Shooting Challenge: 23 Striking Fast Shutter Shots… Vote For Your Favourite!

Hope you like great photos, because this week’s Shooting Challenge entries are coming at you. There are some amazing photos in this bunch, so start voting for your favourite photographer! They might just win an Ultrabook!

For five weeks, Gizmodo readers (and the friends they convince to vote for them) are voting one weekly Shooting Challenge finalist through to the prize round to be judged and announced by Gizmodo editors on Wednesday, June 27.

Note: In the interests of fairness, voting has been restricted to one per user, based on cookie and IP.

Voting closes at 10am on Tuesday, June 19.


Prizes

Ultrabooks are a new category of mobile PC that pack speedy Intel Core processors and a lightweight design — ideal for photographers looking for an editing studio, storage drive and entertainment hub on the go.

We’re excited to be giving away one Dell XPS 13 (valued at $1199) to participating Gizmodo readers. The Core i5 13.3-incher has edge-to-edge Gorilla Glass and is just 6mm at its thinnest point.

Finalists: Giz also has remote-controlled indoor airships (measuring 1.27m long) for each of the four other finalists who don’t win the major prize. The Turbo Blimp is valued at $200. Full comp details and T&Cs here.


Last Week’s Most Voted Photo – Finalist 3 Of 5

Last week was all about long exposure and we had some seriously amazing entries. The most voted photo came from…Daniel Buskario — who braved squatters to hold his own glow stick rave party and capture this amazing shot.

Daniel’s awesome ‘Long Exposure’ joins Stuart Addelsee’s ‘Engine’ photo and Larry Chew’s ‘Speed’ shot in the final. But they’ll face tough competition from these Fast Shutter shots. You can’t vote for them below now that they’re finalists — but you can certainly show your love in the comments.

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This Week’s Entries

Click on images to zoom into gallery mode, and don’t forget to scroll down to vote.

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Sam Matthews

Taken with a Canon Eos 600D with a 18-55mm lens with a shutter speed of 1/1000 and an ISO of 3200.
With the amount of rain we had yesterday, I noticed there was a constant dripping from my awning from the water being diverted. Took me a number of tries to get this watery crown effect from the water splash back.

Joel Kong

Thought this week we’d go swimming, but I don’t have an underwater camera, so we had to use ‘smoke on the water’ =)
It took a while to get it to flow in the right direction, let alone to get the correct freestyle stroke technique.
Camera: Canon EOS 600D
Lens: EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II
Shutter Speed: 1/2000 sec
FStop: f/5.6
ISO: 6400

Stuart Addelsee

Canon Eos 7D – Sigma 10-20mm
1/640sec | f/4.5 | ISO 100 | 10m
A wire wool spin that would traditionally be a long exposure shot, seen in a split second view gives a different perspective. Simple setup, just did a few spins to get a nice even shower of sparks and to play with my settings. I was shooting solo so had set my timer to take a shot every second and just let it chug away…
Stuart – http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuart_addelsee/

Brad Saegenschnitter

‘Strawberry Milk’
Canon 5d Mk II, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L USM Lens, tripod, Canon RS-80N3 Remote Shutter, Canon Speedlite 580Ex II
ISO-6400, f/22, 1/200 sec.
After pondering all week, I came up with the idea to capture the movement of strawberry flavoured milk as a strawberry falls into it.

Adam Williamson

While all my friends were out at the pub on Saturday night I found myself in a factory in Melbournes south eastern suburbs with all the lights out getting wet. This shot was taken in pitch darkness with the aid of a Cognisys Stop shop (a very cool device made by a couple of dudes in the states).
This shot involved a water balloon being slapped by me, 2 off camera 580ex II flashes shooting through Westcott brollies, 5D mkII and a 100mm macro lens.
Technical stuff, ISO 400,Apertur 6.3 and the crazy thing is the shutter speed was open for 8 seconds, enough time for me to fumble in the dark to get into slapping position.
As a slapped the ballon a microphone hooked up to the Cognisys stop shot unit fired both flashes at 1/16th power (around 1/20,000 a second light burst… I think) exposing the image.
It took a couple of runs to get the right amount of burst, this one was at a microphone delay of 19.5 milliseconds.
The 5D mkII has a fast shutter speed of max 1/8000 of a second but a burst of light from a flash is ultrabook fast!

