High Speed Photography

High Speed Photography:

When I first got my new camera (Canon EOS 40D) I was quite intrigued of a new feature that this camera offered. The EOS 40D is one of the fastest digital SLRs offered at its price. It shoots up to 6.5 frames per second, making it ideal for everything from wildlife to sports photography. It can capture up to 75 JPEGs, or 17 RAW images in one burst. This camera allows the user to capture pictures at precise moments that would be otherwise impossible to get.


If you haven't guessed already, high speed photography is the science of taking pictures at a very fast phenomena. In 1878, a man by the name of Eadweard Muybridge started an investigation that questioned whether or not a horses' feet were actually all off the ground at once during a gallop. Muybridge used a series of high speed shots to freeze motion and see if his hypothisis was correct. As you can see illistrated in the picture to the right, multiple pictures were shot at a very excessive rate to capture the exact moment when the horses feet were completely off the ground. Muybridge's theory proved to be very successful and his investigation was later coined to be the birth of the motion picture.

How Did I Demonstrate This Technique?

This was my first attempt at trying anything like this, so it took a little bit of practice to get it just right. I wanted to experiment with the camera's potential to take good high speed shots. To start off I tried capturing my girlfriend jumping around. I thought that hopefully this would be easy and produce cool results. However, I quickly found out that the pictures I was getting lacked interest. Yeah there was a person seemingly suspended in mid air, but it just wasn't appealing to look at. Next I fooled around with dropping a beer bottle cap into a glass filled to the top with water. This technique proved to be very easy and a great way to practice the high speed shooting method on your own. I produced a lot of shots in a very short amount of time, so not only was it easy but efficient as well.


The bottle cap plopping into the water and making a splash that was frozen in time was significantly more interesting than the friend jumping around approach. However, I wanted to take my newly developing skills in high speed photography to try something more unique and tricky. I got the idea to start filling water balloons and trying to capture the moment of popping them with a needle. I hoped to get a cool perspective of the water burst motionless in time.

How I preformed this procedure

~ Canon EOS 40D

~ 6.5 Fps

~ Canon Speedlight Flash 420EX

~ Off Camera Flash shoe Cord

~ To position flash exactly

~ Standard Tripod

~ Bathroom Tub With Lights Off

~ A Few Dozen Water Balloons

~ Popping the balloon from a height higher than the center of the view finder

~ Black Sheet Used As a Backdrop (for some)

~ Using a vocal “3,2,1, snap” count to sync timing between my partner popping and myself shooting the picture.

My Camera Settings:

~ Continuous Shooting Mode (Canon 6.5fps)

~ Shutter Speed: 1/3200

~ F-stop: 5.6

~ ISO: 100

~ Focal length: 35mm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For the most part I learned a great deal about high speed photography. It will be a technique that I will not soon forget, and I plan to further expand my knowledge of this method through more experimenting very soon.
During the balloon session I took 884 pictures, popped 86 balloons, and received 13 usable pictures (ones I liked).
"Everything takes time to get it right, keep shooting, keep smiling, learn!"

Jim Miotke’s Digital Photography Guide Book:

Review by David Biblis

When going through the first chapter titled “Getting to know your Camera” I got the basic feeling that you should always pick the camera that suits your style and skill level. With the wide variety of cameras that are available today it is very easy to pick the camera that best fits your needs. I myself started with a regular point and shoot camera and have taken many great photographs with it. I have had it for close to three years now and it continues to give me the quality that I am looking for when snapping pictures. I can pick that camera up and go out and shoot whatever I wanted with it and know exactly how to get it to do what I want it to do. I can do this because I have familiarized myself with the camera. The first thing I did when I got it was jump right into the user manual. It is very important to understand how to operate your camera and should always be considered priority number one. Learning the different features enables the user to capture even the most mundane of things and make it appear to be very eye pleasing. Understanding how the camera works will also give the user a better understanding of how to capture exactly what to highlight in a photo.

Knowing what you want to shoot is also very important. It is an essential question that one must ask him or herself before even purchasing a camera. Will you use your camera during travel - if so then do not get a heavy camera. Will you use your camera for sports, macro, portrait, just pictures of the family or is it just for hobby? With this in consideration you can capture what you want with a lot more ease. What you pick will perhaps be what you love the most or what you are most passionate about. However sometimes you are not prepared for what just might take place, so you should always have a camera with you just in case. For instance the photographs taken during the 9/11 attacks mean a lot to us, but we only have them because people had a camera with them at the right point in time. Preparation is significant to making great photographs, but preparation ties into timing. Variation in timing on the same photograph makes a huge difference. All the decisions are held and made by the user which makes the experience that much better. If the shot doesn’t come out good nobody is to blame but you. I have had many experiences where my pictures just would not come out the way that I had wanted so I just kept taking pictures until I took the one shot that did fulfill my expectations. A lot of work that is done using third party programs such as Photoshop can be done right in the LCD screen of the camera such as cropping or making an intentional blur effect. It boils down to just knowing your camera and knowing what you want to capture. The book includes a lot of information in these first few chapters, even though the titles of the chapters seem very easy to comprehend. It is filled with great tips such as getting closer for people photography, using themes, and using flexibility to get pictures. I will try to incorporate what I have learned to my work by always thinking back to the methods described.

Chapter three is all about understanding the file formats, allowing one to recognize what information is being saved as along with how to save it as whatever you want. Resolution is very important when dealing with pictures, for it is the clarity of the picture that makes it good. So one must understand what resolution is and how to incorporate it to what you are capturing. Different file types such as JPEG, TIFF, and RAW all allow for special image qualities. It is up to the user to understand each of these formats and choose which best fits for what you are using you pictures for. There are also external memory cards that can be used to capture much more than the internal memory would normally allow. I use one of these in my camera and am able to capture up to thirteen hundred pictures at a very high pixel rate. Using the external SDI cards also make it very easy to carry your pictures around as a multi media file. I can simply bring my memory card to Wal-Mart plug it into their printing device and it quickly and easily finds my pictures for printing. These memory cards were not always available and film was quiet pricy back in the day, so when people of older generations took pictures they were much more careful with how they approached the subject matter. Today we can snap thousands of pictures and simply press delete if we do not find them appealing.

The latter end of the book becomes far more in depth as to how to take a good photograph. The chapters titled “Exposure” and “Light” both have a lot of information that is just hard to explain but easy to incorporate into your skill arsenal. Setting your aperture and shutter speed to the correct setting is very important to understand. The longer that your shutter is open more light is allowed to pass into the camera. So for example, one Fourth of July I was taking pictures of fireworks by setting my F stop very low and exposing the camera for five seconds. Since it was very dark outside and the only light that was visible were the fireworks - it made for a great shot. ISO is also talked about in these chapters, and for the longest time I had a big problem understanding what this was. Back in high school while I taking a black and white photography class we were always told to have ISO set to 400 and that 400 was the best for indoor settings. This was easy enough to understand except for when we were not taking pictures inside the school. I just always left it on 400 indoor and outdoor but never understood why sometimes I would get really dull grainy pictures. If it is really dark you can increase your ISO but you will lose image quality for the more ISO that you use. Sometimes it helps however, mostly it hurts the picture. With past experiences messing around with shutter speed I have found that it mostly gives me very cool effects such as moving water. Experimenting is the best tool of learning that I have come across yet.

Getting a good shot like a beautiful sunrise or sunset takes the willpower of getting out and just taking the picture. Even though it might be five in the morning, this might be the only time to get the lighting exactly correct for how you want it in the shot. I have stayed up all night to get the shot of a sunrise and I’ll be the first to say the early bird gets the worm because I simply love the shots I get. With effort comes great reward.

The very last chapter of Jim Miotke’s guide is Titled “Composition.” As I read it I found all the essential rules of photography. When most people are asked to take a picture they do just that, but to really bring interest to the picture you must follow these simple rules of composition. In all of my pictures I am always trying new things, such as trying to understand new perspectives. I am always lying on the floor or leaning far beyond my body’s limits to get that good point of view that brings curiosity to the picture. Capturing a good point of view is always my main priority along with the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is just a way of saying do not always center your subject matter because it can be more eye pleasing to have it on a thirds line. The chapter also describes getting close to your subject and trying to show a dominate subject. Having too much in a photograph can be very distracting while on the flipside not having enough in the picture makes tension. There are so many things that must be thought about when taking pictures, and that’s exactly what I am doing every time I turn my camera on. I am thinking, going through all these steps one by one in my head. With time you can do all that this book has to say within a few seconds of actually taking the picture. However, it will take a lot of practice to get it right, as it does with anything new that we do in life.