Balloon Bursting Bonus - Water Balloons with High Speed Flash
I was due to do a fashion shoot with someone new but they cancelled due to work the afternoon before the shoot. So given the option of spending the night either belly aching over it or getting on and doing something I decided on the latter. I did at first consider messaging round to get a replacement but thought instead I would have a bit of me time at the studio and start work on one of my new year projects - High Speed Photography.
So fully armed with balloons, bucket, towels and pins I headed over to the studio. The setup was going to be pretty simple. One water filled balloon over a bucket, trigger trap on my phone in sound mode linked to a flash on low power (the lower the power the quicker the flash pulse) a dark room and a sharp pin. Heh presto Water Balloon High Speed popping.
The setup had the camera at 4 seconds exposure, F7.1 and flash on 1/64 power. The triggertrap bang level was set up about 1/3 of the way up just enough for the camera shutter sound to not trigger it but the balloon pop would and a 3 second delay on repeat triggers to avoid two flashes in one exposure. So balloon setup, lights off all but a small led lamp so I could just see what I was doing, black backdrop in place and I was ready. Oh camera pre focused on manual. Picture of setup below.
I only filled the balloons a little as I didn't want too much of a splash and they just look like they wouldn't cope with too much weight hanging down before they split. I played around with the delay time on the trigger but found that no delay worked best. Once I had it sorted out it was just a case of popping balloons in different way. I tried throwing a pin at it and also just a pin by hand each gives a slightly different effect. One tip though don't let too much water build up in the bucket, you get more splash from the splash back than the burst.
Here is a shot off the back of camera.
Here are the results of the evening. Not bad for a first attempt and has got me thinking of lots of ways to expand on this in future. A really enjoyable night was had by all involved :)
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