Sunday, December 20, 2009

High speed photography

This morning I learned about high speed fp (focal plane sync). I had been frustrated at the limits of the shutter meaning that the highest sync speed I could reliably pull off was 1/200 (even though the camera is specified at 1/250 I almost always see that telltale shutter curtain).

Turns out you can make the flash extend its duration so it syncs at high speed (ie up to the maximum)



This got me interested in high speed photography again, by my previous endeavours have simply involved popping the flash manually, hoping to get the shot.
This is of course time consuming, and very random, so I decided today to have a go at doing it right.

This meant that I had to find a way of getting an audio trigger. Initially I thought about seeing about buying one, but it turns out there is very little information on the web, so I had to do it myself.

I went to Jaycar and bought an audio amplification kit (like a substitute hearing aid), and quickly found out I was almost out of my depth. It turned out the kit was just a pcb with a million resistors, capacitors and integrated circuits which I had to all solder together. Now I have significant experience in soldering, but this was far harder than the 90 minutes specified on the packet.

Anyway 5 hours later (no really), I was able to get the microphone amplifying the ambient sounds. Switching out the headphones for a silicon controlled rectifier and a bit of jiggery pokery with a pc sync chord, I was able to consistently trigger my sb900 with a sharp sound.

I have no pretty photos to show yet, but will be doing some of these possibly this week, definitely after christmas

Tags: high speed sync fp photography audio trigger electronics diy soldering flash

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