Well, not this time – something was different, and I don’t know what.
I’ve previously moaned about the effect of strobe lights on pics, after grabbing night pics at sites where the emergency services (police, fire service) were in attendance.
These light are extremely high intensity, short duration sources, making it difficult to deliberately have them in shot, or avoid. Rather than waste time trying to do that, just take a series of shots, and hope to get a result amongst them.
I got a chance to do this recently, during my high ISO games, when I came across some gas service vehicles. There had been a vehicle here for a few nights, strobing away for hours, although it was just parked where anybody could have parked normally (any excuse to play with the toys 😉), and there was nobody around to alert others to.
This time there were bodies to be seen, creeping around with what I assumed to leak detectors.
The next day, there was indeed a hole in the pavement, with barriers around it – but nobody to be seen, and no vehicles.
Anyway, I took advantage of the vehicles and their strobes to grab a few test pics, to see if they showed the effects I had suffered before.
The did. But, unlike a previous occasion, when landing on a strobe flash completely destroyed the one pic I took (I hadn’t encountered a night strobe before this one), these seemed to come out reasonably well.
I wonder if it’s a side effect of using very high ISO? Or the fact that this encounter was amber, rather than blue? I also recall those blue strobes were emitting rapid double flashes – two flashes each time they flashed. Does that make a difference?
Also interesting that the pic taken with NO strobe light present was completely underexposed, a surprise, since there was more than enough street light (you should be able to see that the large van is actually parked directly under a LED street light) for a reasonably well exposed shot.
I wonder if this is related to the extremely short duration strobe light, and the timing of the shutter operation, slightly behind whatever scene the camera metered?
I’m guessing, and will have to watch for this if I ever come across another night strobe scene.
Complication
I’ve noticed a change in this effect.
This is probably down to the ability of simpler/cheaper LED light sources to be pulsed extremely quickly, and simulate the effect of ‘real’ strobe lights.
The originals used xenon flash tubes, driven by high voltage pulse circuits, producing extremely intense, genuinely short flashes of light, and used in camera flashes. These could easily get down to 1/30,000 sec or less, and be used to freeze motion.
I’m not sure how close LEDs come to this (I’ve yet to trip over any relevant tech articles), but I’m guessing their flashes are a lot longer, and arrays are needed to produce similar brightness.
Secret Scotland 