I put this in my journal today but figured others might like to know...

Ok, so lots have asked what my setups are like. I usually don't show them because, well, sometimes they are really horrible looking. Duct tape everywhere, fishing line strewn all over the place, flashes in every direction.

Lot's have asked how I do the drop shots. Like this one...



Well, it's really simple actually and doesn't need that much in the way of equipment. Well, I should say that it isn't that much relatively speaking compared to a 300mm F2.8 Canon lens.

Here's a breakdown:

Shooting Table: $200 ([link])
Flashes: Used - $300 ( you can get away with 2)
IR Trigger: $240
Glasses: In my career? Well that 300 f2.8 is looking pretty cheap now.

Clean up is the expensive part!!!

Paper Towels: $1.2 million
New Carpet: $2000


Set everything up and drop some glasses. Here's what my setup looks like for a real simple rig with 2 flashes.

[link]

This is a test shot. I dropped the glass too far back and it got in the way of the flash... Not at all acceptable but a good shot of what the setup looks like.

The flashes (Canon 430EX x2) are set to 1/32nd power and the camera is at about f11 at 125th of a second and the room is almost dark.

The flashes are stopping the motion not the shutter. Stopping motion is all about flash duration. That means how long does the flash fire for. A typical full power flash burst is about 1/1000th of a second. Not nearly quick enough to stop fast moving stuff like falling objects.

When you set the power lower on flashes that allow power compensation the length of the burst is faster. So dropping it to 1/32nd gets you at about 1/10,000th of a second. 1/64 power makes it about 1/20,000th of a second. That can stop anything I shoot. The trade off is that the flash is a lot less powerful so you need at least 2 of them, more if preferable.

I did a news article about this a long time ago so figured it might be time for another one.

A couple people to check out about stop motion stuff:

I know ^KevLewis has done an article about this before and he really is the de-facto ruler of stop motion on dA. If you want to know about his stuff go to his page.

Steve Strawn is the king of glass and water stop shots. This link [link] finds him. He's a great guy and an amazing talent.

Hope this helps...

Dave