The Trick to High Speed Photography

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If you're short on inspiration and want to have a little fun, high speed photography is definitely the way to go. There are plenty of cool subjects that can be photographed with high speed, but by far my favorite is blowing light bulbs.

It's a lot easier to set up than it sounds and it's tons of fun. All you need is a simple setup with al light bulb socket a dark background and two lights.

The fun of course is shooting the light bulb with a bb gun and getting it all on camera.

Now when it comes to lighting and settings, there are a few things you need to be careful about. You shouldn't let ambient light affect your shot in any way. That means you have to take a few test shots with the flashes turned off and make sure your frame is completely dark. After that take a few shots with the lights turned on the bulb turned off and finally make the necessary adjustments with the bulb and the studio lights turned on.


Camera settings depend on each specific setup, but as a rule of thumb, use a fast speed, preferably 1/200th or faster. The aperture should be around f/8-f/11 and the ISO should be set to a minimum value for maximum image quality.

A sound sensitive camera trigger would really help because it's not going to be an easy job to synchronize the shot with the explosion manually.

Here's an awesome tutorial teaching you how to do it from the Slanted Lens.

Learn more about studio photography from these recommended books: