Electronic Guidebook for High-Speed Flash Photography

Contents

Title Page
Introduction
Essential Components of a High-Speed Flash Photography System

The activities in the Guidebook are divided into four main sections.

• Section I provides an introduction to electronic flash and sound triggers.
• Section II describes photographic techniques using a single flash unit with a sound or contact trigger.
• Section III covers the use of photogate triggers and delay circuits, also with a single flash unit.
• Section IV describes quantitative applications that use two flash units and a high-frequency clock for measuring small time intervals and high speeds.
• There are also Appendices providing references, circuit diagrams, practice problems, and project ideas.
• Some documents are provided in PDF or RTF format.

Section I. Electronic Flash and Sound Triggers

Activity 1. Getting acquainted with the flash unit
Activity 2. Controlling flash duration
Activity 3. Measuring flash duration
Activity 4. Triggering the flash unit with sound

Section II. Photographic Techniques

Activity 5. Photographing bursting balloons
Activity 6. Photographing the smash of a tennis ball or racquetball
Activity 7. Using a contact trigger to capture a football kick
Activity 8. Photographing waveforms on an elastic band

Activities 9 - 15 are not presently available in html format.  These activities can be found in the pdf version of the tutorial.

Section III. Photogate Triggers and Delay Units

Activity 9.  Using an interrupter photogate to observe a plucked cord
Activity 10. Capturing vertical jumps with a photogate
Activity 11. Using an electronic delay with a contact trigger
Activity 12. Plucked cords and rubber bands
Activity 13. Photographing splashes
Activity 14. Using a light slave

Section IV. Measuring High Speeds and Small Time Intervals

Activity 15. Speed of sound
Activity 16. Speed of a balloon rip

Appendices

Appendix A. Complete equipment list for the activities
Appendix B. Flash accessories
Appendix C. Photographic basics
Appendix D. Using Polaroid cameras
Appendix E.  Making a contact trigger
Appendix F. Problems in high-speed measurement

PDF Documents

A Tutorial in High-Speed Photography with Electronic Flash
Flash Photograph with a Pinhole Camera
Using the Vivitar 283's Light Sensor Socket
Data sheet for flash photography

RTF Documents

Data sheet for flash photography