long exposure? don’t you mean short exposure?

Posted at 12:31 pm on Dec 14th, 2008 by Cyrozap

No, I think the idea is to keep the shutter open during a window that there should be something cool, but then have the flash go off when something cool happens. If tweaked right everything else will be underexposed, while the flash will provide the majority of the lighting.

Posted at 12:39 pm on Dec 14th, 2008 by cptfalcon

This isn’t high-speed photography, but rather great timing photography, right?

Posted at 1:30 pm on Dec 14th, 2008 by johannes

It is using a camera at regular speed in a dark room (thus the shutter is open longer) with a flash that you trigger at just the right moment. Those two items combined = high speed photography

Posted at 2:59 pm on Dec 14th, 2008 by Tuckie

High speed photography has almost always been done with slow shutter speeds.

Before eletronic shutters at least, it was far easier to make a light flash for 1/100,000th of a second than to make a mechanical shutter operate that fast. Even with modern DSLRs, the fastest shutter speed is often maybe 1/4,000th of a second — far too long if you’re trying to capture a bullet in motion.

With electronic shutters, it’s probable possible to have incredibly fast shutter speeds, but then you need huge amounts of light — it’s still far easier to make a blinding flash of light than to make a continuously blinding light. :-)

Posted at 4:50 pm on Dec 14th, 2008 by MattieShoes

this all still assumes that whatever is making the noise isn’t faster than the sound. For example, this couldn’t be used to take a photo of a bullet.

Posted at 8:32 am on Dec 15th, 2008 by ehrichweiss

very true. trying to make a shutter open and close that fast is very difficult. the best way around the problem is using a flash of light. the idea was originally put forth by Harold Eugene “Doc” Edgerton. http://web.mit.edu/Edgerton/

ps: unfortunately, a lot of the images on my website are not loading due the enormous number of hits :]

apparently google sets a page view limit on websites it hosts :(

Posted at 8:35 am on Dec 15th, 2008 by shakir

@ehrichweiss

not true. lets say i keep my mic 1 cm from my gun. we know sound travels at roughly 340 m/sec in air at 20 deg C. use speed=distance/time -> the sound takes roughly 30 u sec to reach the mic.
now, a bullet travelling at say 900 m/sec will have moved a mere 27 mm in that time. so you see, we have a huge margin to work with

Posted at 8:56 am on Dec 15th, 2008 by shakir

That’s all well and good if you’ve got a cheap enough mic that you’re comfortable with aiming a gun 1cm away from it!

Posted at 4:33 am on Dec 16th, 2008 by clubdoug

you are not going to shoot the microphone for heavens sake! just keep it near the gun. and how expensive are condenser mics? a few cents!?

Posted at 7:18 am on Dec 16th, 2008 by joew

Cool stuff. I’ll have to get someone to make this for me.

One thing, though. His flash duration looks too short. If you set a flash on full power, the duration of the flash can cause blurring. If you set it at a lower power (1/2, 1/4, etc.) the burst will be shorter, and the image sharper. Of course, you will have to increase the ISO/set a larger aperture…

Posted at 12:41 pm on Dec 22nd, 2008 by photophile