Originally posted by fuent104 I believe most studio photographers who want to freeze action at short intervals would prefer to use a higher number of strobes, at lower power settings. The duration of a strobe is much shorter than 1/1000 of a second, especially at lower settings. This has been the way to do high-speed photography for a very, very long time.
Actually studio strobes are at their fastest at full power. As you turn down the power on a studio strobe, every stop you turn it down makes it about 15% slower. By the time you hit the lowest power, you've doubled the duration.
Unless you are working with an IGBT Flash ( which basically work the same way compact flash units do). the drawback is that really good IGBT flash units are frigging expensive.
Here are some T.1 durations of common 400-600ws mains powered flash units:
- 1/966 Bowens Gemini 500 Pro
- 1/883 Profoto D1
- 1/683 Elinchrom Style RX 600
- 1/600 White Lightning X1600
- 1/533 Paul Buff Einstein 640
- 1/520 Elinchrom BX 500Ri
- 1/266 Elinchrom D-Lite it 400
These are all at 1:1 power and the durations are still pretty slow. When I have worked in the studio with subjects that require fast motion to be stopped the first thing I do is turn up the power on my strobes. At really high speeds 1/2000th and above the differences between focal plane and leaf Shutter mechanisms is utterly pointless*. At synch speeds neither of them are anywhere near fast enough to stop motion on their own. If the subject needs to make any type of spin (leap and spin, gymnastic moves, martial arts). For that, you need to be about 1/3,000 sec t.5 to completely freeze motion. And if the action involves swinging anything (sword, baseball bat, golf club, tennis racket) you will need a minimum of 1/6,000 sec - surprisingly "whipping" wind blown hair or clothes can easily get up into that speed.
* Unless you are mixing in ambient light, which will give an advantage to leaf shutters - but even that is rather limiting.