickly take a shot
to see if the focus is set correctly nor will
you know if the shot you captured is re-
ally what you wanted until you develop
the negatives.
Aside from those limitations, most film
cameras can also be used to take high-
speed photos.
Lens
Another question is which lens is the best for high-speed photography, and again
the answer is any lens is good enough to start.
Usually I shoot at around f/8 or f/11 to
have enough depth of field. This means
there is no need for super-fast lenses with
aperture as low as f/2.8. Some of my pho-
tos where done with the kit lens, other
where done with a 100mm macro lens.
The macro lens came in handy because
many of my subjects are rather small.
My current macro lens is 100mm, but as
depth of field is also dependent of focal
length I considered getting a 50mm mac-
ro to enlarge the depth of field. On the other hand, 100mm enables me to keep the
camera a bit further away from the scene because some of my setups are rather
messy.
If you start with high-speed photography, I would go with the lens you have, even if
it is a kit lens. Whenever you start liking high-speed photography and feel like you
would like to add a new lens, I would most likely go with a 50mm macro. I would
prefer the 50mm over the 100mm because it is cheaper.
The focal lengths described in this chapter are based on my APS-C camera and
not meant to be 35mm equivalent.

Chapter 1 • Gear
Trigger
There are a variety of different triggers that allow you to trigger flashes and cameras,
with different sensors. Those triggers will not be part of this book, maybe of a future
book which will focus on such triggers. However, if you get interested in high-speed
photography and don’t want to wait until the possible release of my next book, have
a look at my homepage, particularly section 4-8 of my High-speed photography 101.
Gaffer Tape
Gaffer Tape should be in every photogra-
pher’s toolkit. Even if gaffer tape is more
expensive than other tape, it’s well worth
the money. You can easily rip it by hand, it
has excellent adhesive properties, and you
easily can remove it after usage.
There are numerous occasions where you
can use this tape. I often use it to stick
backgrounds on the wall, tape together
two flashes, place sensors, building flash
grids, and so on…
Really, just get a roll!

2
Photography basics refresher
As this book is targeting beginners, I decided to add some photography basics. If you
are already advanced and understand shutter speed, aperture, and ISO feel free to
skip this chapter.
In this chapter I’ll roughly explain some basics that make sense to understand. We’ll
adjust these parameters during our setups. I’ll not explain every item in great detail;
rather it shall be a quick refresher. If you never use your camera in manual mode,
now may be the perfect time to search your camera instruction manual and check
how you can adjust the various parameters.
Shutter speed (exposure time)

Shutter speed is the common term to describe the exposure time. The exposure time
is the time during which the shutter is open and allows the light to flow to the sen-
sor. During that time, the camera is recording the picture. The longer the duration,
the more light is captured and the brighter the picture will be.
Shutter speed ... 1s 1/2 s 1/4 s 1/8 s 1/15 s 1/30 s 1/60 s ...
Amount of light ... 8× 4× 2× 1× 0.5× 0.25× 0.125× ...
The table above shows some common shutter speeds. Each shutter speed transmits
double or half the amount of light compared to the adjacent value.
Rotating LED fan at different shutter speed.

1/500s, 1/125s, 1/30s
Chapter 2 • Photography basics refresher
If one uses a short exposure time (e.g., 1/1000th of a second), the shutter is only
opened for a short time and therefore can freeze movements (e.g., a moving car).
Whereas, if you use longer shutter speeds and try to capture movements, it may re-
sult in motion blur.
You may assume now that we’ll only use fast shutter speeds in high-speed photogra-
phy, but actually that’s not the case. Later in this book I’ll describe different methods
I use to capture high-speed photos. For the moment, it is enough to know that the
exposure time is the amount of time during which the sensor will record the image.
Aperture
Short explanation: The aperture controls the amount of light that passes through
the lens and reaches the film/sensor.
80mm lens at f/8 f/5.6 f/4
Illustration of lens opening
Diameter of lens opening 10 mm 14.2 mm 20 mm

Area of lens opening 314 mm2 633 mm2 1256 mm2
The aperture is expressed as a fraction of the focal length. This means that the diam-
eter of the lens opening of 80mm lens at f/8 is 80mm / 8 =10mm; whereas with the
same lens at f/4, it is 80mm / 4 = 20mm. This also explains why apertures are written
as f/xx. This always means focal length divided by diameter of lens opening.
The table above shows that we increase the diameter of the lens opening by the
square root of 2 (1.41) if we change the aperture from f/8 to f/5.6. At the same time,
the area of the lens opening doubles. This means that at f/5.6, double the amount of
light will pass through the lens compared to f/8. The same is true for f/5.6 compared
to f/4.
Aperture f/ ... 2.8 4 5.6 8 11 16 22 ...

Amount of light ... 8× 4× 2× 1× 0.5× 0.25× 0.125× ...
The table above shows some common “full stops”. Each stop transmits double or half
the amount of light compared to the adjacent value. This means if you change the
aperture from f/2.8 to f/5.6, you need to quadruple the exposure time in order to
receive the same amount of light on the sensor.
The largest aperture (smallest f number) refers to the largest opening of the lens.
With the largest aperture, the highest amount of light will pass through the lens. The
smallest aperture refers to the highest f number.
But that’s not all, changing the aperture also will affect the depth of field. More about
this in the next subchapter.

Depth of field
Depth of field is the area within a picture that appears to be sharp. As previously
mentioned, the aperture affects the depth of field. With a large aperture, the depth
of field is the shallowest, meaning that only the point that was focused upon ap-
pears sharp; the surroundings and the background appear blurry.
By decreasing the aperture (increasing the f number), you can increase the depth of field.
DigitalCameraWorld has a great cheat sheet that explains how aperture affects the
depth of field.
Okay, that was the theory on aperture and depth of field. But what aperture should I
use for high-speed photography?
There is no universal aperture. When I shoot, I mostly use apertures around f/8, for
several reasons:
ff Most lenses have their best performance (in the sense of sharpness and image
quality) around f/8.
ff f/8 is a good compromise between letting in enough light and having a deeper
depth of field.
When I need more light, I tend to use something more in direction of f/5.6 and when
I need a deeper depth of field I go more in direction of f/16. You may ask yourself,
what if I would need more light and more depth of field. Let’s look at this in the next
chapter.

Influence of aperture on depth of field.

f/2.8, f/8, f/22

ISO
Film speed is the measurement of the sensitivity of a film to light, whereas in digital
cameras the ISO system is used to measure the sensor’s sensitivity to light. The high-
er the ISO value, the more sensitive the sensor, meaning with high ISO the sensor will
capture more light. If you use low ISO, the sensor will capture less light.
Noise at different ISO settings.

ISO 200, ISO 800, ISO 12800
ISO ... 3200 1600 800 400 200 100 50 ...

Amount of light ... 8× 4× 2× 1× 0.5× 0.25× 0.125× ...
The table above shows some common ISO speeds. Each ISO value stores double or
half the amount of light compared to the adjacent value. This means that a sensor
with ISO 3200 stores eight times more light than a sensor with ISO 400.
Raising the ISO essentially amplifies the amount of light that is reaching the sensor,
but it also amplifies the errors that are being recorded. This might result in red, blue
or green pixels. Another downside of the amplification is that the amount of noise
will increase.

Exposure value (stop)

In the previous chapters, we have seen that by changing shutter speed, aperture,
and ISO we can brighten or darken a picture, meaning we can change the exposure
value of a photo. One exposure value (EV) is the interval on the exposure scale. A
common term that refers to one exposure value is one “stop.” A one-stop difference
refers to double the amount of light. Even if the scales of the stops are different, they
are interchangeable.
If we have taken a photo and it is too dark and we want to make it one stop brighter,
we can do this by either:
ff Increasing shutter speed by one stop
ff Increasing the aperture by one stop (using a smaller f number)
ff Increasing the ISO by one stop
Modern cameras often use half or third stops for aperture and shutter speed. E.g.,
if you camera has shutter speeds of 1/200th, 1/250th, 1/320th, 1/400th you have a
camera with one third of a stop interval. With this camera, it would be possible to
adjust shutter speed by one third of a stop and aperture by two thirds to get one
stop in total.
Summary
Quick recap:
ff Shutter speed defines how long the sensor is exposed to the light
ff Aperture defines how much light is transmitted
ff ISO defines the sensors sensitivity to light
ff A change of one stop refers to double/half the amount of light
Please also note that images with the same exposure value have the same overall
light level but they may look different, as aperture affects depth of field, shutter
speed affects motion, and ISO affects the noise.

3
Lighting
In this chapter, I’ll describe some lighting basics. If you’re advanced in lighting studio
setup, you may wish to skip this chapter.
Lighting is a huge topic and I’ll not be able to do anything other than scratch the
surface. If you want to have more information on lighting, I recommend you to the
strobist blog, especially the lighting 101 and lighting 102. Another highly recom-
mendable, but rather technical, book on lighting is Light Science and Magic. It also
helps you to learn if you look at other pictures and try to understand what kind of
lights have been used. I have shared a lot of setups in my photo streams (google+/
flickr) and on Flickr there is the Strobist group where many talented photographer
share information about their shots.
I don’t claim to be a lighting master, but for the time being I can handle my high-
speed setups with speedlights and want to give you some insight in my rather low-
cost setups.
The flash
Flashes are very important in high-speed photography because we’ll not only use
them to add additional light to our setups, but we’ll also use them to freeze the mo-
tion. When I talk about flashes, I mean speedlights and not studio flashes such as
Einstein or similar. The difference is that speedlights have a much shorter flash dura-
tion than studio lights. It’s also a nice side effect that speedlights will most likely be
cheaper. There is a very limited amount of studio flashes that can be used to freeze
motion effectively (namely the Einstein 640). I don’t own any studio lights, so I won’t
speak about them. Anyway if you’re interested in reading about the Einstein 640, I
highly recommend the Stopping action with Einstein 640, by Rob Galbraith.
Chapter 3 • Lighting
We’ll use the flash in manual mode. If you own a flash, chances are good that it sup-
ports manual mode. It is safe to say that you need a flash for the methods described
in this book. But no worries if you don’t own a flash yet. See The $125 high-speed
setup (p. 30) for a cheap recommendation.
Built-in flash
Can I use my camera’s built-in flash?
Even if it should be possible to take some high-speed pictures with the built-in flash,
I would not recommend it for three reasons:
ff You are very limited in positioning the flash because it is built in to the camera.
ff Their power is inferior to the power of a speedlight.
ff You most likely cannot control the flash settings manually.
Old school flashes

Most of my setups were shot using two old SB-28. I got them rather cheap (around
$50) from a local camera store. The good thing is that you can use them for high-
speed photography if they support manual mode (which most of those flashes do).
Warning: It is not recommended to use old flashes on your camera. It is pos-

sible that those flashes may damage your camera because they have a higher
discharge voltage than some DSLR cameras can handle. There are websites that
let you check trigger voltages of flashes. In order to stay on the safe side, I recom-
mend using a wireless trigger for your flash. It is cheaper to destroy a wireless
trigger than damage your camera. More information about wireless triggers can
be found in the chapter Wireless triggering (p. 21).

Modern speedlights
Most camera manufacturer also offer flashes that are optimized for use with your cam-
era. Those flashes offer some great features, such as automatically syncing settings
with your camera, wireless auto settings... Surely those flashes are the Rolls Royce of
speedlights, but these features come with a heavy price tag. If you’re thinking of buy-
ing a flash for high-speed photography, I don’t recommend getting one of those rath-
er expensive flashes unless you have plans to use it on many other occasions.
HSS flash
Your camera cannot sync with every flash speed. The fastest speed on which your
camera can sync with a flash is called “sync speed.” When your camera is out of sync,
with the flash this can result in a black bar on the final image.

To avoid this behavior, camera manufacturers have introduced high speed synchro-
nization (HSS), which allows your camera to sync with a flash (from the same brand)
with higher shutter speeds. There is an example in this book where I explain HSS
(p. 36) in more details and show you how you can use flashes with HSS to create
high-speed photos. In my opinion, this is not the best approach and I rarely use my
HSS flash. If you already have a HSS flash, just don’t use this feature and use the flash
in manual mode instead. If you’re looking for a new flash, my advice is not to buy a
HSS flash unless you otherwise have a real need for a HSS flash.
Wireless triggering
When you’re working with off-camera flashes, you need a way to trigger them. Some
flashes have a trigger button on the back. This may not be the most convenient way
to trigger the flash, but in some of the setups it will work.
There are two more methods how you can trigger your flash: acting as slave and
wireless triggers.
If your off-camera flash is acting as slave, your in-camera flash (or any other flash) will
act as master and trigger the slave as soon as the master becomes triggered. This is
a very cheap solution, however not all flashes support this mode. Further limitation
is that if you’re using your built-in flash as master, it could add an unwanted light
source to your image.
If you prefer a more convenient and less restricted solution, you’re looking for a wire-
less flash trigger. Wireless flash triggers allow you to trigger one or multiple flashes at
the same time. The wireless trigger packs consist of a sender and one or more receiv-
ers. They are available in many different configurations and in very different price
ranges. If you’re looking for something inexpensive, you could go with a RF-602; if
you are willing to spend more money, you can have a look at PocketWizards. Wire-
less triggers are compatible with most common brands. The two main differences
between cheap and expensive triggers are build quality and the function set. For my
recommendation, see the The $125 high-speed setup (p. 30) chapter.
Another reason why I recommend using wireless triggers is that some of them (at
least the RF-602) come with a screw thread that allows you to mount the receiver on
a tripod. This gives you huge freedom in positioning your flash.

