Triggering camera and flash for explosion

[Michael16oz]

Hi

Thanks in advance for any help..

I shooting some motion at 1000fps of objects being destroyed. I can send and control a sync pulse from the ball canon that destroys the object.

I want to fire multiple heads and a camera (at least a canon 22mp slr) at a given time. I can control offset .

My work is normally motion (or stills under HMI) so please excuse my ignorance.

Will pocket wizards take a pulse distribute it fast enough?

Will normal flash all fire at the same time if controlled?

Will normal flash have a fast enough pulse to capture this explosion?

What is the fastest flash?

I am happy to use any Highish MP camera so please recommend?

What do people normally use?

any helpful thoughts very welcome..

Michael (London Based)

[Morgan_Moore]

Hi

Thanks in advance for any help..

I shooting some motion at 1000fps of objects being destroyed. I can send and control a sync pulse from the ball canon that destroys the object.

I want to fire multiple heads and a camera (at least a canon 22mp slr) at a given time. I can control offset .

My work is normally motion (or stills under HMI) so please excuse my ignorance.

Will pocket wizards take a pulse distribute it fast enough?

Will normal flash all fire at the same time if controlled?

Will normal flash have a fast enough pulse to capture this explosion?

What is the fastest flash?

I am happy to use any Highish MP camera so please recommend?

What do people normally use?

any helpful thoughts very welcome..

Michael (London Based)

Im not going to be much help..

the score for photographing things going pop is do it in a dark room and have the camera shutter open and get the flash to fire at the right moment - usually by the cutting of an IR beam - flash duration is much shorter than shutter duration

you HMI lit object wont work as above unless you are going to do a stills take and a movie take (two destructions) because the ambient light will crawl all over the long camera exposure

this leads me to thing that maybe you just need to fire the camera at the right time at a high shutter speed how much motion blur will there be in 1/8000 of a second - work it out? will there be enough light - work it out !

if you need flash it could be hard

if you get a low ISO and a small aperture and a high shutter speed your ambient light will interefere less with the flash image

thats going to be a bright flash indeed - many heads - that flash may mess up your motion film at the critical moment

In terms of synching

you are goin to need to open the shutter at T-1 and then fire the flash at T-0

Some thoughts on kit..

Rollie MF cameras have the highest synch speed 1000/th of a second

Hasselblad are second at 1/800th

Fast flash synch kill your ambient light - so these exotica cameras may trounce a canon (or not)

Early Digital backs like the sinar 54 and phase p25 have 25ISO that is good for killling ambient light (but bumps up the flash requirement many fold compared to 200ISO)

Multimax pocket wizards can be set up to double pulse I think

to open the shutter and then fire the flash

the pulse will be fast enough if timed right

Flash speeds you should google it, Profoto or Elinchrom are fastest probably

I can tell you that you are going to have to get a bit specialist - my Ellys dont synch right with my H1 at 1/800th on a regular wizard

If your client has the wedge it might be good to hire help - stephen dalton ?

SMM

[Michael16oz]

Thankyou for your time and answers

kind regards

Michael

Im not going to be much help..

the score for photographing things going pop is do it in a dark room and have the camera shutter open and get the flash to fire at the right moment - usually by the cutting of an IR beam - flash duration is much shorter than shutter duration

you HMI lit object wont work as above unless you are going to do a stills take and a movie take (two destructions) because the ambient light will crawl all over the long camera exposure

this leads me to thing that maybe you just need to fire the camera at the right time at a high shutter speed how much motion blur will there be in 1/8000 of a second - work it out? will there be enough light - work it out !

if you need flash it could be hard

if you get a low ISO and a small aperture and a high shutter speed your ambient light will interefere less with the flash image

thats going to be a bright flash indeed - many heads - that flash may mess up your motion film at the critical moment

In terms of synching

you are goin to need to open the shutter at T-1 and then fire the flash at T-0

Some thoughts on kit..

Rollie MF cameras have the highest synch speed 1000/th of a second

Hasselblad are second at 1/800th

Fast flash synch kill your ambient light - so these exotica cameras may trounce a canon (or not)

Early Digital backs like the sinar 54 and phase p25 have 25ISO that is good for killling ambient light (but bumps up the flash requirement many fold compared to 200ISO)

Multimax pocket wizards can be set up to double pulse I think

to open the shutter and then fire the flash

the pulse will be fast enough if timed right

Flash speeds you should google it, Profoto or Elinchrom are fastest probably

I can tell you that you are going to have to get a bit specialist - my Ellys dont synch right with my H1 at 1/800th on a regular wizard

If your client has the wedge it might be good to hire help - stephen dalton ?

SMM

[michaelnotar]

hi, i studied this stuff at brooks institute of photography. the other blogger is correct, you need one set up for the high speed video with lots of light and another set up for the still camera shot in the dark, use the flashes  to stop action, this is how i did ballistic photos. i have done a similiar project recently imaging the muzzle flash of various guns. i shot in the dark, told him to fire, did a few sec exposure and also used a flash to give ambience. i used a vivitar flash, it doesnt have to be high speed flash since it is coming after the muzzle flash.
 (http://shutterworksphoto.com/portshow.asp?portfolioid={C7347596-59B1-469F-91A3-2543D8050AD7)

i would highly reccomend the time machine from bmumford.com, its a great timing device thats super well built and amoung the cheapest out there. it was build for the Brooks high speed department. in the above situation, i used it with a microphone trigger with no delay added with the flash attached.

with your project i would say just do a few sec exposure at varying exposures, sorry you just gotta test and have multiple explosions...too bad.... add any flash if you want ambient but it will probably add blur.

i use a modified vivitar 283 flash for photographing high speed things like water droplets and its T.1 duration is 1/17,000th sec, too long for your event. you need a flash called spot which is a remake of the EG&G microflash, flash duration 1/2,000,000th sec which will stop most bullets but runs almost $3000.

I want to fire multiple heads and a camera (at least a canon 22mp slr) at a given time. I can control offset .

-you need to connect the trigger to the flashes and not to a hotshoe port, too long of delay. that why i like the vivitar they have a sync cord on the side of the flash that is really fast. camera delay once it receives the electronic signal is way to long..


Will pocket wizards take a pulse distribute it fast enough?

-no, again they are a great product, but have too much lag time in them, time between getting a signal and resending/triggering. you need to hard wire up everything for sure. from my test the vivitar with the vivtar sync cable had a flash lag of 1/42,000 sec while adding the pocket wizard made it  1/1,800 sec.. wow, huh.

personally i would shoot faster than 1000 fps if possible, i have used a phantom 4 and ran it up to 64,000 fps, but normally ran it at about 2-8,000 fps, all at lowered res.