How To Shoot A Light Bulb Explode! High Speed Photography

In this video, photographers Jay P. Morgan (from the Slanted Lens) takes a look at shooting high sped photography of a light bulb exploding.

For this shoot Morgan used a BB gun placed on two light stands for better accuracy. A light bulb was placed firmly on a wooden plate with a piece of duvateen for a backdrop.

Morgan balanced the exposure to the ambient exposure of the light bulb and put a piece of diffusion which he cut a hole into view that black backdrop behind the bulb.

The main lights where two Dynalite Baja heads with grid – one on each side of the bulb. Both were set to low power so that it just rims the light bulb. To trigger the whole thing in time Morgan used Pocket Wizard and Miops Smart trigger hooked up to the camera and started experimenting.

This is not the first time that we looked at the “MIOPS Smartphone Controllable High Speed Camera Trigger” – you can check out more info on that video.

Here are some of the features of the MIOPS trigger:

Light – triggers the camera when a lighting or other strong light appears.
Laser – with the MIOPS built in laser light any object (for example animal) which passes the laser beam triggers the camera.
Sound – the MIOPS can trigger your flash in a dark room (in bulb mode) to capture very fast events such as exploding balloon.
External port – allows you to connect additional sensors such as temperature, pressure and humidity to trigger your camera/flash.
Timelapse – its not just the sensors – its also the unit itself which allows you to create different settings for timelapse photography.
HDR – as with timelapse mode – here two the unit can help you create different HDR images.

You can find all of Jay P. Morgan’s videos here on LensVid on the following link. As always you can find more helpful photography tips on our Photography tips section here on LensVid.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.