A word to the Sony users: When I bought my first wireless trigger. It didn’t ap-
pear to work. Some research on the internet showed that the problem is not the
wireless trigger, but the flash. After turning on Sony flashes (at least my HVL-42),
they need to be connected to the camera and triggered once before they can be
triggered with wireless triggers.
Flash mount
To mount a flash on a camera, cameras are equipped with a so-called “hot shoe”. The
hot shoe was intended to be a brand-independent standard for flashes. However, for
some reason, Minolta and Sony have decided to use their own proprietary connec-
tor. If you use a Sony/Minolta camera and or a Sony/Minolta flash, it is necessary to
use an adapter. There are two kinds of adapters:
The adapter above lets you connect any flash (or wireless sender) to your Sony cam-
era. Those adapters are available at Amazon (Alpha-FS-1100) and Flashzebra
The adapter that lets you mount a Sony flash to any hot shoe (or receiver). Those
adapter are available at Amazon and Flashzebra.

Lighting basics
According to Light: Science and Magic (LSM), there are three principles that define
lighting.
The size of the light source is the most important factor. It will define how the shad-
ows appear. Think about a clear day where the sun is high in the sky; you can see
strong shadows. Even if the sun is huge, due to its distance we consider it as a small
light source. Now think about an overcast day where the sun is behind the clouds.
We can barely see shadows as the cloud cover is our (big) light source.
It behaves similarly in photography lighting. If we use a small light source (e.g., a
single speedlight) we’ll get hard shadows, whereas if we use some big light sources
(e.g., a softbox or an umbrella) we’ll get very smooth shadows.
The type of reflection defines how the material will reflect the light. There are three
different types of reflection: refraction, diffusion and absorption. Each material will
fall into one of those three categories. If we think of a planar glass plate (e.g., a win-
dow) we can see that the light passes through (transmission) unless it is refracted.
A glass bottle, for example, will refract the light, meaning if we look through a glass
bottle we may not see a clear picture because the light is refracted in different direc-
tions due to the shape of the bottle. Diffusion is more about the light source and
not about the subject. When we take a white sheet of paper and place a light source
behind it, the sheet will be lighted evenly. This is called diffusion. Finally, if we think
about a tree, we know that light neither passes through nor becomes reflected as
the tree is absorbing the light.
Different material (e.g., polished metal, glass) will create direct reflection. Direct re-
flection is a copy of the light source. Everybody who ever read a glossy magazine
in the sun knows that this can lead to reflections. However, if we change the angle
of the light source (not possible with the sun) or the angle of the camera (your eyes
in our case), we can see that the reflection changes and eventually disappears. The
angles in which we can see the direct reflection is called family of angles. Depending
on whether we want to have reflection or not, we place the light source in the family
of angles or not.
This is only a very brief summary about lighting. If you want to know more I rec-
ommend you read Light: Science and Magic.
Simple lighting example for glass

If you ever tried to take a photo of a wine glass, you know that glass is terrible rela-
tive to reflection. This is because the family of angles for glasses is about 300 degree,
meaning that it is not very easy to place the flashes. As I’m shooting a lot of setups
with glasses or similar setup, I’ll share one of my lighting techniques with you. The
lighting technique is very similar to the “bright field approach” from Light Science
and Magic.
I have a piece of wood that is covered with white foil. If I want to create a reflection, I
place a glass from a picture frame or Plexiglas on top of the foil. The wine glass goes
on top of the Plexiglas.
Place one or multiple flashes below the table and point in direction of the white wall,

which is acting as background. It is important that there is no line of sight between

the glasses and the flashes; otherwise it is possible that you will see reflections on
the glasses.
Flash set up correctly
Flash set up wrong
If the setup is correct, the result then looks similar to the image on the next page
where you cannot see any reflections from the flash.

Flash power
The distribution of light is following the so-called inverse square law. This means if
you double the distance between the light source and the subject, the subject will
only receive 1/4th of the amount of light. So if we double the distance, we’ll lose 2
stops of light. On the other hand, if we have a setup that appears too dark, we either
can increase the flash power or decrease the distance between the light and subject.
Flash duration
It is important to understand flash duration because this is key in high-speed pho-
tography.1
Tek
CH1 100 mV CH2 5.00 V M 250 µs

Let’s have a look at the graph above, which shows a flash discharge at full power. We
can see the following: It takes a few nanoseconds for the flash to raise to the maxi-
mum light power when it is triggered. Further, we can see that once the flash has
reached the peak, the amount of light decreases. The whole sequence takes place in
a few milliseconds or less.
Tek
CH1 100 mV CH2 5.00 V M 250 µs
1 Many thanks to Jeremy Stein for giving me the permission to use his excellent graphs in this
chapter.

The magic begins if we look at the graph of ½ power. There is no big change in the
rise, but we can see that the light output is cut off during its descent. This means that
the duration of a discharge is even shorten.
Tek
CH1 100 mV CH2 5.00 V M 250 µs
If we finally look at a low power setting (as 1/16, 1/32, or even less) we can see that
the cut off takes place before the flash reaches its peak power, resulting in an even
shorter flash duration.
The graphs above are in no way absolute; they just demonstrate the behavior of a
flash under different power settings.
We can see that shorter flash duration drastically reduces the duration of the flash
discharge.
On the first image the motion is completely

frozen due to the short flash duration
(1/64th power).
With a power setting of 1/16th you can
already see minimal motion blur, especially
the outermost LEDs.
The third image clearly shows that a flash
power settings of 1/2th cannot freeze the
motion anymore.

I’ve not measured any flash duration myself; however, to give you an impression on
the duration here are some examples.
Power setting Canon 430 EZ Nikon SB800

Full power 1810 nanoseconds 950 nanoseconds
(<2 milliseconds)
1/8th power 405 nanoseconds 169 nanoseconds
1/32nd power 120 nanoseconds 56 nanoseconds
1/128th - 24 nanoseconds
Lighting helpers
In this section, I’ll give you a short overview on some common lighting helpers.
Snoot
A snoot lets you control the radius of your light. Basically, it is a tube that limits the
angle of light that leaves your flash.
Image without snoot Image with snoot
On the image, you can see the difference with and without using a snoot. If you want
to have an evenly lighted background, you go without a snoot; if you want to have a
gradient, you can use a snoot.
For home usage, it is very easy to create a snoot of something you have at home. It
could be a Pringles can, a food can, or even just a black foam paper. If you don’t want
to do it yourself, you can buy them (e.g., from Amazon)
Softbox/Umbrella
As we learned earlier, bigger light sources create smoother shadows. To turn a speed-
light into a bigger light source, we can use softboxes and umbrellas. Both have the
main goal to create softer light. The bigger the softbox, the smoother the shadows,
but it also will require more flash power to light a big softbox.
If you consider getting an umbrella, be sure also to order an umbrella adapter.

Some adapters (e.g., the Manfrotto) support the use of a regular tripod whereas
others only support the use of light stands. It is possible that light stands don’t
have a standard tripod mount because the stands sometimes just have a stub. Be
sure to check that the swivel adapter and the light stand/tripod work together. It
is possible to get everything in a rather inexpensive set.

Softboxes seem to be a bit more expensive than umbrellas. If you consider buying a
softbox, be sure to check if they can be used with speedlights or not because some
softboxes are designed to be mounted on studio lights. This is an example of a soft-
box that can be used with a speedlight.
Flash gels
Flash gels are a great way to create creative
lighting. Gels are basically thin colorized
foils for your flash. This will affect the color
of your lights. The best thing is that they
are rather inexpensive. You can find them
at online stores as Flashzebra or Amazon.

The $125 high-speed (lighting) setup

In this section I’ll give some recommendations on what to get if you don’t yet own
any flash / wireless trigger. I assume that you’re at the beginner level, do photogra-
phy as a hobby, and don’t have a huge budget to spend. Therefore, I’m clearly focus-
ing on low-cost equipment, even if there may be some drawbacks on quality and re-
liability. I don’t expect this to be the best solution, nor the only solution. If you don’t
meet the criteria, this may not be the best solution for you. It represents my opinion
and some of my learnings. With the gear I recommend here, you’ll be able to do all
examples shown in this book. Further, I only recommend equipment that I’m using
myself. If I don’t own the equipment, I’ll state it.
Flash
As mentioned earlier I have done a lot of my setups with two old Nikon SB-28s. I got
them rather cheap (around $50) at a local camera store. In retrospective, it was a fan-
tastic idea to buy them and they really paid off. A visit to the local camera store could
reveal some jewels. Some stores have a website where you can check if they have
used items. As said, I own and can highly recommend SB-28s, and also SB-24, SB-25
and SB-26, and maybe others could do the job. If you’re unsure, do some research
online or ask the staff at your local camera store. You can also find them online at
such used gear shops as Keh or Adorama, or on platforms like eBay.
I’m sure there are similar flashes available
from other brands, but because I don’t
own any and I cannot give you any feed-
back.
A good friend of mine was looking for an
inexpensive flash. We found the Yongnuo
YN460, which appeared to be the least
expensive at $40. I decided to order one
for my friend and one for me and I was
surprised. It can be controlled manually
and it even supports slave mode, which
means that you can trigger it with any
other flash. I’ve not used it very often yet,
so I cannot give any long-term feedback,
but the first impression is great. You can
find them on Dealextreme, Amazon and
on platforms like eBay. I highly recom-
mend that you compare prices because
they seem to range between $40 and $70.
If you’re not sure yet whether you will like
high-speed photography or if you just
want to play around with an off-camera
flash, I would definitely go with the YN640.

Flash trigger
As described earlier, I use the Yongnuo
RF-602 and I’m very happy with them. I’ve
been using them for more than two years
and they work very well. I got mine from
eBay, but they also are on sale on Amazon
($30) or Dealextreme ($30). The package
consists of on sender and one or more re-
ceivers. It is perfect for triggering your off-
camera flashes.
There is a new version of the Yongnuo
RF-603, where it appears there is no more
difference between sender and receiver.
Further, there are other low-cost triggers as the CowboyStudio NPT-04 ($30) or the
WanSen PT-16 ($20). As mentioned earlier, there is the Rolls Royce of wireless trig-
gers, the Pocket Wizard ($139). Because I don’t own any of the triggers from this sec-
tion, I cannot judge them.
The 125$ lighting setup

The question “How much lighting do I need” is answered in Light Science and Magic.
I would quote:
“1. No photographer has enough lighting equipment to do every assignment

as well as possible.
2. Most photographers have enough equipment to do almost every assign-
ment well.”
While I completely agree with both statements, it doesn’t help you with your deci-
sion. For starters, I suggest getting the following items.
ff 2× Yongnuo YN640 (total cost: $80)
ff RF-602 pack with two receiver (cost: $45)
Which brings you to a total cost of $125.09 for two flashes and two wireless triggers.
It should be a good start and you easily can add further equipment as you need it.

4
High-speed techniques
In this chapter I’ll show you three different techniques to freeze motion in (high-
speed) photography.
Freeze the motion with your shutter

First, let’s have a look at a very basic version of high-speed photography where no
additional hardware is required.
Equipment needed
ff Camera
ff Good weather (preferable)
Chapter 4 • High-speed techniques
Technique
The easiest way to freeze the motion is to use shutter speed. In general, the faster the
motion the shorter the shutter speed needed. Modern cameras may take pictures
with shutter speeds up to 1/8000s.
Note the following illustration:
These are images I captured for the collage shown at the beginning of this chapter.
Those images were taken with a shutter speed of 1/1000s, which means that we
froze exactly one millisecond of the movement of the skier. The red rectangle illus-
trates the time elapsed during the creation of one photo. Depending on the speed
of the object you’re photographing, one millisecond may be enough to create mo-
tion blur. In our case, it appears to be okay. In my eyes, this is a very easy variant of
high-speed photography. Even if it is not necessary, burst images of this kind are of-
ten combined in a sequence. The sequence helps the viewer understand the whole
event captured. I was photographing with five frames per second, which means that
the one millisecond slices I captured are created in an interval of about 200 millisec-
onds. The grey bar between the start of two images illustrates this.
Camera Settings
The most important setting with this method is the shutter speed. It should be as
fast as possible. Shutter speed mostly is limited by the amount of light available, but
more on this in the limitations section. Factors such as aperture or ISO are not that
important in this method. If you’re just taking one shot and not a sequence, you can
use the “shutter speed priority” mode of your camera.
Shutter speed priority often is abbreviated as S or Tv on the camera-mode dial.
If you’re shooting a sequence, I suggest not using “shutter speed priority” mode be-
cause you want to have all images with the same settings. Therefore, I suggest using
“manual” mode.
Limitations
As already mentioned, it is important to have enough light to freeze the motion with
your shutter. If you’re outside on a sunny day, this often is the case. But if it’s already
later in the afternoon on a cloudy winter day, then you can clearly see the limitations
of this method.

