High Speed Flash

[Section 8]

Hello,

I want to do some freeze action photography, of rather high speed subjects. Water drops, things breaking, popping baloons, projectiles ect. harold edgerton type of things.

I don't know anything about flashes. Quite a few sites give credit to a EG&G Microflash when referencing how the photo was taken. Does anyone know what kind of a flash/strobe that flashes around 0.005 seconds or so that I should be looking for? I haven't seen a flash that lists its minimum on time, making finding such a beast very diffacult.

Thank you,

Greg

[slin100]

.005 seconds is 1/200 seconds. All shoe-mount flashes can do that easily, as well as most studio strobes. If, as I suspect, you meant .0005 seconds (1/2000), then I think you'll find that most shoe-mount flashes and a few studio strobes can still do that, especially when set to half-power or less. Flash durations generally decrease as you decrease power.

Many studio strobe manufacturers publish their t=0.1 flash duration times. I seem to recall that Elinchromes are particularly fast.

[cmM]

check out www.liquidsculpture.com , that guy is a genius. He uses like 1/10000 s to freeze the drops though :)

[DaveG]

.005 seconds is 1/200 seconds. All shoe-mount flashes can do that easily, as well as most studio strobes. If, as I suspect, you meant .0005 seconds (1/2000), then I think you'll find that most shoe-mount flashes and a few studio strobes can still do that, especially when set to half-power or less. Flash durations generally decrease as you decrease power.

Many studio strobe manufacturers publish their t=0.1 flash duration times. I seem to recall that Elinchromes are particularly fast.

I think that you want to use it on an automatic setting rather than a manual (ususally about 1/750 of a second) in order to make the flash duration as brief as possible. Auto flash durations may be approaching 1/10,000 but the flash better be really close to the subject!

Harold Edgerton, the MIT scientist who more or less invented flash photography, would use flashes with incredibly brief durations like 1/100,000 of a second to do things such as stopping bullets in mid air. For that stuff the triggering device is likely to be as much a stumbling block as getting the flash duration that short. And - get this - you get to work in total darkness since the only light can be from the flash!

I'd do a Google search on our man Harold and see what I could come up with since there's no real reason to reinvent the wheel.

[Section 8]

Yes. I know. I have 2 books about him. I am not going to be goofing around with firearms. At most, a 22 caliber "pellet gun" (air powered).

I have a windowless room. I have a camera with a bulb setting. I go to an engineering school with an electrical engineering program making acquiring a "black box" for a microphone, or proximity sensor very easy once I find a flash with a remote signal capability.

I just need to find a suitable flash/strobe that doesn't cost $500.00 +.

Thanks.

[Section 8]

check out www.liquidsculpture.com , that guy is a genius. He uses like 1/10000 s to freeze the drops though :)

Thats a very cool site.

Thanks.

[liquids]

Greg -

I use Vivitar 285HV flashes, which are fairly inexpensive ($70-80 each), and are easily customizable for speed. The flash has an adjustment knob on the front that pulls off and you can replace it with a pot for variable control. A 50K linear might be a good choice. I think www.hiviz.com has more info on this. As DaveG suggests, the shorter the burst, the less light you get, pretty much proportionally. That's why I sometimes use multiple flashes.

I have looked several times, and haven't found a better, affordable choice. It seems that Fotronix, www.fotronix.com, builds the closest thing to a product based on Edgerton's designs, giving a good guide number (100 ASA at 100ft) in a short interval (70 usec) but it's 15X the money. The Microflash is (was) more of a laboratory instrument (a good one) with very short pulses possible, but correspondingly low output, and from the research I did, was not suitable for the kind of photography I wanted to do.

Have fun and don't stay up too late...

Martin

[neo_xeno]

check out www.liquidsculpture.com , that guy is a genius. He uses like 1/10000 s to freeze the drops though

whoa, those are some cool pics. some of them don't even look real, like computer generated.

[karusel]

You could use more flashes at a decreased power, so in the end you'd still have the amount of light necessary and the short time you wanted.

Also, check this (http://users.skynet.be/fotoopa/index.htm). However I must warn you, this guy uses somewhat wrong equipment, you know, N.... :D

[DocFrankenstein]

And I have a vivitar flash :)

Now I need the timers.

[Section 8]

Martin,

Thank you very much. The site you listed was exactly what I needed. Its alot easier for everyone involved to hand some one a schematic than tell them what I want it to do. :lol:

As for staying up late, I'm sure I will become oblivious to the time at some point while playing around, and show up in class stinky and worthless. :oops:

And thanks to everyone else who posted a site, they get the gears turning. :D

Greg

[DocFrankenstein]

As for staying up late, I'm sure I will become oblivious to the time at some point while playing around, and show up in class stinky and worthless. :oops:
Welcome to my world :D :lol: