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

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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!"