Michael Dean

“The things guys will do for toast…”
f/5.6 – iso 100 – shutter 1/250
Canon 500D
50mm 1.4
Didn’t have much time but this is what i came up with from stuff i found in the kitchen.
Formed from 2 photos.

Elissa-Simone Hui

Title: The Awakening
It’s cold. Freezing, in fact. That’s what inspired me to mask myself in powder and become a cold hard statue. A very messy shoot (not to mention choking on powder) but high shutter was required to capture the dust in the air to create this shot.
Canon 550D – ISO100 – F9.0 – 1/200

Brad O’Callaghan

First time entering one of these shooting challenges and with only the last evening to have a crack I enlisted my girlfriend and her dog Archie. He loves jumping off the couch so I laid onthe floor while my girlfriend repeatedly coaxed him to jump off. Shot a couple of dozen pics with lots where the timing was out but got a few that I thought were interesting. This one looks to me like he’s doing a donkey kick, with his front paws planted firmly on the floor and his back legs kicked up and out, but really he had just landed from his jump off the couch. Went for flash use (bounced off the ceiling) rather than high speed shutter as I felt that was easier to achieve frozen motion.
Canon 7D with EFS 10-22mm lens
Canon 580EXII Flash
Focal length: 15mm
Aperture: f/11
ISO: 800
Shutter speed: 1/90
Only post processing was a square crop to make Archie fill the frame , slight exposure compensation, and minor sharpening.

Mark Clement

The camera I used was a Nikon D90 with an ISO3200 at 90mm 1/4000 F5.6 When taking a fast shutter photo I wanted to capture the ripples made in water when it is touched the tiniest bit by a child on a cold day, no matter how cold they are you can’t tell a little kid not to play in the water.

Sequoia Weitman

I used a Nikon D90 with an ISO1000 at 32mm 1/4000 F6.3 When I thought of a photo I could take using a fast shutter speed I simply threw my sister infront of the camera and told her to whip her hair back and forth, the result, crazy hair which defies gravity and picks up the autumn light.

Simon Lee

A Sacrifice to the Gods of ROCK!
In days gone by, Rockstars appeased the Rock Gods by offering ritual instrumental sacrifice.
Now it is MY turn to save Rock and Roll.
Canon EOS 7D, 80-200mm L (@80mm), f2.8, ISO 800, 1/1250 sec

Craig Reid

Model: Canon 60D
Lens: Canon EF 50mm F1.8 II
F-stop: f/1.8
Exposure time: 1/8000 sec.
ISO speed: ISO-250
Focal length: 50mm
For this shot I added some blue food dye to water in a bowl. I went outside to allow for maximum amount of light so that the shutter speed can be as fast as possible. I got my younger brother to put some of the water into a pipette and I set my camera to manual at 1/8000 sec. and f/1.8 with automatic ISO. My brother held the pipette and let one drop go into the middle of the bowl from about 20 centimetres and I held the shutter on continuous burst. At first it was cloudy which diffused the light giving the image a nice matte effect however the drops lacked the shiny detail. The sun eventually came out and we continued, resulting in this shot. I increased the contrast and cropped the photo in photoshop.

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Jay Daley

Title: Photobucket
Trying to get a little creative with the popular name PHOTO BUCKET.
After some practice at making a water arc with a bucket and convincing the letters to balance on the sand, the photo was ready to go. This was actually a pretty straight forward shot with surprisingly very little photoshop.
Shot with a Nikon D4 and 24-70mm lens at 1/3200th sec and f5.6.

Dave Read

Most people would think that lighting a small fire on top of a glass coffee table in the middle of your lounge room is a pretty dumb idea. And normally I’d have to agree with that 100%. But if you think it through properly and take the appropriate precautions you can avoid getting yourself on the 6pm news, and maybe even get a cool photo out of it while you’re at it.
1/500 sec, f3.2, cropped vertically with only very slight adjustments in camera raw, but otherwise as shot.

