Snap a drip

A friend who is well into his photography ( a BA no less ) was chatting about shooting water drips. Problem is, it requires a timer / trigger . He had seen an Arduino setup and was considering going down that road, “ What did I think” (Mmm Not for a total mcu newbie with no ‘Electro’ background ) So being a PIC nut, I offered to build a timer for him , more or less from parts I had to hand. Well although it looks like a crazy machine, it turned out better than either of us expected ! Still not 100% but as my mate said “Getting there”
The prototype PIC18F14k22, 2x16 LCD, rotary encoder, switches and two opto couplers ( Think I needed to keep the 12volts well away from his thousand pound Canon camera) the timer gave millisecond accuracy ( 1 to < 3000ms ) for the valve and the camera trigger.
{ if you would like my very "amateur" C code , PM me }

What triggers the timer?

A great practical application, thanks for the show and tell.

I love the prototype assembly, something which just grew and grew.

JimB

atferrari said:

What triggers the timer?

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After the set-up of the D1 ( valve timer first drip ~20ms ) [next] D2 ( second drip , same valve) .[Next] D12 time between drips , [next] C is delay( D1 to Camera trigger) {[Next] RUN , enables the run button .. stays in RUN untill [next] cycle repeats..
His Canon camera has a 3 pin 2.5mm jack cable for a remote trigger,

Going back a VERY, VERY long time Practical Electronics did a flash trigger using audio detection and a variable monostable to delay the flash after the sound was detected - they showed some amazing pictures in the article. Your picture is great as well.

Hmmm. My Pentax SLR has an IR shutter remote. It might be too slow, and perhaps not repeatable enough, to allow doing something like this.

As far as I'm aware my photo man has an open shutter at the 'splash' time also a high aperture f22 for depth of field, also some mega expensive lens ! theres also a Apple laptop connected somewhere , I've not seen the 'Drip action ' due to covid rules . The whole setup, valve, water,camera etc within a 'dark ' enclosure, He then fires a one or two high speed flash units.. ( Be prepared for lots of time spent adjusting things )..

Ahhh. Nice way to do it.

At least it's far simpler now with digital cameras than with film cameras! Can you imagine shooting 24 shots then waiting a week to see if any of then turned out?

Visitor said:

Hmmm. My Pentax SLR has an IR shutter remote. It might be too slow, and perhaps not repeatable enough, to allow doing something like this.

Click to expand...

I've got a book somewhere, my wife bought it me for a present, all about high speed stills photography with LOT'S of great example pictures.

The main issue was shutter speed, and as I recall he overcame this by using small explosive charges to move the shutter fast enough.

Now that you mention it, I recall that the mechanism granddad described has been used for the same reason. The flash can be far faster than a shutter.

You should take a look at this book:

Stopping Time: The Photographs of Harold Edgerton

Edgerton invented the electronic xenon strobe light, and a lot of other stuff.