In this shot we take a close up look at shaving gel. I’ve spent a decent amount of time staring at my shaving gel, primarily because I really liked the refraction and the way it emphasizes the curves and ripples. Shaving gel has some rather neat properties, high viscosity, high transparency, and high refraction. All of these make for a great subject for macro photography and filming (at least in high-speed). In the thousands of times I have used shaving gel I never really appreciated exactly how solid it is once it is out of the can and reacting with the air. In the video you can notice it maintaining the splash pattern instead of collapsing down to nothingness as a less viscous fluid (water, milk) would. You can also notice the way this allows it to cut paths through itself. My favorite bit has to be the curling of the gel as its forming, the shapes are interesting and pretty. It is also interesting to note the change in transparency over time. The change in transparency is caused by the formation of bubbles as the gel reacts with air, part of what makes it foam. When you just let it sit there the bubbles tend to form on the outside vs when you are smoothing it out in your hands and it all becomes foamy. This makes for some (in my opinion) very pretty photos. The camera on this shot was roughly 8″ from the subject. Once again, sorry for the strobing, hopefully soon we’ll receive some better high-speed lighting rigs.
This one just wouldn’t break. I suppose there was not quite enough water in it. It certainly made for a semi-interesting shot though. I’ve seen several of these types of videos before and it always fascinates me. The contortions a balloon goes through are fascinating. They almost look alive, in some kind of living jelly loaf fashion. Since this shot is really not terribly useful in any way I can think of the full resolution clip for this one will be free once I get it uploaded.Full Resolution download: WaterBalloon1.rar, JPG Sequence, 754MB, Free – Right Click/Save as…here.
This is a fire extinguisher being fired off. For this shot I just wanted the spray going out across the frame, though in retrospect I really should have had a fire being put out. I will have to do that one later. This is a rather long clip but I liked the evolution of the extinguishing dust so I decided against cutting it short. This was the first time I had ever had an opportunity to use an extinguisher so I was quite taken back at the mess remaining. The dust they use to smother the fire is relatively heavy and it also sticks to just about everything. It’s been about three weeks since we shot this and you can still see the dust. I also had the not so enjoyable experience of getting a mouthful of the dust when the wind whipped it back in my face, it was less than pleasant….foul would be a bit closer to the mark. So, yeah, all in all this was a fun shot. It was worth it though when I got a chance to see the frames I’d captured. The initial frames are probably the most interesting to me as you really get to see the vortices forming. The extinguisher was off frame by only an inch or two, so what you are seeing is pretty much what it looks like coming right out of the tube. This was a relative short blast, a second and a half or so. The lighting could have been better but the weather that day was not very cooperative. I hope to get another shot on a nice bright sunny day so the shadows will give it some more depth.
With this shot I wanted to show off the cool shape you get when you have any kind of impact into loose material (or when you have a high velocity impact into solid material). To do this I tossed a small clear marble into a pan of baking soda. The baking soda had been piled up in the center to give the marble more material to displace. For the lighting I was going for contrast. To achieve this I placed two of the lights to camera left and added a white poster board to the other side to act as a subtle fill light. I removed the secondary diffuser on both of the soft boxes to create slightly sharper shadows as well as increase the amount of light the shot was getting. The shot still came out a tad underexposed, the 50mm f/1.2 would have been a better choice for this shot. The exposure was fixed in post.
The third and final in the set we shot that night. This is my favorite of the three, the fireball looks the cleanest in this one. The fire we used to light it is interesting as well. This was three large fireplace lighters (already lit once) doused in lighter fluid and then lit. The wind had kicked up a bit so we needed some extra oomph.Full Resolution download: AcetyleneExplosion3.mov, Uncompressed QT MOV, 35MB – Free – Right Click/Save as…here.
Ok, I decided not to wait until next week. This is a close up of the spray (just cropped, not resized) as it comes out of the bottle as the bottle is spinning. I’ll let the video do the talking.
This is a 3-liter bottle of Faygo Root Beer that we shot with a Ruger 223 rifle. Again we notice the same back flipping motion that we saw with the last shot. You can also notice the major color difference in the spray between the greenish yellow of the Moon Mist and the dark caramel root beer. These are even better looking at high resolution, you can really clearly see the spray coming out. I will post a cropped version of this one sometime next week so you can get a clearer look at it or you can pick up the full resolution version once it is posted and flip through the frames. Again the camera was roughly 15′ away behind our Lexan shield.
It was worth it though when I got a chance to see the frames I’d captured. The initial frames are probably the most interesting to me as you really get to see the vortices forming. The extinguisher was off frame by only an inch or two, so what you are seeing is pretty much what it looks like coming right out of the tube. This was a relative short blast, a second and a half or so. The lighting could have been better but the weather that day was not very cooperative. I hope to get another shot on a nice bright sunny day so the shadows will give it some more depth.
