Flash photography tip: Movement effect with longer shutter speeds

Thursday 8 February 2024, 20:02 by Elja Trum | 3,298 views | 1 comment

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

With your flash, you freeze movement, but it can be great to still capture a blur of movement in your photo. You get a particularly creative effect, without using Photoshop.

Sigrid - f/14, 1 second, 100 ISO @ 70mm
You achieve this effect by using a longer shutter speed on your camera. You then need to use continuous light as well as your flash to light your subject while the flash is still off.

The exact shutter speed that produces the best effect depends on the situation. So try several different shutter speeds.

You get the best effect when you set the flash to second-curtain sync. This captures the movement first, followed by the frozen subject. If someone is walking forwards, you see the blur behind them.

By default, your flash is set to first-curtain sync. You then get the frozen person first, followed by the blur in front of them. This looks less natural. You can find how to change this in your camera's manual.

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About the author

Elja Trum is the founder of Photofacts and online photography course website Photofacts Academy. He has been writing about photography since 2006. Elja is also the author of (Dutch) books on composition, black-and-white photography, flash photography and portrait photography.

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1 comment

Arendo Schipper wrote on Tuesday 13 February 2024 at 12:07 | reply
I discovered this technique by accident. I’ve always intended to do more with it because it is indeed true: it produces very surprising effects. Even during a judging session of a (club) photography competition, it was once suggested that my photo had been made with Photoshop...
Translated from Dutch.

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