Hi all,

I am working with a non-profit group to put on a haunted house attraction and one of the side projects we are working on is to get photos/videos of scared guests. (We were inspired by http://www.flickr.com/photos/nightmaresfearfactory/) Because of the low light/fog/strobes it is turning out to be difficult. One guy set up his DSLR near one of the exits and used custom shutter speeds and a flash but this has only partially worked. The problem is that the DSLR has a UV and IR filter and the shutter is staying open too long to capture visible light and when people are running there is very serious blurring/streaking.

We've studied the pictures in the above site and found that it looks like the people are walking through a pitch black room and there is a very bright flash and the shutter is open only for a very short time.

Does anyone have any suggestions about how we could set this up?

Thanks

[Edited on October 16, 2011 at 3:16 PM. Reason : +]

10/16/2011 3:15:56 PM

UV and IR filter isn't a variable of exposure. What you need to do is set your DSLR on manual and have your flash set to a manual output. DO NOT PUT ANYTHING ON AUTO, metering will give you varied results in a situation like this, plus the fact that your subjects are going to be in the same place in relation to the camera and flash is an easy problem to setup.

The biggest issue is the use of fog, you can't over come this since the flash with illuminate the gas. its just physics. Even if you try to lessen the effect by re-positioning the light won't eliminate the issue completely. The more backlit the fog will be, the it will be illuminated; try side lighting the subjects by either 45 degrees on either side off camera. But the best thing to do is to less the amount of fog in that room or nix it completely.

Depending on what camera you have, flash sync speeds is from 1/160th to 1/320th or even higher, but for most canon and nikon's its 1/200th-1/250th of a second. Have the flash off camera and synced properly by either a wireless or wired solution. Meter your flash exposure once you found a good position for your flash and set the camera to this. I'd say look around f/5.6-8 at ISO 200-400 if the flash is 10ft or so away, but it really depends on if your flash is a portable flash or an actual studio flash.

And forget about capturing visible light.

10/16/2011 5:12:11 PM