Stroboscopic equipment for Edgerton immitator!

[philip_roberts1]

I have been fascinated since childhood by the work of Harold (Doc) Edgerton, and the history of the high

speed strobe to achieve multiple image and incredibly fast exposure. The milk drop coronet, the golf

swing, the compressed rugby ball, the bullet through the apple/playingcard/balloon/you name it! I would

like to try some of these effects but finding strobscopic flash units to achieve this or very high speed flash

units (1/50,000 sec plus) with different triggering systems, seems impossible! <p>Does anyone know

where i can get (reasonable priced) equipment to suit (in the UK), and do you have experience and advice

for this kind of specialist photography?<p>My equipment is Olympus (OM for film, E1 for digital).

[michael_notar1]

hi

i have lots of experience with exactly what you have mentioned. i have studied balistic

photography here in the states. i would like to talk to you in private, since it is hard to follow

up on this thread on this site. please go to www.shutterworksphoto.com, under the contact

page send me a message with your email adress.

 

thanks

mn

[mark u]

A good place to start is to thoroughly explore this site:

 

http://www.hiviz.com/

 

The kits can easily be built with components available from e.g. Maplin Electronics, or purchased direct from Hiviz. If you want to go much beyond what can be achieved with those setups, you start to enter the realms of rather more expensive equipment - the list of vendors (some Europe/UK based) at Hiviz gives you some idea:

 

http://www.hiviz.com/links/links_vendors.htm

[michael_notar1]

timing device: www.bmumford.com its called the time machine.

best device on the market, i have looked at them all, most features, best built, and

cheapest.

ships out of souther california in the states though.

 

flashes: vivitar 283, can be modified to produce really short flashes, or just get the

variable power assessory is preatty good at lowest power. you can buy both for $100 or

about $50 used. fast enough to do water splashes, and some airgun shots.

 

you will need a bunch of PC cordd to connect all the flashes up, i use 4-5. get the vititar

sync cords that plug right into the flash with a special port/connection.

 

the general radio strobotacs are not worth their trouble. they are too old and fire too late

due to internal electronics. they do have short flash durations, but dont bother.

 

for bullets/ballistics- unless you have about $14,000.00 US to spend for the cooke

palflash, forget about it! :) i went to a school that had such a device, its flash duration is

750 nanoseconds (nano=billionth sec) its about 1000 times faster than the vivitars.

 

in any case the flash is connected to the timing device, andd the camera is left open in the

dark before firing the gun or droping the water.

 

you can find an EGG microflash on ebay for bullets from time to time, even though they

are discontinued by a decade, they still fetch about $2000.00 US.

 

any device, ether those mentioned above or homemade are extremely dangerous, so it isnt

worth trying to build them or mess with them unless you are very experienced in high

voltage. they usually have 15,000 DC volts and thousand of amps of current on the circuit

due to the fact the entire device is extremely low resistance to produce as fast flash.

 

theres lots to explore with the vivitars and everything in the normal realm of highspeed, i

get a little blur with the airgun shots but it looks nice, shows a little movement.

 

enjoy

mn

[mark u]

More techniques here:-

 

http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/articles.html

 

and if you are feeling really adventurous about building strobes, this is the place for advice on how to do it:

 

http://members.misty.com/don/donflash.html

[philip_roberts1]

Wow - thanks guys, this just goes to show the value of photo.net! I will be following up all

your suggestions and will look into your websites as well.