Curtains

We live about ten minutes south of the halloween capital of the world. (can you believe it!?) So on Saturday we attended the halloween parade of lights. I was excited to try to get some nice light pictures... or at least play around with the lights. So When we got settled, I set up my tripod, and camera just before the parade started. This guy came up behind us and said, "looks like your all set up!" I guess I looked like a "real" photo nack, because he started asking me questions. I did my best to answer things like what my shutter speed was set at, and my F factor, and angels and whatever. Then I turned to see that he had REALLY fancy camera gear, and realized that I was not just talking to some amateur like myself. He then asked me what I had my "curtain" set at. uhhh.... I had no idea what he was talking about! So I was honest, and glad that I was because he took some time to explain to me what this meant.

Basically, your curtain determines at what point in the frame that your flash, flashes. There are two curtains (atleast on my camera). If the curtain is set at "First Curtain", then the flash will flash at the beginning of the shot. If the curtain is set at "second curtain", then it will flash at the end of the shot.

Here are some examples taken by me... not perfect but they get the idea across.

Okay so in this is a first curtain. If you see that the truck is more exposed at the front, but then the lights trail off into the blue all by themselves.


In this next one, the curtain is set at "second curtain". So the flash went off at the end of the frame, exposing the truck... so you can see what the lights are coming from.


pretty cool concept! -- ill have to work on it!