Watch the video. Definitely one of the coolest projects I have ever worked on. We asked readers what worried them and then wrote those worries on pumpkins and blew them up! I felt like I was on the show Myth Busters all week. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. All of these photos were taken under the supervision of experienced professionals.
Click the image above to watch the video on the Journal website.
Aside from the the joy of destroying pumpkins this also gave me a chance to take extreme high-speed photos. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. You see when a flash is set to its lowest power setting the flash duration becomes extremely fast. On Kevin Lewis’ Blog I found that a Canon Speedlite at 1/128th power has a flash duration of 1/35,000 sec.
This means that whatever is caught by your flash is “frozen” at 1/35,000 sec since the flash is the only light exposing it. In order to do this though you need to keep the ambient light out either by shooting in the dark or shooting at a high aperture like f22 so the only light hitting the object is flash.
Here you see two hammers. That’s because the sound trigger set off the flash when the the hammer hit the pumpkin and then again when it hit the table. There was a 0.2 second delay set for the sound trigger.
A pumpkin is frozen in liquid nitrogen by Matt Green, Staff Interpreter. left and Frank Florian, Director of Public Programs at the Telus World of Science in Edmonton on October 2, 2009. Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
Here is the setup for the frozen pumpkin shot. I built a sound trigger and plugged it into my Pocketwizard Multimax so I could set a delay from the time the sound was made till the time the flashes went off. The problem with this method is that it takes a lot of trial and error to get the time delay right and we only had three pumpkins.
The sound trigger circuit is just a simple 400V SCR circuit connected to the headphone output of my audio recorder which simply acts as a mic and amplifier.
Now we move on to the exploding pumpkins! Dr. Roy Jensen with the Chemistry Department at Grant MacEwan was very excited to help me with this project. I can’t tell you what he used to blow up the pumpkins but I can say that it was in a balloon and ignited with an electric sparker. Roy also had the very important idea to score (slice) up the inside of the pumpkin with a knife so that it blew up semetrically. We also put a little bit of corn starch in the balloons to add a powdery haze.
This is actually a frame grab from my Canon XH-A1. The camera was set to 1/500th shutter speed and shot in 60i. Though it “caught the moment” the quality isn’t there.
Can you tell the difference? I was amazed what a camera shooting 10 fps can catch in an explosion. It’s not as much about the explosion (which only lasts microseconds) but the re-action after.
Frame grab.
Still image. Three flashes. Just awesome!
Frame grab again. The next frame after this one is at the top of this post.
For the exploding pumpkins in the MacEwan University Chemistry lab I didn’t bother with the sound trigger. Instead I just had a Canon 1D Mark-III bursting at 10 fps and a Mark-IIn bursting at 8 fps. Since the cameras have a 2 fps speed difference they fired out of sync which means I was getting about 18 fps of stills combined.
I doubled up the flashes so that I would only need two stands instead of four. One camera had two flashes and was triggered by Pocketwizard Flex 5’s and the other one had three flashes that were all hard wired. Both sets of flashes fired every time with no problem. The Pocketwizards fired just as good as the hard-wired flashes. The flashes were at 1/128th power and zoomed to 24mm.
The cameras were both set at 1/250th (sync) shutter speed, F22, ISO400 so there wasn’t any ambient light in the exposure. Only flash which lasted 1/35,000 sec thus freezing the explosions.
Here you can see the Canon XH-A1 video camera, the Canon 1D Mark-III and the 1D-Mark IIn. There was also a Canon HV20 video camera and a Canon SD960 IS point and shoot camera on video mode. The cameras were tiggered by Pocketwizards so I could stand a safe distance back.
As you can see the pumpkins did a little damage to the ceiling. There…was….pumpkin…..EVERYWHERE!
Now for the shotgun photos.
This photo was done with two flashes. One to the left and one to the right.
This photo was ambient light at 1/2000 sec.
