A Drop in Time

My blog is called ‘The drip drop of a ticking clock’. Well we have had the ‘ticking clock’, so I thought it was about time to have the ‘drip drop’. I am still capturing time in one picture, but for this picture the time being captured is around 1/2,000 sec.

I have for years been amazed at the shots you can get with high speed photography, so I thought I should look into this for my blog.

The first photographs of real high speed action were taken by Harold Edgerton. His milk drop picture is really well known. The splash of the milk drop is so quick nobody realised how amazing it was until Edgerton’s picture froze the motion. Even more amazing was the bullet and the light bulb.

 

Originally Edgerton wasn’t even a photographer. He was an electrical engineer working at MIT in America. He invented the photographic strobe or electronic flash. He had been using a stroboscope for scientific research and turned it to point at everyday objects. This led to its development as a photographic tool. The thing that made it important for high speed photography was the speed of the flash. It was an amazing 1/1,000 sec at a time when camera shutter speeds were much slower. Eventually he got this down to 1/1,000,000 sec.

I certainly wanted to try out the idea, so I decided to look at water dropping onto a water surface. But Edgerton’s original picture has been done so often now, I thought I would do something different. The crown effect is achieved by dropping liquid onto a thin layer of the same liquid. I wanted to create a spout of fluid, so I decided to use a bowl of water.

The main problem with taking the Edgerton type picture is the high speed trigger. Today this is usually a laser or sound device. The speeding bullet or falling drop cuts across a laser beam which triggers the flash. Or if you are breaking a light bulb the noise of the shattering glass is picked up by a microphone which triggers the flash. But getting hold of a trigger circuit is difficult and you usually have to build your own. I didn’t have the time or skill to do this so went for something a lot simpler.

I set up a drip onto water in a glass bowl and back-lit the scene with a soft box with a 250 watt strobe. The strobe flash speed was about 1/2,000 sec. I then took pictures of the scene with a digital camera linked to the strobe. The great thing about digital is that you can take an awful lot of pictures at no cost and can see the results straight away. I couldn’t synchronise firing the strobe with the water drop hitting the water surface, but I felt that if I shot the scene enough times I would get something interesting. I also use the rapid shoot feature on the camera to increase my chances of success. Out of around 70 shots I got 4 really interesting pictures. They are shown below.

I love the glassy look to the water spout in picture 2 and the ripples on the water surface in picture 1. Picture 4 is the droplet crown you get with a bowl of water, rather than a thin layer of liquid. I was really pleased with the results. Hope you like them too.

Bibliography

http://www.artfact.com/artist/edgerton-harold-e.-mk03pl9sp

http://www.madehow.com/inventorbios/21/Harold-E-Edgerton.html

Sources of pictures

http://www.flikr.com/photos/989997814@N00/1109958694/

http://myggm.org/exhibit-seing-the-light/