Velo POP Claims to Be The Fastest Retail Trigger In The World

After successfully funding the Vela One – an uber-high-speed strobe the obvious question was now that you have a trigger that can freezer a bullet in mid air, how do you trigger it to catch the action. This is why I am not surprised that Vela Labs now announces the Vela Pop, a companion sound trigger for the LED strobe.

There are other solutions out there if you want a sound trigger: Camera Axe is one of them, MIOPS is another and  TriggerTrap is a phone based one, and while that are all very good at what they do, Vela Pop does bring some news into this market:

• Vela Pop is the fastest trigger I know at under 10 microseconds to action. (Phone based triggers are in the milliseconds area, and other dedicated devices we know are around 100 microseconds)
• The trigger can work with either a camera for direct shooting, or a strobe for action-freezing
• The price is sweet: $45

That pricing does keep the unit functionality very basic: you can control delay and noise threshold, and they are both controlled with physical knobs. Some prefer physical knobs, and some prefer a digital display which is easier to use if you want to reproduce results. The other thing that makes bullet shooting easy and is not part of the kit is a gate sensor which can measure a bullet as it flies. But for $45, I am not complaining, it does sound triggering pretty well.

The press release tells us that (bolding is mine):

The Vela Pop is available from this week, but it is already battle-tested and launch ready. Top spaceflight photographer Walter Scriptunas II put the Vela Pop through its paces in May at Kennedy Space Center, capturing the launch of the Atlas V rocket carrying the US Air Force’s X-347B spaceplane. Installed on the launchpad the day before liftoff, the Vela Pop waited patiently until triggered by the sound of ignition when it sprang into life, helping capture stunning shots of the launch.

This is the photo that starts the post, and here is another one from that session, as well as some other demos where a strobe is used.

As far as product features, here is the full spec:

• Trigger speed: ~7µs
• Battery life: ~15 days
• Dimensions: 79 x 38 x 16 mm
• Weight: 36g
• Trigger output: 2.5mm audio socket

[Vela Pop | $45]