High Speed Photography

I haven’t write to this blog for a while. Aside from the fact that I’m lazy it was mainly because I started to play with digital photography. About a year ago (maybe two?) I bought a second hand dDSLR camera. It is a 6 Mp Canon EOS-D60. It is an old model (2002) but I like it very much. It is perfect for learning. Here is the link on dpreview if you are interested in more details. BTW dpreview is a really good site if you need info on some digital camera.

So I started to learn digital photography and I run into some splash photos on the Internet. I was amazed, and I was curious how one can make such photo. Soon I was learning about high speed photography techniques. I was hooked. It requires some electronic gadgets and even better one can use microcontrollers to build such devices. Yes, you are right! That is also one of my hobbies So I had a “good” reason to start to build a microcontroller based device. As I was looking for the right controller I found arduino. Now, that is something cool. You have to check that if you are interested in microcontrollers. It is an Atmel based stuff that you can program via USB. It has a very nice programming environment and works like a charm. Here is their homepage.

The target is the following: I build a standalone device with

• LCD screen, menu,
• some push buttons for controllig the device itself,
• output for laser control,
• input for laser detector,
• input for microphone,
• output for camera shutter control,
• output for flash,
• output for dripping device control,
• timing control,
• sensitivity control.

I’m almost ready with it. Only thing that is missing is the dripping device. I already ordered a solenoid water valve from e-bay, so I will also have that soon. When I’m ready with the device I will post some pictures about it.

Before this device I built a small audio detector based circuit. I managed to take some acceptable pictures, but I want to go for better quality.

Here are some examples from others:

http://www.liquidsculpture.com/fine_art/index.htm

http://courses.ncssm.edu/hsi/pacsci/student_photos.html

http://www.backtoessentials.com/inspiration/35-examples-of-high-speed-photography/