The story behind the shot – A bit of fun with flash

Another of my ‘why not try this at home’ posts. You’ll need a darkish room as you’ll be lighting the shot with flash only (oh! And you’ll need an external flashgun so you can control the power output – from about £26 on Amazon if you don’t already have one).

I used a couple of wipeable plastic boards for the floor and background (easier than changing white paper after every shot), diluted Ribena (other blackcurrant drinks are available!) and a piece of potato.

On a count of three Helen dropped the potato into the glass and I took the shot. There’s a bit of trial and error as you need to get the timing right but you can get some interesting results.

Camera settings were 200ISO, f8 at 1/200 second which is the fastest shutter speed I can use on my camera for flash.

I set the flashgun to 1/32 of full power which was enough to light the shot using these camera settings. Here’s the thing. It’s not the shutter speed that freezes the liquid; it’s the flashgun.  The lower the power of the flashgun the shorter the duration of the flash. This means that you can freeze action.

Do put some time aside for this – it gets addictive! Have fun…

Antony