Macro Motion Blur help

wornish

Senior Member
Next Mondays challenge on Flickr Macro Mondays is to do a macro shot that shows motion blur. Thought I would give it a go but I am struggling.:confused:
So I thought I would ask the macro experts on here for some tips.

I decided to try and take a macro of my watch and get the motion blur as the second hand moves. - hmmmm not so easy.
The hand jumps from second to second. If I do a longer exposure to get say 5 secs worth the image of the second hand starts to fade.
This is a 2 second shot

Any suggestions

Macro motion blur 01-2.jpg
 

wornish

Senior Member
Thanks, I tried a 30sec shot on a clock but was worried about noise build up.

Macro motion blur 01.jpg

this was F16 / ISO 100

It has to be pretty dark to do a 5 minute shot though even at F16 or F22 but I will give it a go.
 

Mfrankfort

Senior Member
Do you have photoshop? Try taking 60 pictures at 1 second intervals, and then painting in the 2nd hand, lol. It'll be cheating a little bit, but it'll work. Or a few 5 second pictures, like the first one you took.
 

wornish

Senior Member
Do you have photoshop? Try taking 60 pictures at 1 second intervals, and then painting in the 2nd hand, lol. It'll be cheating a little bit, but it'll work. Or a few 5 second pictures, like the first one you took.

I thought of doing multiple 5 second shots and stacking them but it doesn't really show motion blur.

Using photoshop to put the second hand back in is probably a step too far as you say it could be thought of as cheating.
 

Mfrankfort

Senior Member
I thought of doing multiple 5 second shots and stacking them but it doesn't really show motion blur.

Using photoshop to put the second hand back in is probably a step too far as you say it could be thought of as cheating.

Ya. I kind of thought that it might be, lol. But it could be cool for your own purpose, and a cool picture to post on here. :)
 

wornish

Senior Member
Use a flash with rear synch preceded by your multi seconds exposure.

Not tried that. The second hand on my watch jumps between seconds so the flash would need to be very short duration to catch it in motion. Its a bit like catching a water droplet in mid air.
 

Scott Murray

Senior Member
Not tried that. The second hand on my watch jumps between seconds so the flash would need to be very short duration to catch it in motion. Its a bit like catching a water droplet in mid air.

Rear sync will also highlight the minute hand at the end of the time.
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Problem is, you want constant motion and what you have is start and stop motion. With the original watch shot you've got milliseconds of movement and almost a full second in place. You have a better idea with the minute hand, but what you really want is something with a sweep second hand, which is harder and harder to find.

Maybe try shooting in the dark over the course of several minutes and alternating between bright and dim flash exposures, with the brighter ones being at the beginning and the end and the rest every 10-15 seconds to capture the sweep of the minute hand.
 
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