Canon 5D Mk IV – Einstein Lights in action mode – 1/125 sec, f/5.6 ISO 50

Today was a day to experiment. I have Paul C. Buff Einstein Studio lights. These lights have two modes, a Constant Color mode which I normally use, and an Action mode where the flash duration shortens from 1/588 seconds at full power to 1/13,500 seconds at minimum power for “incredible action freezing capability”. Up to now, I had not tried this but since Project 365 is also about learning, today seemed like a good idea to test. I pulled out our fan which runs around 1500 rpm. I took a test photo with no flash except for a modeling lamp on high power to provide enough light to snap a photo at 1/60 second. You can see this image below. I tied a couple pieces of yarn on the fan for the effect the blowing air showed. That pretty much looked like what my eyes were seeing.

Note: I, and others have commented on the yellow piece of yarn not looking like it was blowing. I’m not an engineer so I can’t really explain this. Both pieces of yarn were tied on the same outer ring except the blue one was offset toward the side while the yellow one was on top. Do spinning fan blades create more force at certain points?

I then set one Einstein to Constant Color and put this on the backdrop so I had a white background to contrast with the fan blades. Two Einsteins were set to Action mode and pointed at the fan. They were set to a flash duration of 1/13500 sec. Note that today’s photo is not about creativity – the lighting was not exact and there was little color – the pic is not going to win any awards. However, it is pretty cool how it essentially stopped the action. I have some ideas on how i want to use this capability but that is for another day in Project 365.