Assignment 2: Sports and Action

James Pan: Death of a Balloon

I always wanted to try out high speed photography without buying a $100,000 Phantom Flex (which is pretty cool by itself — 1455 fps at 2.5K!). Most photographers do it in a dark room with an audio/flash sync but I'm a much simpler guy. This was shot in broad daylight where I could stop down slightly to f/5.6 but still shoot at 1/8000s (had to jack up the ISO to 800 though). Focusing was a bit of a challenge since I was shooting on a manual focus lens. Took a few tries to get it right (the white balloon exploding wasn't exactly focused completely).

What I basically did was point the camera at the balloon, put it in high speed burst (unfortunately, the 5D III can only burst up to 6fps) and had a friend stab the balloon. We pretty much messed around hoping we'd get lucky (I'd hold the shutter a split second before the popping). And it turned out we did!

You gotta do it justice and see it in full res here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/du19rloauydn9re/Balloon.jpg

Also on 500px: http://500px.com/realjamespan/stories/3933449/death-of-a-balloon

Canon EOS 5D Mark III, Zeiss Makro Planar T* 2/100 ZE, 1/8000s, f/5.6, ISO 800