The images for the sequence below had to be taken with 1/500s (because I was al-
ready on maximum aperture and I don’t like raising ISO). You can see that there al-
ready is a little motion blur visible on the skis with a shutter speed of 1/500s.
It’s the same in the studio. You seldom have the required amount of light to use such
shutter speeds without using additional lights or flash. We’ll cover the use of flash for
high-speed photography in the upcoming chapters.
Another downside of this method is that it’s possible that the most important mo-
ment – that lasts only for a few milliseconds (e.g., a baseball player hitting the ball)
– may be happening in between two images and therefore is not captured.
When to use
Before writing this chapter, I thought which example I could use and I really had to
think hard to find a good one. This method is used rather seldom in studio environ-
ments. I used this method just once for my own studio work.

I think the image on the prevoius page is a perfect example for this method. The sub-
ject is really bright and therefore you have enough light to use this method. Another
perfect use case for this method is taking action sport photos on sunny days.
This method is very successful for events that last some seconds. With those events,
you’re able to take several pictures and can later choose the best one. Often it doesn’t
matter if you start 50 milliseconds earlier or later. If the event is really short (such as
the bursting of a balloon), you’re only able to capture very few images and it’s much
more difficult to capture an interesting image. With short events, chances are even
high that you’ll miss totally what you tried to capture.

Freeze the motion with an HSS flash

In the previous chapter we saw that the main problem with short shutter speeds is
having enough light. Let’s have a look at what happens if we use a flash.
Equipment needed
ff Camera
ff Flash with high speed sync
Technique
We saw that we need short shutter speeds to freeze the motion. As already men-
tioned, we will use a flash to get enough light. And this is already the problem, to
get the flash working “correctly” we need to have a flash that supports high-speed
synchronization. Mark Wallace has a great video that explains high-speed synchro-
nization.
There are different variants of high speed sync. Therefore it is important to check
that the flash is compatible with the camera’s high-speed sync capability.

Let’s look at the following illustration:
The shutter speed of this photo is 1/1600s. The red rectangle above illustrates the
time that passed during this photo. Because I was using a HSS (high-speed sync)
flash, the flash fired multiple times at a high frequency during this 1/1600s. The blue
rectangles illustrate this. As you can see, the flash was available during the whole
exposure time. So we’re back at the topic from previous chapter, freezing the motion
with the shutter speed. We can also say the power setting of the flash doesn’t have
any impact on its duration. We froze exactly 1/1600s of the motion of the milk.
Camera Settings
As seen in the previous chapter, the most important setting with this technique is
the shutter speed. It should be as short as possible. We compensate the missing light
by using a flash. Maybe it’s needed to turn on HSS on the camera and/or on the flash.
ISO isn’t very relevant in this technique. I often use an aperture of about f/10 to get
a bigger depth of field. For this kind of image, I use the manual mode of my camera.
Limitations
Depending on your camera and flash, it may be possible that either of them is limit-
ing the shutter speed, e.g., on 1/4000s or something similar. Even if we use a flash, it
is possible that we don’t have enough light. It is also possible that the shutter speed
is not fast enough to freeze the motion.

Most cheap flashes don’t support HSS and flashes without HSS cannot be used for
this method because it would result in a black bar on the image. Another disadvan-
tage is that most cameras have a short trigger delay, which means that some millisec-
onds will go by between pressing the shutter and the beginning of the recording of
the image. The technique described in the next chapter will solve all those problems.
When to use
I used this method at the beginning of my high-speed photography work. I was

lucky because my first flash supported HSS. The first part of my “Milky Music” series
was done with this technique and on the image above I used this technique. You can
find the detailed behind the scenes of the Milky Music series in chapter 13 (p.117).
Conclusion
The main advantage of this method is that you gain some flexibility due to the extra
light from the flash, especially in a studio environment. One disadvantage is surely
that you need the more expensive HSS flashes. But all things considered, I believe
this is a valid method for high-speed photography.

Freeze the motion with a flash

I’ll show you a very easy and my favorite technique for taking high-speed photos. For
this method, you don’t need any special equipment, just the camera and your flash.
Equipment needed
ff Camera
ff Flash
ff Remote trigger for flash (not required but definitely useful)
Technique
In the last chapter, we saw that you can use a short shutter speed to freeze the mo-
tion and compensate for the missing light with a flash. But, the main disadvantage of
the last method was that you’re only able to use HSS flashes. This is exactly why we
need the technique described in this chapter. With this technique you can use what-
ever flash you have. The camera is setup in a dark room, with longtime exposure (or
bulb) and in the key moment, we’re firing the flash manually.

Let’s have a look at the following illustration:
Because we are in a dark room, the camera isn’t recording anything (expect black) as
long as there is no flash. As soon as we trigger the flash, it will get bright for a short
moment and the camera captures only and exactly this moment. Even if the camera
was recording a picture for several seconds (red rectangle), the only thing we can see
on the final image is the moment we triggered the flash (blue rectangle). Depending
on the flash and the power setting of the flash, this will be as short as 1/20’000s. This
duration is much shorter than what we could get with the shutter. Therefore we’re
able to freeze much faster motion. The duration of the flash depends on the power
setting. If you don’t remember, check out chapter 3 Flash duration (p. 26) again.
Camera and flash settings

As already mentioned, we’ll use long exposure on our camera; I suggest somewhere
around 4-10 seconds. Most of the time, I set the aperture to about f/8 to f/10 to filter
out minimal amount of ambient light.
As mentioned in Flash Duration (p. 26) chapter, the duration of the flash highly de-
pends on its power setting. Therefore, we try to use the flash at a very low power
setting to get a short flash duration in order to freeze our motion. We shouldn’t use
the flash at full power because then we have a flash duration of several milliseconds,
which could be enough to get motion blur.
Testing camera and flash settings

To validate our camera and flash settings, we do two tests:
1. During the first test we want to see if the flash is set up correctly. Therefore we
take an image with firing the flash, but without action. For this image I just placed
the strawberry in the glass and changed the position and the power settings of
my flashes until I was happy with the result.

2. The second test we do is to verify if the camera settings are adequate. Therefore
we take an image without triggering the flash. This image should be totally black.
If this is not the case, we have too much ambient light. You should try to mini-
mize the ambient light; if this is not possible, you can choose a smaller aperture
(smaller aperture = higher number). For further possible actions see section ghost
images (p. 136) in Part III: when things go wrong.
In practice, the first test is much more than one picture. You are adjusting the
camera and flash settings until you get the lighting you want. The second test is
just a quick check to see if the chosen exposure time / aperture will not produce
any ghost images.
Here are my test images:
Left: Completely dark. Middle: Flash 1/8th power for the background. Right: Same as middle,
but an additional flash with 1/32nd power to brighten the strawberry.
Creating the image

As soon as you’re happy with your lightning setup, you can capture the action. As
already described, it is very easy. First I triggered the camera, then I dropped the
strawberry into the water, and just before the strawberry hit the water I fired the
flash manually.
It is important that you don’t fire the flash with the camera because this would
create an additional delay. You have to trigger the flash manually.
If you don’t want to put your hands on your flash every time, you can use a remote
trigger to fire your flash. If you don’t own a remote trigger, do not worry; it will also
work without.
Surely not every attempt will be successful, sometimes you’ll trigger the flash too
early, or too late, but with some practice you’ll get great results. For this chapter I
made about 30 photos, 15 were okay (strawberry in the moment of hitting the wa-
ter) and about 5 were great (everything looks good)

There was also a reason for choosing this section of the image. If I’d taken an image of the
whole glass, I’d have to clean up the table after each attempt. Setups where you have to
clean up after each attempt are very time consuming. I don’t say that it’s not possible to
take such pictures with this technique, but you’ll need a lot of time and patience.
Above I wrote that we have to take the image in a completely dark room. Well that’s
not completely true.
The room doesn’t need to be completely dark, but the amount of ambient light
should be so low that we can filter it out with our camera settings.
In a completely dark room I wouldn’t have been able to see the glass. In this example
I pointed with a flashlight on the opposite wall. Just bright enough to see some-
thing, but not so bright that the picture without flash wouldn’t be black anymore.
You can find the setup for this image on the next page.
Limitations
If the room is too bright, it’s not possible to expose long enough without getting ghost im-
ages. This happens also if the object is very bright, as may occur with a light bulb. Further,
it is not possible to make sequences with long exposure times. If you use this technique,
you’ll get one image per attempt. If you would fire the flash a second time you would get a
double exposure. Which would mean two different moments of time in one image.
When to use
This technique is universally applicable and I used this technique in most of my im-
ages. Many of the images in the behind the scenes chapter will use this technique.
Here are some other examples, where I was using this technique:
ff Popping water balloon
ff Splash in a glass
ff Kiwi Splash
ff Champagne Splash
ff Milky Music on white
As you can see on the example images, you can use this technique with bright back-
grounds as well as dark backgrounds. The brightness of the background is controlled
by the settings of the flash.

Strawberry water splash
Conclusion
With the correct technique, it is very easy to take high-speed photos. If you don’t
fully understand every detail, don’t be afraid. In the behind the scenes section are
many images with this technique and especially the first image has a very detailed
walk through.
I believe that this is the most important technique for high-speed photography be-
cause you can achieve exposure duration, which cannot be achieved by your shutter.

Part II
behind
the
scenes
5
Splash in glass
Idea
In this shot I wanted to create a splash by throwing something into a glass. A lot of
people do this with coffee, but I decided to do it with a cocktail glass and colored
water. This has the advantage that you can do it with just one flash and it’s a little less
messy. Because this is the first example, I’ll walk through all the steps from preparing
to settings, more details than in the subsequent chapters.
Chapter 5 • Splash in glass
Equipment
To create this shoot the following things are needed:
ff Camera
ff Flash
ff Wireless flash trigger (optional but very helpful)
ff A cocktail glass (any other glass will also do it, the wider the glass the easier to
aim)
ff Something to throw into the glass (I used oven-hardening modeling clay. I de-
cided to use something soft to minimize the chance of damaging my glass. You
could also use a cookie or ice cubes.)
ff Water
ff Food coloring
ff Something to cleanup your mess, either a towel or some paper towels.
Flow
We’ll use the Freeze the motion with a flash (p. 39) method as described in Chapter 4.
The process for this shoot looks as following:
ff Turn off light
ff Start camera
ff Drop something in the glass
ff Trigger flash
ff Done

Equipment setup
Splash in glass

Initial camera settings

I used the camera in manual mode. For my shots, I mostly start with settings like:
ff Aperture f/8-f/14
ff Exposure time of 5-10 seconds
ff ISO 200-400 (rarely 800)
ff Set the frame
ff Manual focus
I set up the camera with room lights on. As soon as I have all the settings, I turn off
the light and do some test shots and fine adjustments. In this particular shot, I start-
ed with an aperture of f/10. This provides an acceptable depth of focus. The photo
without light should turn out completely black, and the lens performance is very
good in this area.
The exposure time was set to 5s. For your camera / lighting settings test shots, you
can use shorter exposure times so that you don’t have to wait too long. For the cam-
era / lighting test shots, I trigger the flash with the camera because I don’t do any
action and just want to test the settings. Remember that we’ll be working in a dark
room and the camera only sees the moment the flash is triggered; the exposure time
will not affect the brightness of the image.
For the ISO, I generally start with 200. I don’t like raising ISO and try to prevent ISO
adjustment by adjusting other factors such as flash power, number of flashes, and
aperture. However, there are cases where I can’t adjust the other factors and then I
raise ISO to 400 or rarely to 800, if needed. Let’s start with ISO 200.
Whenever I set the frame, I try to get the subject – in this case the glass – as big as
possible. However, keep in mind that when throwing something into the glass there
will be a splash, most likely in both directions and above the glass. When you have
a zoom lens, you can adjust the focal length; if you have a fixed focal lens, then you
have to adjust the position of the camera. I decided to use portrait orientation be-
cause I expected the splash to go more in height than in width.
Setting the focus is the last setting I do. I used manual focus because I’m shooting in
a dark room and this will confuse the auto focus. So I set the focus to the upper edge
of the glass. To set the focus more accurately, I used the “focus check” function, which
displays a magnified version of your image.
As you turn off your lights later, you’ll sometimes touch your camera or the glass
by accident. In this case, you have to check and reset your focus. Because I clean
the glass after every attempt, I had to reset the focus after each attempt.
So quick recap for camera: f/10, 5s (could also be 1s for testing), ISO 200, manual
focus.
Okay: camera ready so far, let’s setup the flash.
Initial flash settings

