Many years ago Nova had a program on Harold Edgerton, the guy who invented the strobe light. Invented to stop the motion of moving parts in electric generators, he extended this to photography which was a hobby of his. Eventually he did work for the US government to image France at night during WW II and recorded the atomic bomb detonations to show physicists what was really happened.

I never forgot about that program and had a desire to attempt to recreate some of his more famous images. Two things led me to believe I could do this: content in Digital Photo about high speed sync flash units and a shutter triggering device from Ubertronix.

Using the combination of the two would make it possible to create the images, but would it work?

Edgerton had taken photos of balloons in different stages of disintegration via a .22 bullet. How could I create this without taking undue risks?

Using the Ubertronix sound triggering capabilities allowed me to fire the camera when a loud noise is detected. After some experimentation the photos below were finally taken.

Air Balloon #1 shows a balloon just having been ripped asunder by a Red Ryder and in fact the bb can be seen in the picture. After seeing this image I decided no others were worth taking.

Even at a shutter speed of 1/8000 second the tatters of the balloon are still blurred, inferring a speed preventing me from capturing the fragment.

While disappointing, just being able to capture the bb in flight was a bonus I hadn’t considered possible.

What could be next? How about exploding a water balloon?

 After bunch of trial and error this was the first result. Not perfect but passable.

So this is the instant the water balloon has been popped but the water itself retains its shape. But it was still out of focus for my liking.

Even after being more diligent about focusing and depth of field it still remained out of focus.

What could be left? Could the water be moving faster than what I could capture? The backstop being out of focus as well eliminates the water motion.

A mystery to be solved later for sure.

After some research it turns out that digital cameras are sensitive to near-infrared wavelengths and if the visible spectrum is blocked what’s left is recorded. Blocking is done by a filter.

For comparison the picture below is a simple black and white photo.

The photo below is in near infrared. The notable differences: darker skies, white leaves, with the remainder is the same. Turns out that this is due to the different wavelengths. Longer exposures are needed making it tough to capture a true still image.

In retrospect, how many other ways can you get a tree with white leaves, dark skies and everything else looking normal.

Much easier said than done. But I could fool around with other stuff.

I knew that the 7D was supposed to have built-in capability to better render long exposures. This was a solution in search of a problem so the problem had to be created, so the next thing was to set up a tripod with a cable release in the light polluted backyard in June. Talk about stacking the deck against success. What happened was something else.

I took  couple shots, experimenting with the exposure times and had some success. Shown below is a shot of the big dipper and another of the small and big dipper.  The literature was true to its world. The camera really did successfully process the images. I was astounded.

There’s a heavy looking gold frame that seemed suited for b&w shots so color was the first thing to go. Next was tonemapping with qtpfsgui. I like qtpfsgui and while it doesn’t have all the features of commercial products, the price was right. The actually settings are embedded in the description of the picture.

Tonemapped St. Francis of Assisi monastery

B&W image of towers at San Gimignano

I thought it looked pretty dramatic. Time to try another one. I picked a shot of two towers in San Gimignano; they reminded me of the NYC twin towers except these were Medieval.

Went through the same steps of conversion to b&w and tonemapping. A funny thing happened along the way. After removing color I noticed a couple people in the foreground; well at least their silhouettes. I figured I’d have to crop them out.  Not a problem. After tonemapping something more dramatic occurred.

Not only did the dark wooden frame come to life, the people were now discernable as well in the lower left corner. Amazing and unexpected. The shots below show the difference.

Towers tonemapped

Lower left corner pre-tonemap

Lower left corner post-tonemap