Shuter Drag Still Life – Tutorial

The objective here is to mix continuous light with strobe using shutter drag, i.e. keeping the shutter open to allow in more ambient light, or in this case the continuous light which was used on the background – a handmade paper with some texture on it. The following is a description of what I did:

There are a couple of things you absolutely must have in place in order to make this type of shot work.

1. Firstly, you must be in an environment where you have absolute control over the ambient light in the room. As you will be using a long shutter speed, you do not want any ambient light in the room contaminating your shot (this means no using modeling lights on the strobe!).
2. Secondly, you do not want the light from the strobe contaminating the background, which will be exposed using the continuous light, so you must be able to separate them somehow.

   For my background exposure I used a Fresnel spot light with a dark blue fabric hanging from a C-stand in front of the light. The dark fabric was necessary to get the background exposure down to a shutter speed of around 8 seconds. In front of the Frensel light I placed another C-stand from which the handmade paper was suspended. In front of the handmade paper I placed the little statuette. Next in line was my camera, on a tripod directly in front of the statuette, and last but not least was the strobe, directly above my camera. Three additional items you will need are: a stopwatch, a remote trigger that allows you to lock the shutter open and a black piece of cloth. More on that in a moment.

The first thing you need to do is determine the exposure on both your background and the statuette …separately. I set the expose on the background first. I knew I wanted a shutter speed of approximate 8 seconds, so I set the shutter speed on my lightmeter to 8 seconds and took a reading.

It gave me an aperture of approx. f32 which was more than I wanted to used, so I added the dark blue fabric in front of the light to reduce the amount of light by two stops, giving me an exposure of 1/8, f16 @ ISO200. A couple of test shots confirmed this was perfect.

Next, I shut off the background light, placed the statuette in place, and adjusted my strobe. I knew I needed the strobe output to be f16@ISO200 so I made some adjustments, using my lightmeter, and set the strobe to expose the statuette properly.

Now it was time to bring them both together. Enter the black piece of cloth. I hung the cloth on the C-stand over top of the background paper, in such a way that would allow me to pull it off quickly with one hand without disturbing anything. Prior to turning off all the lights in the room and shutting all the doors, I prefocused my camera where I wanted it and confirmed the focal length and composition were where I wanted them. Lights off, doors shut. Next I turned on the background light (which the camera cannot see because of the black cloth) and opened and locked the shutter on my camera using the remote cord. At this point everything is ready to go.

• Step one: fire the strobe. I did this manually by hitting the text button once. No need for PocketWizards or other radio triggers for this shot.

• Step 2: zoom the lens just a touch…like maybe 5-10mm is all you need. This is to create the shadow around the statuette.

• Step 3: with one hand grab and pull the balck cloth off the background C-stand to allow the camera to both see the background light and the handmade paper it is shining on. At the same time, you need to either count, or measure using your stopwatch, the 8 seconds needed for your background exposure. And…at the same time hit your camera or tripod to add some camera shake to the shot. This is what makes the background blurry and causes the background to invade on the foreground slightly. You don’t need to do this but it gives the background a softer feel, especially the transition between shadows and highlights. Close your shutter, check your shot, reset and do it again.

That’s it. Do this as many times as you like, making sight adjustments as you go to change the feel until you get it the way you like. For example, you can increase or decrease the amount of zoom you apply. Or you can vary your background exposure slightly to either make the background lighter or darker.