I wanted to use something similar to the bright field approach (p. 23) as described in
chapter 3. The flash was set up below the table, pointing on the white wall behind
the glass. The flash highlights the wall and the glass sits between the camera and

the wall. Further, there is neither a line of sight between the flash and camera nor
between the flash and the glass. A line of sight between the flash and the camera
may result in flare on your picture, whereas a line of sight between your glass and
the flash may give you “hot spots” (ugly reflection) on your glass. For my glass setups,
I often use this setup.
The flash was set to manual mode. In this setup I used an SB28, set the power to 1/8th,
and the focal length to the shortest width (24mm in my case). Some flashes have a
built-in diffusor, which allows you to get even smaller focal lengths, but I found out
that this eliminates about 1 stop of light. So I rarely use them.
The flash was mounted on a wireless receiver so that I could trigger the flash by
pressing the button on the sender. I wrote that this receiver is optional but very help-
ful. If you don’t own a flash receiver, you have to use the “Test” button on your flash to
trigger it. However, this button is on the back of your flash and may not be reached
very easily if you’re alone. If there is a second person who can either drop the ball
or trigger the flash, then this can be done; but if you’re alone, a wireless trigger defi-
nitely will be helpful.
When I use wireless triggers I always trigger the flash without starting the cam-
era, just to be sure that it is mounted correctly to the trigger and that the trigger
is operating.
So, when the flash is positioned and set up, we’re ready to test our settings.
Testing the settings

As described in chapter 4, to test the settings (p. 40) we do two different tests. The first
test checks whether camera and flash are correctly set up and the result is a good
exposed image; the second test checks whether our settings are dark enough when
no flash is fired. For the first test, I turn off the light, start the camera, trigger the flash,
and check the image. Depending on the result, I adjust the parameters in order to
get a better image.
If the image is too dark, you have the following options:
ff Use a larger aperture (larger aperture means smaller number, this will reduce
your depth of focus)
ff Reduce the distance between the flash and the object (the object has to go near-
er to light source, the white wall in our case)
ff Increase the flash power (keep in mind that this will make the flash duration lon-
ger and may add motion blur)
ff Add an additional flash (limited by the number of flashes you have)
ff Increase ISO (which will result in more noise)
You don’t need to bookmark this page. Possible actions when images aren’t turn-
ing out as expected are collected in the section When things go wrong (p. 135)

Those points are in order of my preference. I mostly use points 1-3 above or the
fourth point if I have additional flashes that are not in use. In each situation, you have
to decide which compromises you’re willing to make.
If the image is too bright, you have the following options:
ff Decrease ISO (which will result in less noise)
ff Decrease the flash power (this one is great because it gives you a shorter flash
duration)
ff Use a smaller aperture (smaller aperture means higher number, this will increase
your depth of focus)
ff Add light modifier as diffusors (depending on availability)
ff Increase the distance between the flash and the object (the object has to go far-
ther away from the light source)
ff Remove a flash (only if you’ve setup two flashes at the same position)
In general it’s easier if your image is too bright. I then follow the points mentioned
above from top to bottom until the exposure is OK.
The first test shot I did was already okay and I didn’t have to do adjustments; it looked
as following:
Test one: Lighting test Test two: Darkness test
As mentioned at the start of this chapter, there are two tests. The second test is to
check if the image will be black if there is no flash. The reason for this is that when the
image is not completely black, there is a possibility that you will have a ghost image
in your final image. Now it is important to adjust the exposure duration to the time
you’ll need drop the ball in the glass and fire the flash. I did a test with five seconds
and the image was completely dark. So I checked if the image stays dark when I raise
the time eight seconds and it did.

However, if the image is not completely dark, there could be several reasons:
ff Too much ambient light (try to reduce ambient light)
ff The exposure time is too long (try to reduce the exposure time)
ff ISO too high or aperture too large (if the two steps above didn’t help, you need to
adjust either of those settings.)
If you are adjusting ISO or aperture during the second test, please be aware that
you have to repeat both tests. ISO and aperture are influencing the result of the
first test.
If both tests are successful we’re finally ready to take the picture.
Taking the picture

When everything is set up correctly, taking the final image is very easy. The proce-
dure will be as described in the flow chart chapter.
ff Turn off light
ff Start camera
ff Drop fruit
ff Trigger flash
ff Check picture
I started with a wine glass and after the first shot I found out that it’s really difficult to
get the ball inside the glass. Therefore, I decided to use a wider cocktail glass.
After each shot, I cleaned up the glass and refilled it with water so that there are no
drops on the glass from the previous attempt. One could remove those drops in
post editing, but I prefer to do as much as possible while taking the image. A cleaner
image needs less post editing. On the next page you can see the first shot with the
cocktail glass.
Actually this photo was shot in portrait mode and much of the white space was add-
ed in post-production. As I saw that the splash is more going to the left and right
than going up, I decided after few shots to change orientation to landscape.
It may take some time until you got the timing right. Overall, I shot 20 images, three
were very good, three were OK, and on the remaining I triggered the flash too late or
too early. Patience and practicing are key for the success.

So we’re done!? Nearly, but not yet! You should make it a habit to take some setup
shots at the end of a session. Even if you’re very excited and want to see the result on
your big screen, take the time to do the shots of your set up, it will pay out someday!
Why you should take some shots of your setup

Over the last years, I forced myself to do a shot of the setup and I really encourage
you to also make it a habit. I’m a lazy guy and don’t do nice light diagrams after the
shot or write down the flash settings. When I’m done, I take some shots from the
overall setup so that I can see the camera and flash position and some close-up shots
from each flash so that I’m able to see the flash settings.
1. It helps YOU. When you want to do a shot similar to your last shot, you just
can open your image library, search for the setup shots of that session, and
you have all the settings, even if it’s from years ago. I’m sure when you write it
down somewhere; you’ll surely not find it when you’re searching for it.
2. I t helps OTHERS. We all love to see setup shots to improve our skills. Sadly, far
too few photographers share their set ups. I highly encourage you to share
your setup shots, even if they are not masterpieces. If you look at my Flickr or
Google+ portfolio, you will find setup shots for most of my high-speed shots. I
received a lot of positive feedback for sharing the setup shots.

A setup picture is a note of the most important elements. It doesn't need to be a masterpiece.
Conclusion
On the size of the chapters, you can see that preparation is at least as important as
taking the picture. A careful preparation can prevent a lot of hassle. Further, you
have seen that taking high-speed images is not very difficult and doesn’t need much
equipment.

6
Pouring wine
Idea
You’ve surely already seen images where somebody fills a glass with wine. This is an-
other great and easy example for high-speed photography. The setup can be pretty
similar to the setup from the last chapter. Filling a glass of wine takes some seconds.
As the action is long enough, this easily can be captured without the use of triggers.
In this chapter, I’ll also show that the camera really doesn’t matter. As I’ve done this
shot several times, I decided to do it with a film camera. Certainly you can also use
your digital camera. Should you ever want to use your film camera for a high-speed
shot, this is a good example.
Chapter 6 • Pouring wine
Equipment
To create this shoot, the following are needed:
ff Camera
ff Flash
ff Wireless flash trigger (optional but very helpful)
ff A wine glass
ff Water
ff Pot
ff Food coloring
ff Something to cleanup your mess, either a cloth towel or some paper towels.
Flow
ff Turn off light
ff Start camera
ff Start filling glass
ff Trigger flash
ff Done

Equipment setup
Pouring wine

Initial camera setting

My analog camera has only exposure times less than one second and bulb mode. As
I knew that I need some time to fill the glass after starting the camera, I was going to
use bulb mode.
In film photography, the film defines the ISO. I had a half-full ISO 200 film in the cam-
era and decided to use the remainder of the film to try this.
Focus is set manually, so nothing special here. The only difference is that those cam-
eras don’t have a nice real-time magnifier to set the focus properly. So setting focus
is a bit more difficult.
As mostly everything is predefined in this example, the aperture is the only param-
eter to define. As already mentioned in the last example, I tend to use apertures be-
tween f/8 and f/14. Because I was using an ISO 200 film and cannot easily adjust the
ISO between two shots, I decided to go with a larger aperture. I went with f/8.
One of the disadvantages of film cameras is that you can’t immediately see the re-
sult. This means either you have a lot of confidence and start shooting right away or
you double check the settings with your digital camera. I went with the later. I set up
my digital camera with the same settings to test the lighting.
ff Aperture f/8
ff ISO 200
ff Exposure time 10 seconds
ff Manual focus
I decided to capture only the glass without the table below. This has the advantage
that you don’t have to care about the surface of the table and you don’t have to clean
its surface after each shot.

I planned to use the same lighting setup as with the previous shot.
For most shots, I use the flash in manual mode. Also, this time I was using the flash
with the shortest width possible. For those shots, I usually start with power settings
from 1/16th or 1/8th. Actually it doesn’t matter what your initial settings are. Power on
your flash, set the power to any level, take a test shot, and check the result. Depend-
ing on the result, you increase or decrease the power. The more you practice the
more you’ll get a feeling for the settings. Or, maybe you have even done something
similar and can have a look at your setup and settings. These are exactly the mo-
ments when setup pictures are very helpful.
In this setup, I also was using my wireless trigger for triggering my flash.

With those settings, I did my light tests (p. 40) (according to chapter 4) with my digital
camera. Because the digital camera was next to the film camera, they don’t capture
exactly the same frame, but you can roughly see if the light is OK or not. If both tests
are successful, you’re ready to take the picture.

Taking the picture

As with our previous shot, let’s have a look at the flow chart again.
ff Turn off light
ff Start camera
ff Trigger flash
ff Done
I mentioned before that you’ll not be able to review the result immediately if you’re
shooting on film. The nice thing about the high-speed method we’re using is that it
doesn’t matter if you use just one or multiple cameras. You can start both cameras,
do the action, and then fire the flash, and you’ll capture exactly the same moment on
both cameras. Because my digital camera was already setup for the light test, I also
used it for the actual shot.
So my workflow was turning off the lights, starting both cameras, filling the glass,
triggering the flash, and reviewing the image on the digital camera. After each shot,
I cleaned the glass to prevent having drops on the glass surface.
Please remember to reset the focus if you touch or move the glass.
You can try to vary the speed of filling or the color of the water. By triggering the
flash earlier or later, you may control the amount of water in the glass.
This also is one of those shots where it’s about patience and retry. When you have
some shots you like, you’re nearly done. Just don’t forget the setup shot!
Film strip of high-speed photos
Conclusion
You’ve seen that the setup for this shot is fairly easy and that the camera absolutely
doesn’t matter when you’re using the right method. Surely better equipment may
give you better results, but it also works with the equipment you already have. As
Zack Arias once said:
“Learn to use the equipment you own, before you get something new!”

7
Pouring whiskey
Idea
In this shot I wanted to capture a very similar effect as in the last chapter: the mo-
ment of pouring a glass. However I also wanted you to see the bottle from which the
liquid is coming. There are two main differences to the last shot: First, we most likely
need a second flash to highlight the bottle. I once did a similar shot before (Cham-
pagne splash) and remembered that I needed a second flash to highlight the bottle.
Second, I want to place the glass on a reflective surface to create a mirroring effect.
Chapter 7 • Pouring whiskey
Equipment
It shouldn’t be a surprise that the equipment list is very similar to our last shot.
ff Camera
ff 2x flash
ff Softbox or umbrella
ff White frosted Plexiglas (Alternatively, a glass from a picture frame and something
white to place below the glass, e.g., a sheet of paper)
ff Wireless flash trigger (necessary if your flash doesn’t support slave mode)
ff A glass
ff Water or some other liquid (I took whiskey)
ff Bottle or some other container
ff Something to cleanup your mess, either a towel or some paper towels.
Flow
Also the flow chart looks identical to the one of the last shot:
ff Turn off light
ff Start camera
ff Trigger flashes
ff Done

Equipment setup
Pouring whiskey

Placing the equipment

I wanted to create an advertisement-like shot. I decided to use a setup similar to the
last one, but this time you should also be able to see the surface where the glass is
standing. You could go with white paper. The problem with using paper is that you
will surely “spill” some liquid while doing the shot. So you either have to change the
paper very frequently or you can see those stains later.
When I want a white non-reflective surface, I use white self-adhesive foil that can
be used to protect books. You’ll find this foil either in office supplies stores or in DIY
markets. Alternatively, a laminated sheet of paper also should work. The advantage
of those plastic surfaces is that you can easily clean up drops.
But, as said before, I wanted to use a reflective surface. I’ve used reflective surfaces
regularly on my shots. On earlier shots, I was using white foil below a glass. Lately I
found some frosted white Plexiglas at a local market and it also works great for re-
flection.
For this shot, I also went with the white-frosted Plexiglas and placed the glass and
the bottle on the Plexiglas.

When working with multiple lights, it is not easy to predict the exact outcome and
you’ll do some test shots to setup the lights. Therefore, the initial camera settings
don’t matter too much. I started with:
ff ISO 200
ff Aperture f/11
ff Manual focus
ff Exposure time of 1/100s

The light setup for this shot took me six shots. I’ll walk through those shots and de-
scribe the changes I did on those iterations.
I really like those white or nearly-white backgrounds. I set up one flash to fire on
the white background. As with the previous shots, I recommend to place it below
the table in order to prevent flash reflection on the glass. I set the flash in manual
mode, with power settings of 1/8th. The bottle and the glass already were placed on
the Plexiglas, so it was time for a first test shot. For those kinds of test shots, I put the
wireless flash trigger on the camera so that the flash fires when I trigger the camera.

The first shot was as I expected. The background flash was okay, the whiskey in the
bottle was well lighted through the flash on the background, but the bottle was too
dark. On the first shot, I left the room light on because I was using a short exposure
time. To see the influence of the ambient light, I did a second shot with lights off.
One can see a slight difference between the two bottles. When the ambient light is
off, the bottle is even darker. So we have to add a second flash to highlight the bottle.
I placed the bottle in a way I expected it to be on the final image. It really helps you
to set up the flashes if you place everything from the shot similarly to that of the final
shot. The second flash was positioned at about five o’clock and pointed in direction
of the bottle. I did another test shot.

You can see that I put the bottle on a roll of gaffer tape and on the glass to create an
image which is really close to the final shot. The result of this shot was clear. The sec-
ond flash added an ugly flash reflection on the bottle and even on the glass. I don’t
remember which power level I used for the flash, most likely around 1/32nd power,
but the reflection is ugly and I had to get rid of it. Decreasing the flash power wouldn’t
change much on the reflection. To remove that reflection, I decided to use an um-
brella. An umbrella or a soft box will give a much softer light. If you don’t own a soft-
box or an umbrella, you can try placing your flash behind a frosted Plexiglas. This
should also create a smooth light. I placed the second flash inside the umbrella and
tested the light again.

The reflection was gone but the bottle wasn’t light enough. The flash was set to
1/32nd power, which was too low for the umbrella. So, I increased the flash power to
1/16th and did another test shot.
Just a little better, than the last one but still not light enough. Because it was much
too dark, I increased the flash power by two stops to 1/4th power and did another test.
Yes, this was more what I wanted to achieve. The background is nearly white, the
liquid is well lighted, one can read the text on the bottle, and there is no reflection.

Pro photographers still may not be completely happy with the light setup set up and
see room for improvement, but for me this was good enough.
So I finally found a light setup which was suitable for this shot. The first flash was
positioned below the table, set to 1/8th power, and pointed in direction of the back-
ground. The second flash was set up in an umbrella at about five o’clock, with 1/4th
power, pointing in direction of the bottle. Now we no longer need to trigger the flash
with the camera and can remove the flash trigger from it. When doing the shot, we’ll
have the trigger in our hands and trigger the flashes while filling the glass.

As I already spent some time fine-tuning the light, I did some test shots to see if everything
is completely dark when the flash doesn’t fire. Therefore, I increased the exposure time to
eight seconds. As I had to anyway wait eight seconds for the exposure, I decided to do a
dry run and test if that is enough time for what I wanted to do. I placed the bottle on the
Plexiglas (the cap still on) so that I can easily grab it and begin to fill the glass in the image.
I turned off the ambient light for the dry run: triggering the camera, walking around the
umbrella, grabbing the bottle, simulating filling the glass, and triggering the flash. You
can hear when the mirror of the camera is getting down again and the exposure is over.
It turned out that eight seconds was rather short for completing the whole procedure.
This means that there is the possibility that I may trigger the flash few moments after the
camera stopped the exposure. This would mean cleaning up the set without getting a
shot. When you are in a hurry, you make more mistakes. To be on the safe side, I decided
to increase the exposure time to 10 seconds and did another dry run. It turned out that 10
seconds is much more comfortable and the image was still completely dark.
So, finally we also set up the camera. Quick recap, settings used for this shot are:
ff ISO 200
ff Aperture f/11
ff Manual focus
ff Exposure time of 10s
Taking the picture

This is the moment where you can’t wait to give it a first try, but don’t forget one of
the most important steps: Focus! You’ve done some test shots and have touched
the camera multiple times. Eventually, you hit the tripod by accident; chances are
big that the focus is not set accurately. Turn on the light again, place the glass where
you want to have it and set the focus again. For the dry run, we used a closed bottle;
don’t forget to open the bottle before taking the first shot. Now we are finally ready
to take the picture.
This time it counts. Let’s have a look at the flow chart again to check that we didn’t
forget something.
ff Turn off light
ff Start camera
ff Trigger flashes
ff Done

Let’s give it a try and see how the actual image looks.
This image was really my first shot and it was exactly what I expected. Often, when
you look at an image on your camera, it looks perfect and later when you check it on
your computer there are some details you don’t like. Because I had set up everything,
I did some more shots. I decided to go a bit farther away to see more of the bottle
and did another shot.
Basically, going a bit farther away was a good idea, but I haven’t thought about that
one can see my fingers in the shot if you see more of the bottle.

Conclusion
In this chapter you could see how I try different light setups in order to get what I
want. You rarely will setup the lights and the camera and everything is okay. Take
your time to try different setups and play around with the settings. It will give you
some practice.
All in all, this shot went really smoothly
and I soon got the result I was seeking.
The creation took me about one hour.
It helped me a lot to have a clear vision
of the final image. I use to write down or
draw ideas into a little notebook when-
ever they occur.
Another advantage was that the clean-up
work between two shots wasn’t too long.
Cleaning up everything, resetting focus,
and doing the image took me about five
minutes. This is not self-evident. On one
of my earlier works (rainbow splash),
the clean-up and preparation process
between two images took me about 45
minutes! So, with this shot I was lucky
that everything went well and quickly.
The next chapter will show you a much more painful setup, where I needed a lot of
patience.

8
Bubble burst
Idea
Ever since I saw Richard Heeks’ Bubble Pop: Reflection Perfection, I wanted to cap-
ture images of a bursting bubble. I’ll describe you the way I attacked this challenge.
It turned out that it is really difficult to capture a bubble in mid-burst. Maybe this
is not a perfect example to try yourself, but I included this shot because I really like
this series and have not seen many similar shots. The previous shot took me about
one hour. This set of shots took me about three evenings and a lot of patience. In
high-speed photography, you’ll often find examples that are really time-consuming,
especially if you don’t have triggers. Lastly, I think this is a perfect example to show
you that you can create incredible photos with very basic equipment.
Chapter 8 • Bubble burst
Equipment
ff Camera
ff 2x flash
ff Empty can of beans (remove top and bottom that you get a tube)
ff Empty bottle
ff Wireless flash trigger (I’d definitely recommend one for this shot)
ff One of those soap bubble cans
ff Something to destroy the soap bubble (I used straws, wood, cocktail umbrellas,
and a makeup brush. A needle will most likely not work)
Flow
The flow chart doesn’t look very complicated.
ff Turn off light
ff Create a bubble
ff Start camera
ff Destroy bubble
ff Trigger flashes
ff Done

Equipment setup
Bubble burst


I wanted to have the bubble on the same place for every shot. I knew that one can
place bubbles on wet things. Wondering if it also works with a bottle, I tried it and it
seemed to work. During creation of the first bubbles, I had to learn that it is not very
easy to create bubbles on top of a bottle. I first tried to create the bubble with the
built-in tool, but then I couldn’t place the bubble on the bottle. It always stayed on
the tool. So I had to switch strategy and use a straw to create the bubble.
After some practice, I could create bubbles on the bottle.

I had no idea on how fast a bubble will burst and what settings I had to use to cap-
ture it. So I started with:
ff ISO 200
ff f/8
ff Exposure time six seconds
ff Manual focus
If you have no idea, you have to start somewhere and change settings until you have
something you like.
Setting focus on something transparent is not very easy, it really helped, that the
bubble was on top of a bottle. So I could just focus the top of the bottle.
I wanted to light the bubble from behind and destroy it with something non-trans-
parent that would then turn out black. So, I placed one flash below the table and
pointed it toward the wall. The flash was setup to use manual mode and 1/16th power.

I did a first test shot and the settings seemed to work.

I then decided to try to destroy the bubble and try to capture the event of bursting.
Not knowing that, it soon turns out that my initial plan will not work.
Taking the picture

My first idea was to destroy the bubble by dropping little balls onto the bubble and
triggering the flash with a light barrier. It took me some shots to setup the light bar-
rier and then I got a first shot. Don’t worry about the light barrier, you’ll soon find out
why the light barrier didn’t work.
I zoomed into the shot and saw that the bubble was not very sharp and that the im-
age was rather bright. So I tried to increase the aperture to f/11 to darken the image
and get more depth of field. A few shots later I was again successful capturing a burst
and it looked a bit better with those settings.

I wanted to do some more shots to prove whether the problem is a focusing prob-
lem or if the bubble was bursting too fast. I didn’t think that it will be that hard to re-
produce this shot. From the next 40 attempts, none was successful. On none of those
images could one see the burst of the bubble. It was a combination of following
incidents: the bubble burst before I dropped the little ball, the little balls missed the
light barrier, triggering the light barrier by accident with my fingers when dropping
the balls, and the bubble didn’t burst at all. It turned out that those balls were too
little to destroy the bubble and just went through the bubble without destroying it.
I doubt that I can achieve it with light
barrier and those balls and moved to a
more manual setup. I tried to destroy the
bubble with a needle and trigger the
flash by hand. After eight more attempts,
I was able to capture another burst of a
bubble. When checking the pictures on
the computer, I saw that the needle isn’t a
good solution either. On the image on
the left, you can see that the needle went
through the bubble without destroying
it. And, on the image below, you can see that my fingers and not the needle destroy
the bubble.
Also, the lighting on this image wasn’t
what I expected. One could really not
see the edge where the bubble begins
to burst. Overall, I wasn’t really happy
with the outcome of this day. After about
two hours, I hadn’t had one single image
that I liked. I had to give this another try
and change some things on the current
setup.
A few days later I decided to try it again.

First thing I was going to change was the
lighting. I did some lighting checks with
placing the flash left or above the bub-
ble. This added more color to the bubble,
but also added ugly flash spots and re-
flections all over it.

To remove those reflections, I again tried to highlight the wall behind the bubble.
But, this time I added an empty can on the flash to create a gradient on the back-
ground. This made the edges of the bubble more visible.
I took a piece of wood to destroy the bubble because it was bigger than a needle and
rougher. With the new setup, I did some shots, and already the third image was cap-
turing the moment I wanted. Not yet what I sought, but finally a first success.
When checking the image, I saw that the back of the crack was sharp, but the front
was still out of focus. I moved the aperture to f/13 and f/16 to do some testing if
more depth of field can make the bubble sharper.

Those images where better but very dark. So, I decided to increase ISO to 800 and
adjust the aperture to f/22. I now had more depth of field and the brightness of
the photo was similar to ISO 200 and f/11. Because I had the impression that there
was some motion blur on the previous images, I added a second flash and reduced
power on both flashes from 1/16th to 1/32nd.
Reducing the flash power and adding a second flash with the same power gives the
same amount of light, but with a shorter flash duration.
I did some more shots and finally the outcome was what I wanted. I was able to cap-
ture the burst of a bubble in very different phases. I really like those shots because
they show something we haven’t seen hundreds of times.

The final camera settings were really different from the initial settings. I hope this
walkthrough gave you some insight as to how I start and proceed when I have no
idea on which settings to use.
Conclusion
It turned out that it is really difficult to capture a bubble in mid-burst. I did some re-
search on the internet and it looks as it takes about 10ms for a bubble to burst and
the thickness of a bubble is around 140 nanometer. This is about 10x smaller than
the diameter of a red blood cell or about 1000x smaller than the width of a strand
of human hair. Even if they seem very fragile, I captured some images where a straw
and a needle are going through the bubble without doing enough damage to get
the bubble to burst.
In my opinion it is a fantastic example to demonstrate what high-speed photogra-
phy can capture. It also shows that you can capture events which last less than 10
milliseconds without a trigger. And, finally, it is a perfect example to show that pa-
tience is a must in high-speed photography.
Links
Check out Richard Heeks Bubble set on Flickr. He was able to capture some amazing
bubble bursts.