For the shotgun photos I did a similar setup as the exploding pumpkins. Three video cameras and two still cameras shooting a combined 18 fps.
I placed a sheet of plexy glass in front of the line of cameras incase a pellet from the shotgun went astray. (Just being paranoid.)
Here you can see the two video cameras (the third one was used to take this photo), the two still cameras and three flashes. One camera had two flashes and the other one only had one.
Finally you can see the black king-sized bed sheet that I used for a backround. I bought the sheet at Walmart for cheap and then draped it over a monopod superclamped to a light stand.
Posted by ryanjackson on Oct 10, 2009 in photos, video
Don Metz, President and CEO of Aquila Productions directs people during rehearsal for the opening ceremonies of The Edmonton Oilers season opener at Rexall Place in Edmonton on October 3, 2009. Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
Take a behind the scenes look at the dress rehearsal for the opening ceremonies for the Edmonton Oilers season opener with Don Metz of Aquila Productions on October 3, 2009. Video by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
The E-ville Roller Derby league sharpen their skills at a boot camp held at Strathcona Athletic Park in Sherwood Park on September 12, 2009. Photos by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
Posted by ryanjackson on Sep 8, 2009 in photos, video
Journal readers Dan Allinson, Debra Ward, Carson Fong, Journal reporter Ben Gelinas and Journal reader Brent Welch play The Beatles Rockband on XBOX 360 on the roof of the Journal building downtown Edmonton on September 8, 2009. Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
Posted by ryanjackson on Aug 18, 2009 in photos, video
Don and Debbie Gulayec stand in front of the burnt remains of their hog farm near Derwent, Alta., 200 kms east of Edmonton on August 18, 2009. They awoke around midnight on Tuesday morning to the fire after a concerned neighbour called them. All of their barns and 900 sows were lost in the fire. Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
Posted by ryanjackson on Aug 12, 2009 in photos, video
Edmonton Eskimo defenseman Kitwana Jones, right, and Journal Crime Reporter Ben Gelinas sit and play the brand new Madden 10 for XBOX 360 in Gelinas’ living room in Edmonton on August 12, 2009. Kitwana is a fan of video games and says many players enjoy video games in the locker room to wind down. Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
This assignment was fun. Our very talented crime reporter Ben Gelinas also runs the video game blog Button Mash for the Journal. For his review of Madden NFL 10 for XBOX 360 he asked Edmonton Eskimo Kitwana Jones to play it with him and he accepted. It made for an interesting review and a fun video.
To shoot this I placed a Canon HV20 beside the TV pointed at Ben and Kitwana. I had my Canon XH-A1 off to the side to get details and wide shots. The room was dark so I had a 300w tungsten hot light going into a shoot through umbrella to the side.
My third “camera” was my laptop. I split the video coming from the XBOX 360 to the TV and to an AV->DV converter box which basically takes composite video and audio in and then gives you a DV video stream through a firewire cable. I had Final Cut Pro set to capture the stream and then synced all three cameras up together in FCP after.
In total there was two hours of game play which resulted in six hours of footage (three cameras times two hours). The XBOX 360 signal was standard def so it was recorded in 720×480 DV video. My HV20 and XHA1 were 1080i HDV. Final Cut Pro is great at mixing DV and HDV footage so that wasn’t a problem and the SD video up-sized to HD looked pretty good in the end.
I would have liked to have captured the XBOX 360 video in HD but that would involve buying a component video splitter and a component video capture device which are super pricey. Most cards are over $1000 but Hauppauge has a new box that can convert HD component to H.264 video. Pretty cool, but then you would have to convert the H.264 video to HDV to mix in with the video cameras and that would be a lot more work = just capture in SD and no one will really care….
