I have received 3 “Ultra” units from highspeedflash dot com. These units charge in around 1 second and give a flash duration of 9 microseconds, that’s 1/111,111 th second in real money. In other words these units will stop the action of just about anything 
Over the next few days I’ll be taking some test shots just to gauge the stopping power of the Ultra units. After that I’ll take the units up to Tony Allen’s well-designed photo studio to do some more serious work. Keep viewing these pages to see how things progress.
3rd July 2009
Today I coupled three “Ultra” units together to do some studio ultra-high-speed flash photography. Here is the 9 microsecond exposure of an air rifle pellet hitting a light bulb 5 milliseconds after the pellet was fired.
4th July 2009
Out came the sound trigger and air rifle again – this time for raw eggs. Messy business but somebody has to do it.
10th July 2009
I (GP) just spent the whole day building and troubleshooting a rather simple circuit that will allow me to manually fire the three “Ultra” units through the Canon 40D. What is rather special about this converter box is that it only presents a maximum of 4.5 Volts to the Canon 40D synch socket (I think I read somewhere that the Canon 40D doesn’t want to see more than 6.0 Volts, so I thought I’d play it safe and limit things to 4.5 Volts). Fired all 3 Ultras through the converter using the 40D and now it’s planned to start doing a bit more water splash work using drips rather than dropping in coloured glass pebbles.
11th July 2009
Using the circuit described above, electronic shutter control in one hand and syringe full of water in the other, I spent the day taking pictures of water drops falling in to water. Got a handful of good results using this entirely manual (i.e. non-triggered) method.
14th July 2009
Went up to Tony Allen’s well equipped film studio in Oxford with the high-speed flash units to take some more HSF shots. This time we tried water-filled balloons shot with a small air pistol. The results were quite unexpected and astonishing, especially the picture where a pellet has highly deformed – but not actually broken the balloon!
6th September 2009
This amazing high speed flash equipment is available for you to hire in order to create your promotional images. Either Tony Allen or myself (or even both if the diary permits) accompany the equipment to help you with your high speed photo shoot. If you would like to hire this unique equipment (plus technician) then contact us at either greg@highspeedflashphotography.com or tony@highspeedflashphotography.com
10th October 2009
I have just been sent a link to some highly impressive high speed flash images of bats taken by a Mr. Kim Taylor who apparently lives near Guildford. In the shot showing his setup you will see the flash heads which look like they are on the end of cables (!) all lying precariously close to the pond, with one unit actually overhanging the pond. Like my HSF units, Kim’s run at around 3,500 V, but unlike my self-contained units Kim has cables from the high power inverter to each flash head – something I would never advise. You have a bomb (fully charged capacitor) with 3,500 volts on it sitting somewhere on the cable (doesn’t really matter which end) so the slightest nick or scratch in the cable, or simply one filament of wire not properly encapsulated and you have a potentially lethal situation on your hands – it is of course greatly helped by working near water!! With 3,500 volts and a couple of hundred Joules of stored energy, you don’t get a second chance if something goes wrong, there is no replay button with this sort of kit. Please take very great care with that setup Kim – I’d like to see more of your stunning work in the future.