Make:

Related to MAKE 04, Homemade Strobe Photography

More High-Speed Photos

November 02, 2005

With so many great photos to choose from, we had a hard time deciding which ones to put in MAKE 04. Here's some more that we loved, but couldn't fit into the magazine.

For more amazing photos, see the High Speed photography pool or the MAKE Strobe photo pool on Flickr.

You can find instructions on doing your own strobe photography in MAKE 04 (If you don't want to build your own controller, you can also buy one from the authors of the article). The article in MAKE shows how to build a strobe flash out of a Kodak disposable camera. A circuit triggers the flash when it detects a sound or other measurable event. By using a digital camera set for a long exposure (two seconds or more) in a dark room, you can trigger the circuit to fire the flash at the sound of a balloon pop and capture an image of the event.

Ernst Mach published some of the earliest high-speed images in 1887, but it's MIT professor Harold "Doc" Edgerton (1903-1990) who is perhaps most famous for capturing striking images of high-speed events.

• Airgun pellet shattering a Jello-filled Christmas ornament
• Liquid sculpture
• Glass breakage