why is the speed of the stick not blurred, but the flame is? The speed of the stick should be moving at a higher rate of speed than the flame itself when ignited. With a flame that large on both sides, not very much flint appears to have been burnt. I tried this also with a friend and can not seem to get that photo like that. I shot at 6 frames per second.
How did you get it to appear like that? After looking at it very tight, what direction did you strike the match?
burningcloud7 wrote:
why is the speed of the stick not blurred, but the flame is? The speed of the stick should be moving at a higher rate of speed than the flame itself when ignited. With a flame that large on both sides, not very much flint appears to have been burnt. I tried this also with a friend and can not seem to get that photo like that. I shot at 6 frames per second.
How did you get it to appear like that? After looking at it very tight, what direction did you strike the match?
I think I was going left to right in this shot. I tried it both ways. The reason the stick isn't blurred is that I was also using dual flashes, firing at 6 frames/sec to sync with the camera. The flame looks blurred just due to the nature of fire. The shutter speed was 1/125.
After a lot of trial and error, this is what ultimately worked best for me. I pre-focused on the spot on the match box where I wanted to get the shot. Then I moved the match towards that spot as slow as I could to get it to strike . I waited for it to start to light and slowed down the speed of the stick in the area where I'd pre-focused, hesitating for a fraction of a second. Only then did I start to fire off some shots, usually only 2-3 at a time. With macro, you don't have a lot of room for error on focusing, so knowing the spot on the box is very important and hitting it even more so.
I found out rather quickly that even at 6 frames per second, actually catching the match lighting at a "normal" striking speed requires a heck of amount of luck. I had way more missed shots than successes, so I changed my approach.
Painting the box black and clamping it in a vise also helps. And of course you have to be careful not to light the box when you slow the match stick down, too.
Kingdon Hawes wrote:
I think we have this months winner. Great shot.
Thanks for the compliment, but there are a lot of good shots here. I'm just enjoying the practice and seeing what other folks do. It's a great way to learn and expand my skills!
