Today we have another shot of a light bulb burning itself out and the smoke exiting from a small hole.
Materials
60watt Black light bulb.
Procedure
Create a hole in the bulb. I used a dremel tool to take care of that.
Result
The filament heats up and then proceeds to produce a thick (pleasant looking) smoke before burning out.
Observations
I like this one because you get to see the smoke contained by a barrier, while at the same time you get to see a limited amount escape and curl around the barrier. The smoke is also rather pretty in and of itself.
Additional notes
If it looks like I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for my clips, it would be because I am. I am currently in-between cameras so I’m searching through things I’ve not posted in the past because I had better clips to post. Hopefully this situation will change in the near future.
Today we have another shot that comes from our Shot Suggestion page. The Incandescent light bulb explosion was proposed by Cameron, and a good suggestion it was.
Materials
250Watt Heat Lamp bulb.
A spray bottle with cold water.
Procedure
I turned the bulb on and let it heat for approximately half an hour then sprayed it with water.
Result
The explosion was quite surprising in its violence. It doesn’t appear that way in the video, but the pieces flew better than six feet. Much to my dismay as I had to clean it up!
Observations
The force of the explosion was indeed quite surprising, I did not expect the pieces to fly so far. The smoke that begins to broil up was not unexpected though cooler than I had anticipated. Also, as one can see in the video, considerably brighter than I had expected. I will redo this shot during daylight to really allow the smoke to be seen as it is awfully pretty to watch live. I apologize for the smoke being so blown out, I had balanced the shot based on the light on the top of the glass. It should have been obvious that against a whitish smoke it would blow out. At any rate, enjoy!
Today we say hello to a new member of the Lucid Movement family. The GigaView from Southern Vision Systems (SVSi). I received this camera yesterday and was playing around with it, just trying to get a feel for it. My initial reaction is that this is a great little camera with a good software package to match. I will go through and do a more thorough review at the end of next week. This video is one of the shots I created last night, it isn’t as polished as I would like, but I thought it was cool enough to share. I plan on doing a few more in this vein. One of which comes directly from our Shot Suggestion page.
Materials
One 40watt g-type bulb
One clamp on lamp
Procedure
Wrap the glass on the bulb with tape (any will do) and then break the glass carefully with a hammer or similar object. Remove and discard the glass. Setup your shot and turn on the light.
Result
Without the vacuum contained by the glass, oxygen is now able to allow the filament to burn. The filament heats up and begins burning itself producing a very interesting, thick smoke. The smoke is pleasantly lit from the filament burning as well as an additional light I had placed to the right. The smoke curls in some very interesting manners. The initial mushroom like cloud is my favorite.
Inspiration
The inspiration for this piece comes from Rich Legg over at LeggNet. He took some amazing photographs of this. I ran across his site while surfing digg. Rich is an amazing photographer and has some great work on his site, definitely worth a look.
Today I will demonstrate the improper disposal of a compact fluorescent light bulb. This was a bulb that had chosen to discorporate long before it’s rated lifespan. I didn’t bother to perform an autopsy as I figured it might ruin a perfectly good photo opportunity. The high-speed camera arrived and provided me with the means for capturing a most improper disposal of the dangerous chemicals contained in the corpse of the CFL.* Details below.
Materials
Compact fluorescent light bulb, 1.
A solid surface, in this case the asphalt outside the studio. (Optional? It could be a soft surface, that may be interesting.)
Black tin foil. Amount depends on how wide your shot is. (Optional)
Black background. (Optional)
Procedure
Toss the light bulb at a moderate speed towards the center of the field of view of the camera.
Result
The light bulb penetrates the ground, displacing the lighter earth molecules, thereby displacing time and is suddenly transported to a split second before it was going to/already had penetrate(d) the ground.** This time physics and reality asserts their right to rule the interactions of this universe and the light bulb promptly shattered in to quite a few, rather tiny, pieces. See kids, physics can be fun. Enjoy!
*CFL’s contain mercury vapor.
**Not really. At least not that this camera was able to detect…perhaps the next model.
Full Resolution download: Coming soon…
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Several of the high-speed galleries I have visited have shown at least one video of a light bulb turning on, so I figured I should as well right? Besides, how often do you get to see 16 compact fluorescent bulbs lighting at once? Below is a video of it played back at real time for context.
I’ll take a brief moment to talk about the lights here for those who may be interested in picking them up. For photography and video they are great. There is no flicker or strobing when filming at 24 or 30fps. The lights can stay on for hours with no real noticeable rise in the ambient temperature of the room. The subject does not sweat when under three of them for an extended period of time. There is some minor color correction that has to happen to compensate for the fact that you are using fluorescents, but that is pretty standard. The bulbs claim to be daylight colored (5500K) but the result is still rather green. Now a note for those of you who are considering them for high-speed filming. Don’t, they flicker horribly at the higher frame rates.
All of the above aside, I rather like the shot. Seeing one light bulb light up is interesting, but when you have 15 others in there for comparison it gets even more interesting. The one in the top left corner was already warmed up and so, lights the quickest of all of them. I pulled it from one of the other light rigs I had used on the previous shot to replace a dead bulb for this shot. Another interesting thing to note, though it is rather hard to see in the web resolution version, is you can see a traveling, alternating, pulse of darkness and light traveling in the coil of the bulb. You have to look really close to see it, but I found it interesting.
Context Video:
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