James Wood Photography

A few days ago I had the idea of hanging a camera from a ceiling fan, to try and get a cool rotating blur on a photo. I thought the camera might have been too heavy, so I was reluctant to try it. It slowed the fan down a lot, but it worked!

To narrow down the exposure prior to the shot, I used a handheld Sekonic lightmetre. I wouldn’t normally bother, but in this case there were a couple of good reasons to put in the extra effort: Firstly, I didn’t want to leave the camera dangling for any longer than I had to, and secondly, once the camera was in the ceiling (I have ten-foot ceilings!), it was going to be very hard to check the results.

I dialed in the exposure, on manual mode, opting for a slow-ish shutter speed of 1/20th of a second to give enough blur while still keeping things visible. I also added a remote flash, triggered by the popup on-camera flash (using Nikon’s automatic CLS flash system). I shot some test shots of my face with the camera at arms’ length, to make sure everything was working. They were awful photos so I took great pleasure in deleting them. Instead, please enjoy this out-of-focus shot of some clamps:

Glorious!

I stood beneath the fan, holding the camera, and focused on the fan from the position my head was going to be in. Then I switched to manual focus, so that when the camera was hung, it would be focused on my face. I didn’t like my chances of standing right under the correct focus point, and I wasn’t sure how well the camera would be able to focus on me once it was spinning. So I decided to avoid the issue altogether and focus manually beforehand!

Hanging the camera was tricky. I used wire (thinner than coathanger wire, but still pretty sturdy) attached to clamps from the hardware chain, Bunnings. The strap holders and tripod mounts were the best places to attach the wire, but then the camera wouldn’t sit horizontally. Next time I will join all three wires to a central point, so that I can balance it on the ground before hanging it. Once the clamps were attached, it was very sturdy. They’re strong enough that I would be confident hanging the camera from a single one, so with three there was nothing to worry about but the strength of the fan itself! Oh… and the bare wires connected to the fan. I tried not to touch them but I did several times because I am clever. They were the wires for the light, which was off, but still. Not a good idea to go poking bare 240v wires even if you’re sure they’re off!

I took a few shots with the fan stationary, then bit the bullet and fired it up. I was worried that it would be too fast, so I was ready to shut it down. I had nothing to worry about. Fans are built to be as light as possible, so the best way to slow them down is to hang heaps of camera gear off them! It was slow but didn’t sound like it was struggling. I shut it down anyway and let momentum spin it while I took some more test shots, then climbed up and pulled the memory card out to see what was happening.

Too bright! Not enough blur! My face is blasted! I stopped down a bit to underexpose the ambient more, as well as opening up the shutter speed to 1/10th (twice as long) to increase the blur. I also set -1Ev of flash exposure compensation to avoid whiting myself out.

Then it was back into the camera with the memory card, back into position with the supermodel, and all systems go for the shot. I like how it turned out!