Edmonton Oilers prospect Jordan Eberle who was the Oilers 1st round draft pick in 2008 jumps out of a parachute simulator with Warrant Officers Eric Miles and John McNabb behind him during a team building exercise held by Canadian Forces Base Edmonton in Edmonton on July 8, 2009. (Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Edmonton Oilers prospect Jesse Dudas from St. Albert, left, carries Master Warrant Officer Steve Merry during a team building exercise held by Canadian Forces Base Edmonton in Edmonton on July 8, 2009. (Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
An Edmonton Oilers prospect fires a weapon simulator during a team building exercise held by Canadian Forces Base Edmonton in Edmonton on July 8, 2009. (Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Edmonton Oilers prospects stand in front of a mock jump tower before simulating a parachute jump during a team building exercise held by Canadian Forces Base Edmonton in Edmonton on July 8, 2009. (Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Edmonton Oilers Team Services Coordinator Patrick Garland jumps from a parachute simulator with Warrant Officer John McNabb guiding his line during an Edmonton Oilers prospects team building exercise held by Canadian Forces Base Edmonton in Edmonton on July 8, 2009. (Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Edmonton Oilers prospects rest after doing a mock tower jump during a team building exercise held by Canadian Forces Base Edmonton in Edmonton on July 8, 2009. (Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Dianne Greenough (centre bottom) is the coach of the Edmonton Eskimo Cheerleaders and Victoria high school cheer team. She has been coaching for over 32 years and has won hundreds of provincial, national and international awards. Here she coaches the Victoria senior team at Victoria high school in Edmonton on June 24, 2009. (Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Peter Burns, left, and Dom Kinisky do flips as Dianne Greenough coaches the Victoria senior team at Victoria high school in Edmonton on June 24, 2009. (Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
CN Rail has announced that they are canceling service to the village of Girouxville, Alberta located 450KM north-west of Edmonton in the Peace River region. Some residents fear the loss of the train service will kill local businesses and inevitably the town which has a rich French Canadian heritage. Video by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
Ernest Johnson owns Merlot Agriculture Services Ltd., a producer car loading station in Girouxville, Alberta. Johnson must re-locate his business to the nearby town of Falher which may kill his home town. CN Rail has announced that they are canceling service to the village of Girouxville, located 450KM north-west of Edmonton in the Peace River region. Some residents fear the loss of the train service will kill local businesses and inevitably the town which has a rich French Canadian heritage. Photo by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
Lifetime Girouxville residents Armand Boisvert and wife Rollande. Photo by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
Alain Johnson with Merlot Agriculture Services Ltd. directs grain into a producer car. Photo by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
Driver Brian Birch and his navigator Bill Bakelaar start a new section during the 500 kilometre, 13-hour 2009 Mudlark TSD Rally that ran from Calgary to Cochrane overnight May 2nd to 3rd, 2009. Photo by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
Driver Ian Seda checks his wheel for damage near Rockyford after miscalculating a turn and going into the ditch during the 500 kilometre, 13-hour 2009 Mudlark TSD Rally that ran from Calgary to Cochrane overnight May 2nd to 3rd, 2009. Photo by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
A view from Journal photographer Ryan Jackson’s rooftop camera during the 500 kilometre, 13-hour 2009 Mudlark TSD Rally that ran from Calgary to Cochrane overnight from May 2nd to 3rd, 2009. Photo by Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal
Here is how I mounted my Canon 1D-Mark III for the time lapse video. I build the bracket from scrap wood and two giant suction cups from Princess Auto. I then used a tie-down strap wrapped around the inside to keep the mount and cups squeezed down.
I used a Canon 24mm f1.4 lens and kept it at f1.4 most of the time. I ran a 10-ft USB cable from the camera to my laptop so I could control it with my laptop.
At night I set the camera to ISO6400, f1.4 in Av mode with -1EV exposure compensation. This gave me around 1/200 sec which was surprisingly fast for night shots. As the sun came up I lowered the ISO more and more until I was at ISO100, f1.4.
I set the Canon software to take one picture every five seconds.
In total 5315 frames were taken. I put them into a video using Final Cut Pro. For some of the parts in the video I play at 60fps. Most of it is at 30 fps.
