I’ve always been interested in high speed photography – the ability to capture the precise moment a balloon is popped, or capturing a drop of water just as it hits the water’s surface. An earlier example of that is the ‘Splash!‘ photo I posted a little while back.

In an effort to take this to the next level, I’m working on a setup that will let me experiment more with high speed photography. In order to do this, I need something that will trigger a flash at precisely the right moment, and I think I’ve found something that will help me do that.

Sound Kit Unassembled

For this first iteration, I will be using sound to trigger the flash – using an electronic circuit to detect the sound and close the circuit to fire the flash. This is the Sound trigger with Delay Unit Kit from HiViz.com.

The kit comes as you see in the picture on the left. It is a collection of resisters, capacitors, potentiometers, wires, etc., along with a solderless breadboard for assembly. While the kit comes with no instructions, HiViz has an excellent set of instructions on their website, with pictures of the assembly process at each step of the way. You really don’t have to be an electrician in order to assemble this – my biggest challenge was the small size of the components and my fat fingers!

Sound Kit Assembled

You can see the assembled unit on the right. The large black circular device is the sound-detecting element, which has a sensitivity control. In addition to being triggered by a loud sound, the kit has a delay unit (also with a sensitivity control), which introduces a delay after the sound detection before the flash is triggered.

In my first experiment (which I haven’t done yet), the sound will come from a pellet gun, which will fire a pellet at an inflated balloon. There needs to be a slight delay as the pellet makes its way to the balloon, and if it works correctly, the flash will fire and capture the instance of the balloon being punctured. I’ll report back over the next couple of weeks as I work out the issues and see what kind of pictures I can capture.