The joys of flashing people

[Mr Guy]

I've been thinking a bit about bulb photography because I've never played with it. Specifically, I'm wondering about techniques for using the flash to freeze motion multiple times, and how to calculate what the cumulative effect would end up being on the exposure.

Thinking it through in my head, I wonder if it's possible to get the effect I want. Am I right in thinking that if I'll either be able to expose properly for the moving subject, or the background, but unlikely to be able to get both? It seems as though if I put myself in three places, each with the flash set to a the proper exposure for me, then the ambient will be three times as bright, while if I set it to be 1/number of flashes for the ambient, then I'll fade myself into ghostiness.

Am I looking at this wrong?

Since I can now set my flashes and wander around with just the transmitter's "test" button to fire them, it seemed like the perfect time to play with this.

[wulf]

I can see that being a headache to calculate. Experimentation might be a better approach - practical science over pure theory.

Wulf

[sarahgirl777]

So I have no idea if what you are saying will work, but I wanted to share with you what I did and maybe it will help you. I simply set up my camera in a dark room only lit by the TV, I put it on a longer exposure, I can remember but maybe 20 or 30 seconds, I manually pressed the button, waited about half the time then sat in front of the camera, so half the time I was in the picture and half I wasn't which gave me this see through effect. Not a great picture as I was just bored and playing around with possibilities, but here it is anyways. p.s I stumbled upon this effect cause I was trying to take a picture of my dog in the dark room using a longer exposure and she got up and walked away in the middle of the photo, lol

[smc1377]

I did something similar with a strobe light set to it's slowest setting. Then I had someone run across the frame. Also did this with fireworks that had a strobe effect. Pretty cool actually. I would imagine testing with an actual flash would be the way to go.