p.1 #1 · Motion Blur and Rear-Curtain Sync during dance
I need some advice from some of the experienced wedding shooters out there.
I've tried this at the last few weddings that I've worked, but never quite got the result that I'm looking for. I want a shot during some of the dancing at the reception that has the perfect motion blur with rear-curtain flash sync.
My question is how slow do you set your shutter? Does anyone use additional off camera flashes in addition to a speedlight in the hotshoe?
I know there's not a magic formula that's going to work in all situations, but I wanna practice this before my next wedding. I've already had one person tell me that he sets his shutter at a full second. (which seems too long in my mind).
If you have some examples of your dance pictures, I'd love to see them.
p.1 #2 · Motion Blur and Rear-Curtain Sync during dance
I do mine around 1/10 or 1/20. If the room has darker walls, I just blast them straight on. Some off camera flash system cannot do rear curtain flash. But when people are just dancing around, does it matter whether it is first or second curtain? It is not like you know which direction they are moving. I usually dont like to do this slow shutter when there is a lot of continuous bright light hitting the subject. You see too much blur on the subject.
p.1 #3 · Motion Blur and Rear-Curtain Sync during dance
I am usually at 1/15 f5.6-8.0 (iso varies, but 800 to 1250 seems to be where I land more often than not). I have two ocf and one on-camera flash for fill. You do not need rear curtain sync...you are making the movement happen with the camera itself, so you can control the direction of the blur with how you move the camera.
p.1 #4 · Motion Blur and Rear-Curtain Sync during dance
Robin Usagani wrote:
I usually dont like to do this slow shutter when there is a lot of continuous bright light hitting the subject.
^ that's the key ingredient right there.
it best if almost no light is hitting the subject from the front beside your flash so only the background light are blurry and then you can go down even to 1/4 and still get a sharp subject. if the dance floor lights are only coming from one direction (like the dj stand) than it's easy just shoot in to the lights but if it's from multiple directions than you just have to wait to the right moment when the light doesn't hit your subject.
p.1 #5 · Motion Blur and Rear-Curtain Sync during dance
Bit of advice: make sure your couple likes this sort of thing before you go nuts with it at the reception. I'd be pissed if my photographer did a bunch of these. A few is fine, whatever, unless they prefer it over normal photographs, but go overboard and you may run into problems.
p.1 #6 · Motion Blur and Rear-Curtain Sync during dance
I've had some seriously dark rooms where I had to go as low as 1/6th. But I'm usually between 1/10 and 1/30. That seems to do the trick.
I bump up my ISO to about 800-1000. That saves on flash battery and no one is looking for a high-resolution image of a bunch of random people dancing and not looking at the camera, so IQ is somewhat irrelevant.
Also, I try not to do too much shutter dragging, as TTLKurtis mentioned, if you shoot every single reception shot like this and the couple is a bunch of bar-hopping club-going youngsters, they may not like that too much.
