HIGH speed photography WITH FRIGGIN’ LASERS

[Bruce] built his own high-speed photography equipment for a fraction of the price it would have cost him to purchase it. He was inspired by a pal who showed him some example images. He headed into his shop and built an Arduino-based high-speed flash controller.

To capture an image like this one the cam is placed in a dark room and set for a long exposure. At just the ideal instant the flash is activating, capturing the image. In this case [Bruce] used an infrared laser diode pointed at a phototransistor to activate the flash. When the droplet breaks the laser beam the Arduino triggers the flash after a calculated delay. It’s not specifically covered in his guide, but [Bruce] also mentions that this can be modified to use sound as a trigger. Here’s another sound-activated flash controller if you need inspiration.

The image at the top was made by dropping dye from a pipette into a pool of water. If you don’t have a pipette on hand you can head over to our LIFE blog to make one out of heat shrink tubing.