9
Vegetable in tank
Idea
Dropping a vegetable into a fish tank is also a common high-speed photography
start project because it is very easy to realize. The mess is limited and there is no
cleaning needed between the shots. This setup is a little more difficult than the pour-
ing-wine setup because the event we want to capture is a little shorter. In the next
two chapters I’ll show you that the method freeze the motion with your flash (p. 39)
can be used with light and dark backgrounds.
Chapter 9 • Vegetable in tank
Equipment
ff Camera
ff 2x flash
ff 2x empty can of beans (remove top and bottom so you get a tube)
ff Wireless flash trigger (I’d definitely recommend one for this shot)
ff Fish tank (I used a small one made of Plexiglas)
ff Some fruit or vegetables (depends on the size of your fish tank, if it’s a small one
maybe something like strawberries, if it’s a bigger one you could use something
like bell peppers)
ff Something black for the background (I used a black linen)
Flow
The flow chart looks like:
ff Turn off light
ff Start camera
ff Drop vegetable
ff Trigger flashes
ff Done

Equipment setup
Vegetable tank


The first step is to place the fish tank on a table and fill it about two-thirds full with
water.

I had the camera setup from another shot, with ISO 400 and aperture of f/11. I turned
down exposure time to 1/80s to do some light tests. Focus was set to manual.

I placed the two flashes to the left and on the right of the fish tank, facing each other.
I used the flash on the settings from the last shot (1/16th power) and gave it a try. I
just wanted to highlight the fruit or vegetable inside the fish tank and therefore de-
cided to use a can on each flash to minimize the angle of light.

If you don’t know what settings to use on your camera and flash, use the following
approach. Set up the camera and the flash with some settings, do some test shots,
and adjust the settings based on the outcome.
Just place the vegetable or fruit in the fish thank and do a test shot. This will give you
a first reference.
The image was much too bright: 1/16th flash power is obviously too much. So, I de-
creased the flashes to 1/64th power.

You already can see that there is a big difference between the two shots but the im-
age was still too bright. So time to tweak camera settings. ISO 400 is not needed;
decreasing ISO to 200 will give us an image that is one stop darker. I also adjusted
aperture to f/18 to get some more depth of field and further darken the image.
Because the image could be a little darker, I moved the flashes a bit further away
from the fish tank to test how this affects the brightness of the image.

Another test shot later and I had the impression that those settings could work. Don’t
forget to increase the exposure time to something like two or five seconds for creat-
ing the shot.
Taking the picture

Taking the image was then a question of patience. The procedure was quite simple
and not much cleaning work was needed between two shots. It was a repetition of
the following steps:
ff Start camera
ff Drop vegetable
ff Trigger flashes
ff Done

This was the second attempt:
I saw that the fruit was at the very bottom of the image and therefore I decided to
lower the camera so that the top of the picture was at the level of water. I did some
more shots and they turned out well.
I also tried some images with Romanesco broccoli. I prefer the images with the broc-
coli because as you can see some great detail (see the examples at the end of chapter).

Next steps
If you prefer a white background, we can alter the setup accordingly. We remove the black
linen and add an additional flash to highlight the background, which could be a wall.
The two flashes from the previous setup stay in the same position with the same set-
tings. Additionally, one flash was added to highlight the background. This flash was
placed below the table, pointing in direction of the wall behind the fish tank. This flash
needs a bit more power than the other two flashes, so let’s start with 1/8th power.
In the previous setup, we were using an aperture of f/18. Because we’ll do a bright
background, I decided to open the aperture by one stop.
Because I had changed the settings, I had to test the new settings. Therefore, some
broccoli was put into the fish tank and focus was adjusted. I did a first test shot and
the background turned out too dark.
I decided to increase the flash power of the background flash to 1/4th and did an-
other test shot. This time the result looked much more like what I expected.
Once you are happy with your settings, you can again drop the vegetables into the
fish tank. After few shots, I had what I was seeking.

Conclusion
The challenge is to hit the fruit in the moment it gets into the water. There will be
some images where you trigger your flash too early or too late. But, because no clean-
up work is needed between the images, it is less exhausting than many other shots.
In this chapter we have seen how to create a shot of a vegetable dropping into a fish
tank. We also have seen how we can extend a setup to change the color of the back-
ground and used the method freeze the motion with your flash (p. 39) to create both
black and white backgrounded images.
We can see that the background and light setup influences the perception of the im-
age. I prefer the white background because you can see more of the splash on the
surface of the water.
Currently the flash looks really hard on the splash. If I’d do the shot again, I’d either
use a softbox for the two flashes on each side or I’d place a frosted Plexiglas between
the flashes and the fish tank. This should produce softer light.

10
Deodorant
Idea
In this chapter I’ll show you another easy example of high-speed photography. Even
if we (or at least some of us) use deodorant on a daily basis, few people have seen
the amazing details of its spray. I wanted to create an advertisement-like image of a
deodorant can while spraying. In this example, I’ll show you how to use flash gels to
color your light.
Chapter 10 • Deodorant
Equipment
The equipment list is quite simple:
ff Camera
ff 2x flash
ff Umbrella
ff Flash gels
ff Wireless flash trigger
ff A can of deodorant, perfume, air refresher
ff Black linen
ff Black self-adhesive foil or black paper
Flow
The basic flow chart again is very simple. In this setup I decided to trigger the flashes
by the camera. The only difference between triggering the flashes manually and trig-
gering the camera (which then triggers the flash) is the pre-shot delay. Most cameras
have a short (up to 100 ms) delay between pressing the button and taking the pic-
ture. Because I just wanted an image during spraying, the 100 ms delay didn’t matter.
There are shots where 100 ms is too much delay. In those cases I just start the camera
and trigger the flash manually.
ff Turn off light
ff Start spraying
ff Start camera (triggers flashes)
ff Done
Because I haven’t found a way to remove my fingers from the picture when spraying,
I have taken a second shot of the can without spraying and merged them in post
processing. With this small modification, the flow chart locks as following:
ff Turn off light
ff Start spraying
ff Stop spraying
ff Done

Equipment setup
Deodorant


I decided that I wanted to have black as the background color. Therefore, I mounted
a black linen. You can use anything black as background as long as it’s non-reflective.
To also have a black surface, I put the black adhesive foil on my table. Finally, I added
the can on top of the foil.

As mentioned above, I wanted the camera to trigger the flash. So I set up the wireless
flash trigger on the camera. Because my flash units don’t support HSS (high speed
synchronization), I had to use an exposure time longer than 1/125th of a second. I set
up the camera with ISO 200, f/10 and 1/100s.
Initial flash settings & testing the settings

The setup I had in mind uses two flashes, one to highlight the can from the front and
another one to highlight the spray.
“Flash 1”, which is used to highlight the can, was placed at about five o’clock in front of
the can. Because the can was built of reflective aluminum, I had to use a big light source
to avoid bright spots on the can. A softbox or an umbrella will produce a great light and
do a great job in such setups. If you don’t own a softbox or umbrella, you can try placing
your light behind a frosted glass. This should also create a smooth lighting. I decided to
set up “Flash 1” to light through the umbrella. From my experience, I knew that I had to
put my flash at least to 1/8th of its power when I use the umbrella. Before placing the sec-
ond flash, I did a test shot to check if “Flash 1” was producing the light I wanted. When-
ever you use multiple flashes, it is a good idea to test the flash setups in sequence. It can
be difficult to see the outcome of an adjustment if there are multiple flashes involved.
I did a test shot with f/10 and it turned out a bit too dark. So I opened the aperture
and did another test shot with f/5.6, which looked great. In order to get some more
depth of field, I did another test shot with f/8, which also was fine.
f/10 f/5.6 f/8
In this example, you can see that it makes sense to do changes of about one stop
until you have roughly found the setting that is suitable for the situation. Once
you have found it, you can use the one-third stops to fine tune your setting.

After setting up the first flash, it was time to set up the second flash. I tried different
positions, but from the front of the can this always produced ugly reflection on the
can. So, I decided to place the flash behind the table and the background, pointing
in the direction of the splash. I set up the flash with 1/16th power and did a test shot.
The shot looked like what I wanted to achieve. It just had a little light spot on the
right side of the can, but that one didn’t disturb the image.
The last adjustment I did was adding a yellow gel to “Flash 2” in order to colorize the
spray. One could easily do this in post processing, but I like to do as much as possible
in the camera.

Taking the picture

As with my other shots, taking the final picture is not much effort after a good prepara-
tion. I took one shot during spraying and two shots without spraying. In post-processing,
I combined the two shots into one to remove my hands from the picture, and I was done.
Last but not least, I took some setup shots.
Conclusion
In this chapter we have seen how easily it is to use an everyday item to create a great
high-speed photo. We’ve also seen that it sometimes doesn’t matter if we first start the
camera and then trigger the flash or if we let the camera trigger the flash. This mostly de-
pends on whether a pre-delay of some milliseconds matters or not. If we have an action
that takes some seconds, we can use the camera to trigger the flash. If the setup is more
delay sensitive, we should first trigger the camera and then trigger the flash.

11
Inflaming Match
Idea
I wanted to take a picture of a match exactly at the instant it starts to burn. Because
I already had taken smoke pictures I had some experience in how to light smoke,
but still I faced a new problem. The method Freeze the motion with a flash (p. 39) was
not working for this shot. Usually I start my camera and then I do the action needed,
but this works only if it’s dark enough. If I had done a similar setup for this shot, the
match would be overexposed due to the flame. Therefore, I had to go with a short
exposure time.
While browsing the web, I saw that somebody else had used a candle to light the
match. (I would like to give credit for this fantastic idea, but because this shot was
taken a few years ago, I really don’t remember where I found it). Basically, you place a
candle below the match, light the candle and wait until the heat inflames the match.
Chapter 11 • Inflaming Match
Equipment
ff Camera
ff 2x flash
ff A box of matches (one match will most likely not be enough)
ff Black linen
ff Candle
ff Spring clamp
Flow chart
ff Turn off light
ff Light candle
ff Wait until match inflames
ff Trigger camera (this will trigger the flashes)
ff Done

Equipment setup
Inflaming match


As mentioned above, the candle is placed below the match. I used a spring clamp to
hold the match. To create a black background, I again used black linen. One flash was
set up between the linen and the match to light the smoke. A second flash was set
up to point in the direction of the match.
During the shot, I would trigger the camera and the camera would trigger the flash-
es. To achieve this, the wireless flash trigger was set up on the camera.

The camera was setup with an exposure time of 1/125th of a second. I wanted to have
a short exposure time, but because I was triggering two flashes with the camera, I
could not go below the flash sync time; therefore 1/125th was a good value.
I assumed that the light of the match will be very bright and therefore I used an ap-
erture of f/18. This also has the advantages of a bigger depth of field.
I decided to shot with ISO 200.
So, camera settings were: ISO 200, f/18, 1/125s.
Initial flash settings & testing the settings

The flash between the linen and the match was setup to 1/8th power. Because it is
difficult to tell if this setting was OK, I had to do some test shots. Because I wanted to
find the best value for that flash, I did some test shots with only one flash. I went
through the procedure as if I would create the final image. The first tests showed that
1/8th was too much and 1/16th power was a more adequate setting.

After finding the settings for the first flash, it was time to find the settings for the
second flash. I did few test shots and it turned out that 1/8th was a good setting for it.
Taking the picture

As always, if the preparation is done, taking the picture is just a question of patience
and practice. One of the advantages with this shot was also that it didn’t require
much cleanup time and the success rate is quite high. I took about 20 photos in half
an hour and on 16 out of those 20 I was able to capture the match in the moment it
burst into flame.
Conclusion
This is another example of a very easy setup that will create awesome pictures. It is
very easy to reproduce but still, when playing with fire, always be careful! Further, we
have seen how we can adjust the method freeze the motion with a flash (p. 39) when
we shoot something bright. Actually, it is a combination of two methods: The shutter
is freezing the fire and the flash is freezing the smoke.
Be aware that there is a shutter lag when you trigger the camera. Even if the shut-
ter lag is just about 50ms, this is a huge amount in the domain of high-speed
photography.

