High-speed Photographs By Lex Augusteijn

Lex says: “I started photography back in 1976, mostly black and white which I developed and printed myself. In the eighties and nighties my photographic activies declined, until I bought my first digital camera in 2001, an HP715 point-and-shoot camera. This boosted my enthusiasm again, and I found myself not touching my analog SLR any more, but I missed its versatility. This made me buy my Canon Digital Rebel (300D) in 2004. But still missing some features, I joined a group that developed a firmware upgrade, enabling features similar to the 10D. The images are frozen by the flash speed. I can go as low as 1/40.000 by reducing flash power. The bullet is real, though fired by a coil gun, which has much less energy than an air rifle, which again has lower energy than fire arms. It is all controlled by a laptop, releasing the drop, opening the shutter, firing the flash and shooting the bullet. No triggering required.”
High speed photography is the science of taking pictures of very fast phenomena. In 1948, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) defined high-speed photography as any set of photographs captured by a camera capable of 128 frames per second or greater, and of at least three consecutive frames. High speed photography can be considered to be the opposite of time-lapse photography.