Your First High Speed Photography Accessory - A Contact Trigger
High Speed Photography may seem intimidating with all the high end Arduino Triggers and crazy setups that are going around.
If you just want to have a quick stub at high speed photography, your best chance is probably selecting a subject that is easy to shoot (pun intended) in the dark, and light it using a strobe. "How will the strobe know when to pop?" you ask. Easy, using a contact sensor. Such subjects include thing that you can blow up relatively slowly using an arrow or a slow moving pellet, like balloon, eggs and Christmas ornaments.
A contact sensor is one of the most primitive and easy to build high speed photography sensors and is basically build from two conductive surfaces each connected to one of the strobes contacts. When those two surfaces meet they short the circuit and pop the flash.
This is how the picture in the top of the post (by Henrik Vento) was taken, an arrow hits a contact trigger after passing through the egg and a burst of light is made.
The nice thing about contact trigger is that is very (very) easy to build (about 10 minutes of work and 2 pennies worth of equipment. That is including the two pennies you are going to use as materials.
In the pictorial below, Ian Montes shows us how to easily build a high speed photography contact trigger.
The stuff you need
Strip the wire
Make a hole in the back of the box (we made the box earlier, but really it is just a folded piece of cardboard)
Put the wire through the hole
Add scotch tape to each part of the wire attaching it to the coin
Now paste these two coins to each side of the box
Ball punch
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Comments
Things missing
I can't follow it. How is the flash connected ??? You need more text please
Mssing Info
Seems like a really cool idea, just need more info. Mainly how the white wire connects to the strobe, and how to connect the white and yellow wires.
More???
I think after the the connect that is there that some information missing. Need some more details, text would be good, with all the photos, and more information. I love the idea, and it would work, I think.....
Almost...
This is definitely a good idea, but as the guys above said it needs to be fleshed out a bit more. This was intriguing so I did a little bit of digging and found this excellent video that describes a very similar contact trigger build and explicitly shows how the trigger interacts with the flash:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVUxKnNMW44
I hope this helps some of you intrepid DIY'ers out!
PS- I've been thinking of starting a series of posts on my website about sourcing and using gear on the cheap, i.e. vintage glass or modified cheap e-bay acessories and walking through things like finding reputable sellers, settling disputes, and actually using the stuff in a shoot. I don't want to tread on DIY photography which I love, but I think it would be neat to have something tailor made for college students and other people on a budget that isn't focused on necessarily making it yourself.
Impressed!
The pictures are descriptive but don't you think you need to add a bit more text?
Thanks Ian, that explained
Thanks Ian, that explained alot to me. I also don't understand how the wires attach to the strobe. another thing i didn't get was how the arrow triggered the sensor. i love DIY but sometimes the articles miss information. would be nice to have everything explained from beginnng to end.
This looks like a pretty cool
This looks like a pretty cool idea! I'll have to try it myself to check if it actually works! Thanks!
high speed photo
I wrote also an article about this, something like 2 years ago :
http://www.virusphoto.com/134047-la-photo-high-speed-pour-les-nuls.html
Sorry it's in french :) bu the images can explain, and google can translate !
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