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.
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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.