I’ve recently been spending gobs of time in the newly dubbed “Technical Imaging Lab” at Arizona State University where I attend grad school, work in the photo studio, and work for the university under two separate grant projects. I really can’t complain about being there too much, I get to do things like what you see in the video above and call it work/school. In the fall a new class will be available at ASU called Technical Imaging. It will give students a chance to get their grubby little hands on some fairly awesome equipment and learn how to make sweet videos of themselves getting slapped in the face or hit with water balloons, fruit, dodgeballs, etc. They can also learn how to take still pictures of high speed events like liquids dripping and splashing, stuff getting chopped up in a blender or exploding.

Actually, I don’t know what kinds of things they’ll taking pictures and videos of, those things are just what I do with the gear while I’m in the lab learning how to use it myself. hee hee

A little background on this video…

The first two clips, wherein the illustrious Chris Paxman shoots himself in the face, were shot at 1245 frames per second. The latter clip of the soft (and very tender, ouch) tissue of my arm getting pelted with a pellet was shot at about 5700 frames per second.
The camera used to shoot such high framerates in this instance was a Phantom Miro eX2.

Oh, one more thing… While it may look cool to shoot projectiles at one’s face, this is not recommended.

I get to spend my time doing all sorts of cool things. One of those cool things is helping to set up a high speed imaging lab at ASU Polytechnic. We have all sorts of brand new, really cool gear that I am learning from scratch. Things like laser and sound triggers, extremely powerful and short duration strobes, thermal cameras, high speed video cameras, and so on. Needless to say, I don’t know where to start. So I thought I would try my hand at some of the things I’ve seen done by others and compare the results then once I have a clue what everything does I can get a little more creative.

The photo above was made using a flash duration of 1/7500th of a second. The video below, while not the highest quality in the world, shows the same setup in action at 1000 frames per second. Playback of the video is set at 30 frames per second so even though it takes 30 seconds to watch what happens it went down much faster in real life.

Next item on my agenda, exploding fruit. Stay tuned.

Photographer Mark Wallace let me into his studio yesterday to observe and help out with the filming of a series of short videos for PocketWizard’s website. The new video clips will be part of a series of step-by-step instructions for the new PocketWizard MiniTT1 and FlexTT5. Stay tuned for more information on when these videos will be available. If you recently acquired a set or are thinking of making the purchase, these videos and instructions will be very useful. Mark is a great guy and knows his stuff, you can check out some of his previous educational videos on his YouTube channel.

I have to admit, after seeing the videos and getting a little taste for what these new PW goodies will do I almost wish I shot Canon so that I could go get a set right now. Unfortunately, like the rest of us Nikon shooters, I will have to wait until PW comes out with the Nikon version, according to their website this will be in Fall 2009.

I wish I could say I have had the chance to play around with these new toys but I can’t. So if you are really interested in seeing what the pros have to say about the new Pocket Wizards, check out the links below (they have plenty of pics too) :

Mark Wallace’s review
David Hobby (strobist.com)
Rob Galbraith