A Spot of Smashing Photography

An evening spent at the Telegraph & Argus headquarters, with the camera club. The camera club is a formed from a Facebook Group, members post there images into the group, to share with the newspaper and other club members. Occasionally a members image will be used for a news story. Mainly a T&A Photography Mike Simmonds, will pick out images for a special double spreads, or feature pictures. As a way to showcase images, be it a special event, season, or theme he has picked.

The club will occasionally have meet-ups, light painting, member talks, flower shoots The meet-ups generally are something that members might not have done before, or would like to learn more about. One particular meeting, evolved around smashing items, and capturing the moment of impact. Some of the my images from the evening, how the results.

Long Exposure

The main part of the meeting was a group activity, involving a swinging hammer and a defenceless object. Mike had setup some High Speed Flashes, around 1/9000 for duration of the flash. The flashes where triggered when the hammer hit the object, with a loud bang. We had a trigger, that would be actived by sound, this wasn’t attached anyones camera.

There was a small group of around 10-15 members, bunched around the “hit” location. The recommended settings for the members camera where around, F/10, ISO 100 and 2 second exposure. Mike would would count down from four, and one, we would fire own long exposure. Mike would let the pendulum go on zero, and impact was soon after, with the flash illuminating the scene.

My results are below.


High Speed Sync

At the other end of the space, was a setup for High Speed Sync. You can set your shutter over the native 1/250 flash sync, and push the flash to sync up to say, 1/8000sec.

To have your flash sync at such as a speed comes with power loss, as the flash pulsates as the shutter moves down the frame. when shooting at such high speeds, the rear curtain begins to come across the sensor before the front curtain has crossed the sensor fully.

Again the trigger in all these shots, where sound. The sound of the hammer striking the object, or a the pellet breaking the glass set off the camera. The camera settings for these shots, where around F4, ISO 160 and shutter of 1/8000.