From the course: Advanced Photography: Flash

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Flash duration

Flash duration

From the course: Advanced Photography: Flash

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Flash duration

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- In the next movie we're going to use flashes and strobes to freeze some fast-moving motion. That's something you normally do with shutter speed but if you're in low light, you may not want to crank your shutter speed up real high 'cause then your scene will be too dark. So, flashes are a great way of stopping a moving object in mid-flight. However, because you are using the duration of the flash to freeze the motion, you need to concern yourself with how quick flash duration is. Let's take a look at something. I have here a typical handheld flash, and I have a meter that can measure flash duration. I've got this thing set on the lowest power. And I'm just going to see what the meter says it's firing at. Then it comes in at 1/40,400 of a second. Really thin slice of time there. I'm going to crank this up to full power. And meter this. Or measure this, rather. 1/1,130 of a second. This should make sense to you if you know about how brightness levels work in these flashes. This is…

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