High speed digital photography

[bruce varley]

Is there anything around at reasonable cost these days to enable a home user
to take those slow motion movies of rapid events? Things like balloons
bursting and ball bearings dropping into jugs of milk?

 

[Patrick Dunford]

In article <410a24e6$1@quokka.wn.com.au>, bxvarley@weqstnet.com.au
says...

Is there anything around at reasonable cost these days to enable a home user
to take those slow motion movies of rapid events? Things like balloons
bursting and ball bearings dropping into jugs of milk?

Is 25 fps fast enough, then use a digital video camera

 

[Bushy]

Not movies, but still shots can be taken by timing the flash and holding the
shutter open in a dark area. Dick Smith (maybe it was Jaycar?) sells a Light
and Sound Trigger kit that will allow you to take (adjustable) slightly
delayed shots after being triggered by either another flash, or a sound like
a balloon bursting.

I made one many years ago and also added a contact make and contact break
trigger so I could do other scenes, Lets you use the speed of the flash to
freeze motion to about 1/10000 second if the flash output is restricted and
kept low. This trick can require a fast lens.

I've made mine to play with my film camera, haven't tried it with my Nikon
Coolpix 900S, 'cause it's flash has died and it won't even drive the
external flash socket. Of couse, being that old, it's not worth repairing,
but one of these days I'll get the fancy new model and still have the extra
lenses to go with it.

As you are posting to aus.electronics I assume you have some idea about
electronics. You could use a slow speed camera that is cheaply available as
long as you can hook it up to a triggered flash systen that can recycle at a
suitable speed to match the frame rate. If you wanted to capture 1 second of
film at 25 frames a second, then you might want to trigger 25 seperate flash
units one after the other with a softbox to difuse the light.

Or, if it's a bouncing ball from the side of the pub pool table that you
want to capture, you might like to do it as several flashes in a row during
one shutter opening. The Nikon SB24 and later version flash units all had a
multiple flash setting for doing this.

Hope this helps,
Peter

"Patrick Dunford" <patrickdunford@nomail.invalid> wrote in message
news:MPG.1b78e2dba23ba61b989f7b@news.paradise.net.nz...

In article <410a24e6$1@quokka.wn.com.au>, bxvarley@weqstnet.com.au
says...
Is there anything around at reasonable cost these days to enable a home
user
to take those slow motion movies of rapid events? Things like balloons
bursting and ball bearings dropping into jugs of milk?

Is 25 fps fast enough, then use a digital video camera

 

[agamlen]

bruce varley wrote:

Is there anything around at reasonable cost these days to enable a home user
to take those slow motion movies of rapid events? Things like balloons
bursting and ball bearings dropping into jugs of milk?


We got a philips toucam pro at work to attach to a microscope. I

noticed it had a capture setting for 60fps which if played back at 15fps
should give you a reasonable slow motion but nothing like some of the
advanced cameras that can do thousands of frame per second.