Photo Journal

2/10/02

We began our project today planning to photograph soda cans as they open to capture their spray.  We put our set up on the floor, using chairs with black plastic covering over them as our background.  We placed our Nikon Coolpix 990 about 8 inches off the ground on a small tripod.  We covered the camera (except for the lens) with a plastic bag to protect it from soda spray. 

First, we tried photographing the opening of a cold Mountain Roar drink.  It was more difficult than we'd expected to open the can quickly and loudly enough for it to make a good picture.  In fact, difficulties with timing prevented our first image from coming out. 

The second can we tried made our first semi-successful picture, meaning, the picture was visible, but the black plastic background made a huge glare, and it was difficult to distinguish the spray. 

By the end of this session, we felt that we had conquered the art of successfully opening a can of soda.  It took us a few cans, but we found the quickest and loudest ways to open the cans. 

2/13/02

Today, we moved up onto a counter top because we're going to share this room with another class.  It was easier for us though, because we could use a cloth background that restricted glare, and we didn't have to lie on the ground to take our pictures.  We practiced our settings by photographing a water bottle squirting water into the air. We still, however, had very blurry photographs:

We tried a different camera, a Sony, and it worked much better.  The images were much more clear.

2/15/02

We used the Sony again today.  We put our cans on a desk that was about 2m in front of the background, and this made the background in our photographs completely black and unnoticeable. 

We decided that manually opening the can caused too many problems.  It was difficult to open the can loudly enough for the trigger to create a flash, the spray was never very big, and our hands often got in the way of the spray.  We decided to try a different method.

We shook the can, prepared our camera, and cracked the lid of the can by a tiny amount.  When the shutter was opened and ready to take a picture, we hit the can with a hammer.  This produced a loud sound that triggered the flash, a huge spray, and a neat picture of the smashing of the can. 

The only problem with this method is that the desk rang after the can was hit.  The continuation of noise triggered the flash a second time and caused our pictures to be double exposed.

We think that if we placed the can on a steadier surface that was less likely to ring after the can is hit, we could have great pictures.

2/20/02

Today we finished the experimental part of our project.  We used the same set-up from 2/15/02, along with an addition to our sound trigger.  We added a delay device to our previous sound trigger which prevented the flash from going off a second time after the can was first hit.  This solved our problems of double exposure, as seen in these photos:

With the delay device and Dr. Britton's hammer, we managed to get some really cool shots of some big splashes:

To see more of these pictures, visit our Photo Gallery.