Rob Lacina

Title: 144!
Title comes from this being the 144th attempt at getting a decent splash!
No fancy triggers or timers – just me manually firing the camera via a wired remote at just the right time as I dropped the olive into the glass.
Post-processing: Cropped & Straightened
Camera – Canon EOS 550D
Lens – 50mm
Camera Mode – Manual
Exposure Time – 1/250 seconds
Aperture Value – f4.5
ISO – 100
White Balance – Flash

David Johnson

Did He Land It ?
I went down to the ramp looking for some air big air shots to freeze …..There was no big air happening and the majority of little guys were scooter and bike…. and not a “Lip-trick” to be had, so I settled on this skater doing Kickflip variations and Streetstyle He popped a large Kickflip, and with just a little colour tweaking for tone (I forgot to reset from indoor and cloudy shooting ) and small smudge removal from dirty lens, managed to be happy with this shot.
Camera: Canon 600D
Lens: Sigma 10-20 @10mm
Shutter: 1/1000th
Aperture : 20
ISO: 1600

Matthew Palmer

I shot this with a Canon 550D along with the incredibly versatile 50mm f/1.8. I love the 50mm lens because it lets me get a tonne of light in, even when I want to increase the shutter speed to 1/2000. I shot this at an aperture of f/3.2 because it allowed me to let a lot of light in, but still ensured that all the specks of wood coming off the chainsaw would be in focus and noticeable (sometimes I find f/1.8 blurs a little too much).
Conceptually, I thought about how fast ultrabooks were, and also how their form factor mimicked the ‘cut’ shape in a block of wood. This also led to the visual pun of ultrabooks being the cutting edge of technology, both literally and figuratively, which I tried to express through this image.

Tracy Miller

I didn’t want to take a photo of water or of a bird flying so I decided to tag along to my neighbors softball game. I shot this with my Canon T3i with a shutter speed of 1000 at F-4 and an ISO of 250.

Rachel Gray

After this weeks challenge I think my dog will hate me forever. He wasn’t too impressed with having a bucket of water thrown on him on a brisk winter day. I had my sister throw a bucket of water on Toby while I tried to bribe him to stay still with some treats. Afterwards he was of course dried and pampered inside.
Taken on a Canon Eos 1100D.
Photoshop was used to crop the image and for editing but it was minimal.

Jeremy Somerville

– Canon EOS 60D with Sigma 17-70 2.8-4 lens @ 70mm
– ISO 100
– f 4.5
– 1/125 sec (although realistically its actually 1/1000 sec because I’m using a flash in a dark room. The reason the shutter speed is much slower is because my cheap flash is very slow and takes a bit to fire after exposure begins.)
This is an image of sprinkles (hundreds and thousands) being kicked up by a subwoofer.
To accomplish this shot:
1. I poured about a gazillion sprinkles onto a baking tray, where I had placed a couple of sheets of paper to create the white background you see here. This backing tray was sitting on top of a subwoofer – hooked up to my brother’s iPod.
2. I setup my camera on a tripod in front with a cheap flash attached.
3. In taking the shot, I would coordinate the timing of my shot with my brother blasting the volume to full. Timing it so the sprinkles are still in the air is difficult, but because it’s music it makes it easier. (I was using Tusk by Fleetwood Mac).
Setup photos can be seen on Flickr as well as additional sprinkle dancing shots which I didn’t select to upload.
Beware though, they have a habit of going everywhere. The bottom of my feet are still multicoloured…

Matt Holliday

I have been wanting to do some water droplet shots and this was the perfect excuse to try some. I have never done this before so i am pleased with the shot i got.
Canon 60D
f/3.5
1/1000 sec
ISO-400
50mm

Mark Rhodes

Eos 5d mk ii. 24-105mm F4 Lens. Tripod.
I could not actually take this shot with a fast enough shutter speed, so I decided to build a custom circuit to do it for me. The flash is doing the brunt work of the exposure here as the rest of the shot is in total darkness, exposing at what I estimate is about 1/20,000th of a second. In this shot you can see a balloon full of water, exploding after being hit by a screw. The flash was triggered by a circuit I built by hand, that was activated by the sound of the balloon popping. I was extremely happy with the results of this shot, being not really sure what to expect when I took it, I’m sure I’ll be enjoying the results for a long time!

Stephen Rangott

Shot on a 60D with a 50mm 1.8 at 800 iso, f2, 1/2000 shutter. Im using two 800w lowel tota lights either side. I typically shoot on video and just the other week when I was testing the ARRI Alexa at 120FPS I just flicked my face back and forth as its always a funny thing to do with slow motion. I more or less recreated this with the 60D.

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