High Speed Photography - Water Balloon

I've been experimenting with fast shutter speeds to see if I can freeze action that typically cannot be seen with the unaided eye. Today, my experiment consisted of a green balloon, water, and orange food coloring. The orange balloon shape is NOT the balloon, but rather the food coloring tinted water that is still maintaining the shape of the balloon, before gravity pulls the blob of water to the Earth with a splash! Taken at 1/4000 sec.

That's a cool looking moment there.

wow, that's pretty awesome. as fast as that shutter speed is, it's still not fast enough to freeze the frame!!!

PEKKA - Thanks! I shot it with a couple of AlienBees, close by. I was hoping and hoping that the water wouldn't splash high enough to hit my Bees. Thankfully, they were high and dry.

MSCLMAN99 - Yeah... I was hoping to get the shutter down to 1/8000, which would have possibly stopped the action (or came close, anyway). However, being an overcast day and relying on the AlienBee modeling lamps for a little extra light, 1/4000 was the best I could get away with, without cranking the ISO to something too dirty to work with. Overall, though, I'm very pleased with the result. Makes me want to play around with high speed photography, until I get "the" shot (whatever "the"shot is...).

You want to use "flash" to freeze action, not shutter speed. Alien Bees won't be fast enough. A hot shoe flash on lower power will be super-quick. You'll have to shoot in low-light though, for you'll get way too much ambient shooting in the daylight.

Gatorboy wrote in post #10362365
You want to use "flash" to freeze action, not shutter speed. Alien Bees won't be fast enough. A hot shoe flash on lower power will be super-quick. You'll have to shoot in low-light though, for you'll get way too much ambient shooting in the daylight.

If only I could convince my wife to allow me to pop water balloons INSIDE the house (where I have a pretty decent dark room for dramatic lighting photos). I did experiment with flash stopping motion of my middle daughter blowing a raspberry. It worked pretty decently:

You probably will find this blog post from Strobist interesting:
How to Photograph Water Drops with one Flash

Gatorboy wrote in post #10364721
You probably will find this blog post from Strobist interesting:
How to Photograph Water Drops with one Flash

Wow... incredible video tutorial in there. Sadly, I don't have any way to get my flash off camera, as of yet. That shall change, shortly, so I can take advantage of my newly found water-shooting knowledge. Thanks for linking me to that.

Gatorboy wrote in post #10364721
You probably will find this blog post from Strobist interesting:
How to Photograph Water Drops with one Flash

The first video is very informative, the second is just plain amazing! Thanks for posting!

ohh,
that is an amazing shot!

pretty cool, but I'd agree that using a dedicated flash capable of HSS would be a better choice.