High Speed Photography

What the hell is high speed photography?

High speed photography evolved from my development of the sound triggered flash unit. This unit consisted of a microphone, a relay (automatic switch), and a camera xenon flash strobe. When a loud noise was made, the unit would detect it, and trigger the flash lamp, thus causing a very bright flash.

If you still don't see how this has anything to do with high speed photos, well here is an explanation (skip this bit if you are a smartass):

Cameras take pictures by exposing the film (or CCD, in case of a digital camera) to a source of light. The time that the film is exposed to the light governs the final brightness/saturation of the photo. So if the shutter was opened in a completely dark room, the resulting photo would be...just black. This is the principle behind high speed photography. When the sound-flash unit is triggered, it interrupts the darkness of the room, temporarily lighting it up. This light reaches the film/CCD and everything that happened at that instant is recorded onto the photo. Thus all the photos you see on this page were taken in a completely dark room while something was dropped to trigger the sound-flash unit, which then captured that action on photograph.

I guess we'll start off with the high-speed-photo-taking setup (with lights on).

The red cross is where the camera is placed, with the shutter in the direction of the green arrow.

Obviously then, the blue circle is where the action takes place.

The light from the red flash unit is spread across the scene.

Please ignore the toy giraffe, elephant, and spring for now....

One of the earliest photos during the testing phase. This is just some random stuff being dropped onto the tiles.

Notice how nothing has hit the surface. You're probably thinking, then how the hell did the sound trigger get activated?

Well in fact, the COIN has hit the floor, except there is a tiny delay between sound activation and flash, so the coin you're seeing there is it actually bouncing back UP.

If you look carefully, there's the microphone in the corner...

More random stuff being dropped from a height.

Does it look real? Well it is, and the proof is the shadows being cast on the backboard.

That bright white bit on the backboard is caused by the uneven spread of the flash lamp.

Coins being dropped onto the tiles.

The flash is activated the moment the small 5 cent coin at the bottom hits the floor, the other coins are still falling.

I never thought this would be caught in action...

An attempted snapping of a CD, but instead it bent out of my hand very very fast.

Looks like its flexing around.

A more successful CD snapping. Bits going everywhere... The flash was triggered twice in this exposure, because some of the CD bits hit the microphone after the first flash. That's why everything is "ghostly".

This is a much better exposure. Different CD, obviously...

The lightbulb smashing photo is a classic, and I couldn't resist doing one. This is a very weird one, because the bottom half of the bulb is already gone, but the glass hasn't risen up in the air yet.

The perfect bulb smash photo was never taken, because the flash trigger was too fast, and the glass never had enough time to break up.

The poor giraffe starting to fall when hit at high speed by a flying elephant.

The poor giraffe once again, this time doing a handstand.

Hahaha, I love this one. The flash in this exposure was triggered 3 times, and each time it recorded where the wire spool and the elephant were.

As you can see, the elephant is brutally thrown off the wire spool and hits the corner.

The elephant being dunked in water at very high speed.

Notice in the following water photos, there is a glass panel to stop the water going everywhere.

My favourite high speed photo. Water being splashed onto a glass dish.

This one is kinda spooky. I think what happened was...the first half of the water hit the dish, triggering the flash, while the rest was still falling.

I guess this demonstrates the delay in the flash unit. The screwdriver has already hit the surface, but has bounced back up by the time the flash is triggered. This is due to the time it takes for the relay to switch on and the xenon flash lamp to arc.

What exactly happens when a spring hits the floor?

Well this one didn't exactly hit the ground properly.

This is a zoomed up image of the same ceramic statue that was shot by the Coilgun a few weeks before. I decided it wasn't worth anything anymore so I dropped it. At the time I felt like breaking something anyway, which is what this whole section is about.

Notice the fine grains of porcelain being chipped off.

Those are some of the best photos out of the many many more that I took. But I'll spare you those. (for the meantime anyway).