Daisy Powerline 008
Not content to just pop balloons with a needle, my next foray into high speed flash photography involves the use of a pellet gun to fire pellets at high speed into unsuspecting subjects (nothing living, of course) to capture the point of impact. In my case, I added a Daisy Powerline 008 pellet gun to my arsenal.
As you can imagine, getting the timing down on this is even more difficult due to the high speed of the pellet (around 400 feet/second). In fact, working again with balloons, I found that the placement of the sound detecter was critical in the timing process. Too close to the gun and the flash triggered before the pellet reached the balloon, giving me a picture of a balloon hanging from the ceiling.
Moving the sound detecter several feet away from the gun, the flash triggered after the pellet had exited the balloon and had hit the pellet trap I set up, leaving me with a picture of empty space.
Balloon Meets Pellet
Through a fair amount of trial and error, I was able to capture the picture at left. The pellet has exited the balloon, but there is still a discernable shape to the balloon (particularly apparent at the top of the balloon). It’s still a split second later than I’d like – the exit wound in the balloon is large and most of the balloon is gone – so I still have some work to do on the timing.
There’s also a great deal of softness in the picture – the balloon is blurred, which is likely due to the duration of the flash, which on my flash unit (Canon 420EX) is about 1.2 ms (about 1/1000 second). This is actually a longer duration than I want – something I’ll have to work on improving.
So what’s next? Working on getting the timing down a little better, and than expanding my choice of subjects. Stay tuned!
