| This
everyday impact situation shows some interesting things about lighting and how
high-speed flash photographs are taken. While the yellow
streak attests to the fact that the match was lit, the image
of the match itself is shown before it was lit. Here's what
happened. The room lights were first turned out and the
camera shutter opened. Almost as soon as the match made contact with
the box, the sound set off a sound trigger and discharged a
flash unit. The match and the hand holding it were captured at that moment as if
they were still, since they didn't move far in the short time
that the flash unit was discharging. Even though
the flash unit had discharged, the camera shutter remained
open for a while. During that time, the match
burst into flame, and the light of the flame recorded its own
path across the film. So why isn't the match itself seen as it
moved to the left? Apparently, the light of the match head
didn't provide enough illumination to register a noticeable
image of the match stick on the film.
next
photo
previous photo
Impacts gallery |