12
Drop in a glass on android
Idea
This example shall have an illustrative purpose and is not meant to be done at home.
But, as promised earlier, I am going to show that it is possible to create high-speed
pictures with an Android phone because many people were asking what camera
high-speed photographers are using. Please be aware that this shot was taken in
2010 with phones from 2009. Since then we have not only seen new applications,
but also improved cameras on smart phones. But some of the limitation of those
phones have not changed so far.
Chapter 12 • Drop in a glass on android
Equipment
ff Android phone or iPhone
ff 2x flash
ff A wine glass
ff Strawberries
ff Flash gels
ff Spring clamp
Flow
ff Trigger the phone
ff Drop the strawberry
ff Trigger the flash

Equipment setup
Pouring wine


The setup was pretty easy. I filled the wine glass with some water and placed it in
front of a white wall. One flash was set up to point directly at the wall to create the
background and the other flash was pointing in the direction of the glass to high-
light the strawberry. The phone was mounted on the tripod using a spring clamp and
some gaffer tape. This may not be very professional, but OK enough for the setup.

Compared to modern point-and-shoot cameras, smartphones have inferior cameras.
This is because of their size and also in terms of handling and adjustment possibili-
ties. So this was really what I was looking for, a very basic camera.
I wanted to use the same technique Freeze the motion with a flash (p. 39). The only
thing the camera needs to support is “longtime exposure”. I checked this with my
HTC Hero in a dark room and it turned out that the maximum shutter speed was be-
low one second. I can’t tell you how long it is exactly because there are no exif data
about shutter speed, but it felt pretty short, I’d say 0.5-1 second. I thought this could
be tough, but let’s try.
I checked the setting to see what you can adjust. I turned off auto focus because it
will be too dark for the auto focus to work. ISO was set to 100, because I didn’t want
the camera to use a high ISO. High ISO would have resulted in shorter shutter speed.

Both SB28s were set to 1/32nd power. With that power setting, the flash duration is
about 1/19000th of a second.

I setup the lightning and began to shoot. The camera resets focus after every im-
age. This was kind of annoying. Because of this I had to use a torch to highlight the
glass and set the focus. Then I realized that the white balance is always adjusted
to the light available from the torch. Therefore, I tried the different white balance
modes and “incandescent” looked the best. Because the image looked very blueish,
I used two CTO (Color Temperature Orange) gels on my flashes. The image still looks
blueish, but not that much.
Taking the picture

Soon I realized that it’s not easy to trigger the camera, drop the strawberry, and trig-
ger the flash within one second. The most terrible thing was the shutter lag of about
0.5 seconds. Because of the short shutter speed and the shutter lag, I had quite a few
misses.

All in all I did about 30 shots (without lighting tests). One third of all the shots were
just black because I didn’t fire the flash in the moment the camera was recording;
another 1/4 were half black, because I fired the flash too early or too late. Finally,
there were about 15 shots where I captured the strawberry, but not all were very
spectacular. About five shots were OK.

I also tried with an iPhone 3gs, but the

maximum shutter speed (on iPhone
4) seems to be around 1/15th seconds,
which is really really short. You need a
lot of patience if you want to try this.
I tried “Magic shutter” but I wasn’t hap-
py with this either. The results were very
inconsistent, the number of adjustable
parameters are even worse (compared
to HTC Hero) and the image size is only
720×960 pixel. But beside this limita-
tion, it is also possible with an iPhone.
Conclusion
Surely those images don’t have the quality of images taken with a DSLR but it is pos-
sible to take high-speed pictures with an Android phone or with an iPhone. The pro-
cess is not very comfortable, because of the shutter lag and the very short shutter
speed. I also missed features like “locking focus” and manual white balance.
Finally, I wanted to show that the camera doesn’t matter that much for taking high-
speed photos, it’s all about technique and time (and patience :D).

13
Smoking bulb
Idea
In all the examples up to now, we have seen how to freeze the motion using a flash.
I’ve also described two other methods of high-speed photography. In this chapter
I will show you how I used the shutter to freeze the motion. One of the main disad-
vantages of using the shutter to freeze motion is that the exposure is comparably
long. Even if the shutter speed is 1/400th of a second, it is about 20 times longer than
exposure times of 1/20’000th that can be achieved with a flash. As I also mentioned
earlier, this method mostly is used outdoors for sports and I use it very rarely when
shooting indoors.
Chapter 13 • Smoking bulb
A word of caution: In this example you’re dealing with glass and power. The glass
is really sharp and you could easily touch some of the wires. Both could lead to
serious injuries! If you don’t feel comfortable with this setup, it’s a wise choice not
to do this yourself. Consider this chapter more as a behind-the-scenes view than
as a do-it-yourself project.
Equipment
ff Camera
ff One or more light bulbs
Flow chart
ff Drill/damage the light bulb
ff Turn on the light bulb
ff Start camera on series mode

Equipment setup
Bubble burst


For this setup, I used a black linen and a bulb mount. You have to break the glass of
the bulb. It is recommended to break/manipulate the light bulb in a freezer bag or
another plastic bag, because there are a lot of sharp little shards. You can use a drill to
create a small hole on the top (or wherever you want) of the bulb. The duration of the
burn depends on the size of the hole. A small hole will result in a long burn, whereas
if you completely break the glass, the duration of the burn will be below one second,
but the smoke formation will be more intense. Because I was going to create a series
of images, I decided to drill only a small hole.

The camera was setup with ISO 100, f/5.6, and 1/500s, and in series mode. I had no
idea if it would work or not…, it was just a guess. You need to start somewhere and
change the settings is necessary.
Taking the picture

Taking the shot is rather easy. You put the bulb in the holder, turn it on, and start trig-
gering the camera. Because the camera was set up in series mode, it will create im-
ages until its buffer is full.
This is a combination of the shots of one attempt. On this series one can see how the
smoke flows around in the bulb.
As mentioned earlier, it also is possible to create a bigger hole, which will result in an
immediate burn down of the bulb. In the picture at the end of the chapter, I again
was using a flash to freeze the motion of the smoke. Te setup was similar to the ex-
ample Inflaming match (p. 99).

Conclusion
As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. It is not meant that you’ll do this at
home. It was the only setup where I ever used series to create a high-speed photo in a
studio environment. I use it so rarely because you rarely have setups with rather bright
objects, so that you can go with such short shutter speeds without additional flashes.

14
Milky Music
Idea
In the following chapter I’ll tell you how I did my “Milky Music“ series. The idea behind
those images was to capture liquids in the moment they begin to dance on a sub-
woofer. For this series, I was inspired by Ryan Taylor’s “The Color of Sound”. As with
all the images in this book, those images were done without using any trigger (trig-
ger in the sense of sound trigger). These photos were done in the early days when I
started high-speed photography and I was using the Freeze the motion with an HSS
flash (p. 36) method. In a later phase, I recreated the setup and did another run using
the Freeze the motion with a flash (p. 39) method. Because I was using an HSS flash in
the first phase and don’t have any HSS example so far, I’ll explain this method. After
reading this book it shouldn’t be too difficult to recreate the images by using your
regular flash and the Freeze the motion with a flash method.
Chapter 14 • Milky Music
Equipment
ff Camera
ff Flash
ff Milk, yogurt drink, water, or paint
ff Subwoofer
ff Music player with “boom boom boom” songs
ff Black adhesive foil
ff Food coloring
Flow chart
ff Place the milk on the subwoofer
ff Start the music
ff Trigger camera

Equipment setup
Milky music


I used a milk drink for my shot, but you can also use water, paint (be careful and pro-
tect your camera and its surroundings because the paint will fly everywhere), or
cream. The combination of liquid and sound will influence how the final splash looks.
To create the black background, I taped some adhesive foil on an old subwoofer,
placed it close to a wall, and taped the remainder of the foil on a wall.
Camera settings
The camera was set to an exposure time of 1/1600th of a second. As explained in
chapter Freeze the motion with an HSS flash (p. 36), you will need an HSS flash to syn-
chronize with those shutter speeds. The aperture was set to f/13 to have some depth
of field. ISO was set to the minimum value of 100.
The main difference in the settings where we freeze the motion with the flash is the
exposure time. With an exposure time of 1/1600th, we are getting 1’600 times less
light to the sensor than with an exposure time of one second. This really short ex-
posure time removes the requirement of a dark room. You can take the picture in a
moderately lighted room. However, if you should see ghost images, you should try
to minimize the ambient light.
Even if I was not shooting in a dark room, I set the focus to manual. The reason is that
I wanted the camera to trigger as soon as I pressed the button and I wanted to avoid
that the additional delay by setting the auto focus.
Flash settings
When you are using a flash in HSS mode, there are not many settings to adjust. On
my setup, I was using the flash with a power level of ½ and it was set up in wireless
mode. Wireless mode triggers the flash whenever the camera is triggered.

The flash was positioned at about eight o’clock.
Taking the picture

When all the preparation is done, it’s time to start with the shooting. As already de-
scribed, the process is very easy. Place some milk on the subwoofer, adjust the focus,
start the music, trigger the camera and then clean up for the next shot.

It is not easy to predict in which direction the liquids will fly, so it is a good idea to
focus on the front line of the milk. You don’t have enough time to start the music and
then start the camera, so it’s very wise to use one hand to start the music and the
other hand to trigger the camera. It is a bit tricky and it definitely needs some prac-
tice to capture the movement in a very early moment. For my first attempts, I used
milk without food dye. This will allow you to get a feeling on when to trigger the
camera and it will need less effort to prepare the next shot.
This was the result of the first evening and it proved that it was possible to achieve
such images with the setup I was using. The image looked rather boring and the
small drops, which are all over the image, are distracting. Therefore, I removed those
small drops in post-processing and I colorized the image. The final outcome from the
first evening was this shot:

The next step

You could be happy with what you have already done, but I was sure that I could
further improve the setup. The next day I went to a grocery store and got some food
dye to color the milk. I used the same setup, but this time with yellow and red color.
The outcome was what I expected.
The coloring looked less artificial than in the version that was colorized in post-pro-
cessing. You can clearly see that the different colors mixed in the different pillars and
every image will be unique. So it was proven that food coloring works well; time to
get even more colors.

Finally I got four different colors and wanted to give it another try.
The process is the same as with one color, just the increased time needed to clean
up and prepare for a shot. The main problem with multiple colors is that they will
be mixed after the first attempt. If you are using only one color, you may try it mul-
tiple times without cleaning everything between two shots. However, after some
attempts, I managed to get the following image:
I really like it and it is may be the best of the whole series, but you can see that the
right side is not well lighted. This comes from the fact that I was using just one flash,
which was positioned on the left side.
On my last attempt, I was using two HSS flashes positioned at four o’clock and eight
o’clock. This really helped to light the scene evenly (see the picture at the end of this
chapter).

Conclusion
This chapter showed how to freeze the motion with your shutter and how you can
iterate a setup to get even better results. In total, I shot over 200 images on those
days and only about 10 were great. So again this was a setup that needed some time
and patience, but it will definitely give you great images.
The last two chapters were mainly here for completeness. I rarely use those two
methods, but I do want to show you that it is possible to use any of the described
method to create high-speed photos.

15
Bonus: Smoke photography
Idea
When I was shooting these smoke images I hadn’t thought about high-speed pho-
tography. Without knowing it, I created high-speed pictures. I created a how-to some
time ago and for this book I reworked the how-to. I would like to share it with you
because I still like those smoke images. And, as with high-speed photography, they
are not too hard to create, but it takes some time and patience.
Chapter 15 • Bonus: Smoke photography
Equipment
Before you can start with smoke photography, you have to prepare some equipment
and think about where to do it. The following items are needed:
ff Camera
ff Flash
ff Tripod
ff Lamp (Just a usual desk lamp will do…)
ff Incense sticks (with holder)
ff Black background (Bed sheet, book, whatever you have)
ff Image editing software
ff Closed room with close to no air movement, but which is easy to vent
ff A lot of time and patience
Flow chart
ff Lighting the incense stick
ff Shooting
ff Shooting
ff Shooting…

Equipment setup
Smoke


For shooting smoke, you need a room which is relatively dark. As mentioned above,
the room should have nearly no air movement. As background I used a black linen.
The placement of the flash is important; it has to be between the smoke and the
background, pointing in direction of the camera. It is important to not have the flash
inside of the image, otherwise you’ll have a very bright spot and you’ll not see much
of the smoke. Move the incense stick to the back of the table and put the flash below
the table pointing upward to the smoke. This would minimize the possibility that the
flash can be seen inside your image.

It is nearly impossible to predict in which direction the smoke is moving, therefore
I decided to go with an aperture of about f/16 –f/18 to have a bigger depth of field.
Smoke consists of many small particles (smoke is an aerosol, a mixture of solids and/
or fluids in gas) and has a rough surface. Due to this fact, I set the ISO to 100 to have
the smoke as smooth as possible.
For my shots I used both a 100mm macro lens as well as one of my kit lenses. The
macro lens really created superior images and revealed all the details of the smoke.

