How to Capture Explosions

It’s been too long since we’ve had a good thunderstorm! Let’s combat boredom by breaking some light bulbs.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

You’ll need an off camera flash, your Touch and sound sensor, plenty of light bulbs to break, safety goggles, camera, shutter release and your tripod.

SET UP YOUR TOUCH

After turning on your Touch, hit OK, and select Sound since we’re doing explosions. Adjust sensitivity as needed. If the sound is soft or distant, increase the sensitivity. If it’s a loud sound you can leave the sensitivity low. We set ours to half way, which is really overkill for our example.

Plug the sound sensor into the Touch at the input jack labeled Sound. You can test the sound sensor by simply tapping on the sound sensor or snapping. The red light on the Touch will light up to indicate everything is plugged in correctly.

OFF CAMERA FLASH

Set your flash on manual then on the lowest setting which will provide the fastest flash allowing you to freeze the action. In our case, the flash setting is 1/128. Connect the flash to the Touch with the flash sync cable. This will allow the Touch to trigger the flash at the moment of impact.

SET THE PLAYERS IN PLACE

The sound sensor should be very close to the source of the explosion. This will provide the shortest time possible for the Touch to trigger the flash. Place the flash in the best location to light up the flying glass or as you intend the shot to look.

SET UP YOUR CAMERA

We use a shutter release to fire the camera. The shutter is set to half a second. This allows us just enough time to open the shutter then break the light bulb. Since the shutter is set for such a long time, we shoot in the dark to eliminate the ghosting effect on the photos.

Camera Settings:
ISO 100
Shutter half a second
We found our F-stop by taking several test shots.

I want to show you the process in the light so you can experience all the flying glass with us. It’s pretty exciting!

The photo with the lights on clearly shows the ghosting. Let’s dim the lights and try again.

I think it’s hilarious that the light bulbs don’t always break! When they do break however, the glass will fly. Be sure to wear safety goggles.

The second photo is super cool because it shows the moment of impact, where the bulb begins to break at the bottom. However, to capture the full effect of flying glass we need to add a 5 ms delay to the Touch. Let’s try again in complete darkness, which will remove any remaining ghosting.

What are you capturing these days? Please share your work with us, we’d love to see it!