Hi this is Jay P Morgan and today on The Slanted Lens we’re going to do some high speed photography using a new trigger called Miops Smart. We’re going to shoot a light bulb.

Literally. We’re going to shoot a BB through a light bulb.

Setup

We’ve got a BB gun on two c stands. This way it won’t move, it’ll be nice and stable. We’ve got a box full of hard Styrofoam so that the BB won’t go through it. We’ve got a piece of duvateen for a backdrop. We’ve taken a piece of foam core spray painted glossy black and drilled a hole through that. We dropped the cord of the light bulb through there and screwed it into place.

Exposure

Don’t pay attention to the softboxes you see. Those are just so you can see us.

We balance our exposure to the ambient exposure of the light bulb. We put a piece of diffusion which we cut a hole in to view that black backdrop behind the bulb. We’ve got one Dynalite Baja head on each side of the bulb. The power is low so that it just rims the light bulb. We’ve got a ten and a twenty grid on each head, because we just want to fill the area right around the light bulb.

We’ve got our Pocket Wizard and Miops Smart trigger hooked up to the camera. First we’re going to shoot a couple of background plates so we have a clean shot to work with in Photoshop later if we need it.

Finally, we’re going to experiment with different velocity settings on the BB and sensitivity of the Miops to get a look we’re happy with. Have fun with it. Shoot lots of different combinations.

Hope you learned something today.

Keep those cameras rollin’ and keep on clickin’.