what lens speed "f" to attain the freeze of water droplet from fountain?

Hi,

I intend to purchase a portait lens but i also want to capture freezed water droplet from fountain? what is the min f required?

cheers.
Ming

It all depends on your lighting more than your lens aperture.

Aperture doesn't directly matter - it's shutter speed that affects motion blur. A faster aperture will allow you to get a faster shutter speed and freeze the water...

Just got a 450D camera with the standard kit lens yesterday. I tried to alter the speed to the fastest but it is stopped or "flashing" limited by the "f" of the lens.

anyway to get around that? increase the lighting? ISO? or purchase a fast lens?

cheers

What mode do you have the dial on? What you are most interested in is shutter speed. Shutter speed stops movement. Make sure the dial is on "Tv", and set the shutter speed to 1/500 (which should be sufficient to stop motion). Your camera will then adjust the aperature to expose properly.

Wouldnt that be limited by the lens f3.5-5.6 then?
EF-S 18 - 55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS

forget to mention that i told the picture indoor at night with ceiling lights on.

cheers

If you need to increase your shutter speed for stopping motion you need light. So you can can either stop down your lens (smaller f-stop) to increase your aperture or increase the ISO. If you choose a shutterspeed that cant be used because of the situation, IE not enough light, the camera will start flashing the shutterspeed to remind you that, the shutterspeed / aperture combo will not work.

Yes, your lens could be the limiting factor in some situations. If your lens can only open up (smaller f-stop) to 4.5 and you need a 1.4 to properly expose the scene then you need to add the light from another source. Either increase the ISO or use a flash.

thanks people.


i will keep that in mind.

Depending on lighting conditions you may need a shutter speed of 1/1000s or faster to freeze water droplets. The faster the shutter speed the wider the aperture needs to be (assuming all other variables remain constant). This is where the maximum lens aperture makes a difference.

Ideally you want a better lens than a kit lens having a max. aperture of f3.5 or f4.0. F1.4 would be nice but the cost factor may chase some of us away.

---------------
EOS 3 (35mm film), EOS 40D, Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L, 70-200 f/4L, TAMRON SP AF17-50mm f/2.8
I share my EOS 40D Experience here

I took some photos of milk splashing into a cup of coffee. I used the 50mm 1.8 wide open, ISO 800, some extra lamps and could use a shutter of 1/4000 if I wanted too.

MFG wrote in post #6330817
Wouldnt that be limited by the lens f3.5-5.6 then?
EF-S 18 - 55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS

forget to mention that i told the picture indoor at night with ceiling lights on.

cheers

Might be an idea to learn about exposure.

Your eyes see light very differently from a camera. What your eyes may think is good light will probably not be when trying to shoot indoors with a slow lens.

What you need is more light. A decent flash (a studio flash head) would help.

Shutter speed then doesn't matter as it's the speed of the flash that will freeze the subject.

Think of freezing water as fast action shots.

To freeze action, this calls for high shutter speeds. Availability of light is the biggest factor in this equation, followed equally by focal length, distance to subject and specification of the lens!!

In simple terms, the higher spec cameras & lenses with faster apertures and higher sensor sensitivity will always allow you more scope with your results.

By increasing sensor sensitivity, (100 up to 400+ etc.), you allow faster shutter speeds,
(1/60 up to 1/500) with brighter (wider) apertures, (f8 down to f1.4) you allow more light through the lens.


Need more help let me know?


Live with Passion, Gratitude and Abundance

Harold Edgerton asked the same question decades ago, and the result was the electronic flash most of us use. The answer is a high shutter speed combined with a a flash at very short duration.

A good path toward what you want to achieve is to use a Canon EX-series flash that can use the company's high-speed sync function to better freeze motion. Another path would be to try a camera designed for very fast shutter speeds. Casio sells two digicams of this type, one which was introduced just this week.

Even with dark lenses, you could always bump the ISO to get the shutter speed up. A flash would also work, but might not give the look you're after.

Really, the shutter speed has less to do with freezing action when you use a flash.
In fact, the shutter needs to be set at 1/200 sec(or whatever the flash sync is for your camera.
The flash duration will be very short compared to any shutter speed.
I think you can use your on-camera flash to get some pics of water drops, frozen in action.
Set your camera to manual, shutter 1/200 sec, F-stop can be fairly high, 8 or 11, and let your flash determine flash duration. Try and see how it works, you may experiment with the f settings, but the shutter will need to stay under the maximum flash sync speed.
A off-camera flash will probably give you a better chance to get what you want, but you can get started with what you have.
Good Luck