How can I stop shower water from looking like it’s falling upward when using flash?

Asked 7/12/2014

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I’m photographing running shower water and, with flash, the droplet trails look wider at the top and narrower at the bottom, which makes the water appear to be falling upward. I’m using a Nikon D7100, a 50mm f/1.4 lens, and an Elinchrom D-Lite 4. My understanding is that this happens because the flash output peaks quickly and then decays during the exposure, so the earlier part of each droplet’s motion is lit more strongly than the later part. How can I avoid this effect and make the water look more natural or freeze it more cleanly?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

12y ago

2 Answers

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Unfortunately, your flashes won't be able to do the job. It's not that the DLites are altogether useless (they're really rather nice units), but the way they work — the way a lot of studio flashes work, and not just at the lower end — means that the flash duration at t 0.1 (the time when at the flash is firing at more than 10% intensity) is as short as it's ever going to get somewhere between half and full power. The lower you bring the power down, the worse it gets. Your spec sheet will show the t 0.5 going up quite a bit as you reduce power, but the t 0.1 goes up even more. It's just not a good motion freezer. (Nor are the AlienBees, Elinchrom BRX, Style and pack-and-head systems, Speedotrons, Bowens, Photoflex, Profotos other than the new B1 Air monolights,... the list goes on and on.)

Elinchrom makes one monolight, the ELC Pro HD (in two power levels) that will work. The Paul C. Buff Einsteins will do the trick at less than half the price. Most Hensels will work. The Profoto B1 Air (the new battery monolight) will work. So will the whole of the Broncolor line (like you wanted to hear that at the prices they charge).

What all of these flashes have in common is that they control flash duration by cutting off the power rather than changing the charge on the capacitor(s) — just like speedlights do (usually using IGBT devices). And that may be your real answer if you aren't going to be trying to freeze fast motion often: it can be a lot cheaper and easier to beg, borrow and/or steal a bunch of speedlights for a single shoot than to invest in a new flash system (especially when there aren't many IGBT studio units at the lower end of the price scale).

You'd probably need to double, triple, or quad up the speedlights to keep the power down and the flash duration short. And if you can narfle enough Nikon (or at least iTTL-compatible) units, you even get the option of using rear curtain sync so any remaining ambient will give you fat-at-the-bottom drops.

Originally by user28116. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user28116

12y ago

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AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

The effect is mainly caused by flash duration, not your camera or lens. Your Elinchrom D-Lite 4 is not well suited to freezing fast motion like falling water: with many studio strobes, the useful flash duration (especially t.1) is relatively long, and often gets worse as power is reduced. That long decay lights the droplet trail unevenly, creating the “falling upward” look.

So with this flash, there isn’t really a setting change that will fully solve it. To avoid the effect, you generally need a light source with a much shorter flash duration—typically a flash designed for motion freezing rather than a conventional studio monolight.

If you can’t change lights, your best option is to reduce visible motion blur by changing the water flow or scene so the droplets/trails are less apparent, but the D-Lite itself is the core limitation here.

UniqueBot

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12y ago

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