I set the flash to 70mm (to get a narrow angle) and about 1/2 power. That power level
gave me great structure without too many highlights. This is a good example where
we don’t need to go to the lowest possible power setting because smoke moves
rather slowly. Even if it’s not frozen completely, it will result in great shapes.

Focusing was the most difficult task with smoke photography.
From other tutorials, I read that one can put stuff in the smoke and focus, but it didn’t
work for me for several reasons:
ff I had no mini tripod to put something in the smoke
ff I had no chance to look through the viewfinder and hold something in the smoke
at the same time
ff Every time I got near the smoke and set it sharp, the smoke moved somewhere
else.
The best solution for me was using a desk lamp. As we’re shooting in a nearly dark
room, it is impossible for the camera to see the smoke. You don’t need to try to use
the auto-focus.
On my second day, I recognized that the correct amount of ambient light helps a
lot. If it was too dark, I couldn’t see anything (even with the lamp) and I really had
problems setting the focus. It worked much better as I tried it the next day in the late
afternoon. The ambient light and the lamp were a great combination and I could see
amazing details through the viewfinder. Due to the fact that I was shooting with f/16
and a rather short exposure time, the ambient light was not a problem.

Taking the picture

Turn off the lights and go. It’s important to close any windows and doors and other-
wise to minimize air movement. Every air draft will make the smoke more turbulent.
On this image you can see the incense stick, but in my images I tried to avoid having
the stick visible.
It is possible that you have to move the flash, when the position/direction of the
smoke changes.
My shots were made about 50 cm away from the stick. It’s up to you to decide wheth-
er you want to have more details and zoom in or less details and zoom out a bit. The
smaller the section covered by the lens, the harder it will be to catch the smoke.
Some tutorials tell you to just trigger your pre-focused camera, but I made great re-
sults using the optical viewfinder. In combination with the lamp, I could adjust the
focus perfectly and make some great images.
It is important to have enough time and patience, because it is difficult to predict the
movement of the smoke and you’ll have to try multiple times until you have a good
image. On my first shooting, the quality of the images wasn’t very good; they weren’t
correctly lighted or they weren’t as sharp as I’d like to have. Out of 200 images, I could
use about five.
On second day, I could use about 1/3 of all photos I made. (Again, about 200 shots).
After about the half of the stick burned away or if you have the impression that the
room is too smoky, just take a break and open the windows/doors for a couple of
minutes.

As there were some suspicions on the authenticity of the images, I’d like you to show
an image straight off the camera.
One can really see the sharpness of the smoke, and it should be obvious that those
details were not created during post processing. On the bottom right side you can
see a little of the flash.
Post processing
At the beginning, I removed the spots on background and adjusted the levels to
have a fully black background.
After removing the spots, I had to clean the smoke. Because smoke has an immense
amount of micro particles, it is possible that some particles appear brighter than the
surrounding particles. I just stamped away those spots.
Finally, I sharpened the image and sometimes I de-noised it.
Orientation and mirroring

Most of the time, the orientation doesn’t matter much, it looks different every 90
degrees. Sometimes mirroring looks awesome and other times I wasn’t happy with
mirroring. It’s just a personal preference and everybody should do what he likes.

Color
It depends on your personal preference if you want to colorize the image or leave it
in its original colors. There are several ways to colorize your images; from adjusting
hue/saturation to multiple masked and colorized layers everything is possible. Some-
times it looks awesome if you invert the colors.
Conclusion
Smoke photography is a great amusement and if you feel like trying something dif-
ferent, you surely can have a lot of fun. With all the information provided in this chap-
ter, it should be easy enough to reproduce it at home.

Part III
when
things
go wrong
16
Introduction
This chapter provides some tips if your high-speed images don’t turn out as you’d
like. Sometimes little adjustments can help to get the image you want. On most oc-
casions, there are multiple possibilities, each with advantages and disadvantages.
It’s up to you to judge which adjustment will lead to the result you desire. The expla-
nations in this chapter will help you with decisions relative to some common prob-
lems. The actions described here are mainly for the method freeze motion with a flash
(p. 39).
Ghost image
If you have the impression that you have a ghost image, this could mean that there is
too much ambient light. When you shoot a long exposure, the camera records what-
ever it sees during that time. To test if the ghost image is coming from ambient light,
you trigger the camera with the exposure duration you want to use without trigger-
ing the flash. If the output is a completely black picture, you don’t have a problem
with ambient light. However, should you see some bright spots or even silhouettes
of what you’re going to shoot, this means there is too much ambient light. You have
several possibilities to try to resolve this issue:
ff Try to remove as much ambient light as possible. In my basement, I have cov-
ered the windows to avoid ambient light. Further, I always turn off the lights. To
continue being able to see something, I either use the screen of my laptop or a
small light placed below my table. Sometimes it is even enough to put a so-called
“gobo” (can be anything that blocks light e.g. book, box, wood) between your
ambient light source and the subject.
Chapter 16 • When things go wrong
ff Use a shorter exposure time. The amount of light that will arrive at the sensor is
adjusted by the aperture and exposure time. Changing the exposure time will
not affect the picture when using a flash but it will give you less time between
triggering the camera and doing the action.
ff Decrease ISO will not only result in less noise, but also the sensor will be less sen-
sitive to light.
ff Use a smaller aperture (smaller aperture means higher number). This will increase
your depth of field and allow less light to arrive on the sensor.
The downside of the latter two options is that you also need more flash power to
achieve the same level of lighting. Therefore, I would try to shorten the exposure
time. However, if shortening the exposure time limits you too much, then you need
to adjust either ISO or aperture if it is not possible to reduce the ambient light some-
how.
Image too dark

To check the overall light level of the final image, I turn off the lights, trigger the cam-
era, trigger the flash and check the image. If I have the impression that my images
are too dark, I have the following options:
ff Using a larger aperture will let more light reach the sensor. The downside of this
is that you will lose some depth of field.
ff Reduce the distance between the flash and the object. In chapter Flash power
(p. 26) we saw that the light follows the inverse square law. If there is not enough
light from the flash, we can bring the flash closer to the object. This will increase
the amount of light that will reach our object. If we’re using a white wall or some-
thing similar to bounce the light back, we can bring the flash and/or the object
closer to the wall. Sometimes you’ll not be able to adjust the position of the flash,
and then you will achieve a better result by changing something else.
ff Increase the flash power will definitely bring more light to our subject. However,
in chapter Flash duration (p. 26) we saw that increasing flash power also will in-
crease the duration of the flash, which could result in motion blur.
ff Add an additional flash also will add more light, but you’re surely limited by the
number of flashes you own.
ff Increase ISO will increase the sensor’s sensitivity to light, but also will increase the
amount of noise in the final image.
Those points are in order of my preferences. I mostly use point one-three above or
number four if I have additional flashes that are not in use. In each situation, you
have to decide which compromises you’re willing to take. Sometimes it also makes
sense to combine several of the points to minimize the influence of each point.
Example: If I would need three more stops of light and I would like to resolve this by
adding more flash, I am required to add seven more flash units. As just a minority of
us have seven spare flash units, it would be wise to add one stop with one additional
flash, add another stop by using a larger aperture, and the final stop by increasing
ISO.
Question: Why does changing the exposure time does not affect our final image?
If you’re not sure, please read the chapter freezing motion with a flash (p. 39) again.

Image too bright

If the image is too bright, you are in a rather lucky situation because it is much easier
to darken an image rather than brighten it. For darkening the image, we basically
have the opposite options from the last chapter.
ff Decreasing ISO would be one of my first choices. This not only reduces the sensi-
tivity of the sensor, but it will also result in less noise in the final image.
ff Decrease the flash power is also a great option in high-speed photography be-
cause this also will result in shorter flash duration. Shorter flash duration will al-
low us to freeze faster motion.
ff Using a smaller aperture (smaller aperture means higher number) will have the
nice side effect of larger depth of field. However it is possible that the perfor-
mance of the lens will be less at very small apertures.
ff Adding a light modifier (e.g. diffusor) will darken the image and soften the light.
ff Similar to what was mentioned in the previous chapter, the distance between
flash and object can be increased to limit the amount of light that will arrive at
the object.
ff Removing a flash if we use two flashes at the same position.
ff For the sake of completeness: Another possible action to deal with too bright im-
ages would be the use of ND (neutral density) filters.
As mentioned before, darkening an image is fairly easy but to be honest, you’ll rarely
have this “problem”
Motion blur
Motion blur is a clear indication that the flash duration is too long. As described in
chapter Flash duration (p. 26), the power setting of the flash also will affect the flash
duration. If you are in the situation where you have unwanted motion blur in your
picture, you should decrease the power of your flash.

Decreasing the power of your flash again will lead to a darker image. To avoid a dark
image, combine lower power setting with any of the options described in chapter
Image too dark (p. 137) to compensate the loss of light.
Not enough depth of field

Not enough depth of field is a common problem, especially with macro-photogra-
phy. DigitalCameraWorld has a great illustration that shows what affects the depth
of field.
Basically, the following three parameters affect depth of field:
ff Aperture
ff Focusing distance
ff Focal length
If we have the problem that we don’t have enough depth of field, we can adjust any
of those parameters.
Smaller aperture will give us more depth of field. On the other side, this will limit the
amount of light that will arrive at the sensor and result in a darker picture.
Increasing focusing distance. This means we just increase the distance between the
camera and our subject. The downside of this is surely that our subject will no longer
be filling the whole frame and we may be required to adjust the frame in post pro-
cessing. If we choose the image section badly, we’ll surely lose resolution.
Using a shorter focal length. As the depth of field is dependent on the focal length
of the lens, we can increase our depth of field by using a lens with a shorter focal
length.
To simulate different settings, you can use a depth of field calculator.
Camera is not taking a picture

There are many reasons why you camera is not taking a picture. When you’re using
Freeze the motion with a flash (p. 39) a reason could be that you’re not using manual
focus. Due to the very dark ambiance, the auto-focus cannot work. This could be a
reason that your camera is not taking a picture.

Horizontal black bar on image

If either the top and/or the bottom of the image is black, this means that you’re flash
is not synchronized with the shutter.
This could mean that you’re triggering your flash too early (while the shutter is not
yet fully open) or too late (while the shutter is already closing). If this is the case and
you’re triggering the flash by hand, it was bad luck.
Another reason could be that the shutter speed is too short. This means the shutter
is not fully open when you fire the flash.
In both cases, using a longer exposure time should help to prevent this behavior. If it
is not possible to increase the exposure time, you need to use a HSS flash.

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High-speed photography

for beginners by Pascal Bovet

Part I the basics 7

Photography basics refresher 12

Part II behind the scenes 44

Drop in a glass on android 105

Smoking bulb 111

Milky Music 117

Bonus: Smoke photography 127

Part III when things go wrong 135

About this book

High-speed photography for beginners 4

High-speed photography for beginners 5

High-speed photography for beginners 6

Modern DSLR/mirror less cameras

Compact cameras (Point & shot)

High-speed photography for beginners 9

High-speed photography for beginners 10

High-speed photography for beginners 11

Shutter speed (exposure time)

Rotating LED fan at different shutter speed.

80mm lens at f/8 f/5.6 f/4

Illustration of lens opening

Diameter of lens opening 10 mm 14.2 mm 20 mm

Aperture f/ ... 2.8 4 5.6 8 11 16 22 ...

High-speed photography for beginners 13

High-speed photography for beginners 14

Influence of aperture on depth of field.

High-speed photography for beginners 15

Noise at different ISO settings.

ISO ... 3200 1600 800 400 200 100 50 ...

High-speed photography for beginners 16

Exposure value (stop)

High-speed photography for beginners 17

Old school flashes

Warning: It is not recommended to use old flashes on your camera. It is pos-

High-speed photography for beginners 19

High-speed photography for beginners 20

High-speed photography for beginners 21

High-speed photography for beginners 22

Simple lighting example for glass

High-speed photography for beginners 23

which is acting as background. It is important that there is no line of sight between

Flash set up correctly

Flash set up wrong

High-speed photography for beginners 24

CH1 100 mV CH2 5.00 V M 250 µs

CH1 100 mV CH2 5.00 V M 250 µs

High-speed photography for beginners 26

CH1 100 mV CH2 5.00 V M 250 µs

On the first image the motion is completely

High-speed photography for beginners 27

Power setting Canon 430 EZ Nikon SB800

Image without snoot Image with snoot

If you consider getting an umbrella, be sure also to order an umbrella adapter.

High-speed photography for beginners 28

High-speed photography for beginners 29

The $125 high-speed (lighting) setup

High-speed photography for beginners 30

The 125$ lighting setup

“1. No photographer has enough lighting equipment to do every assignment

High-speed photography for beginners 31

Freeze the motion with your shutter

Shutter speed priority often is abbreviated as S or Tv on the camera-mode dial.