Can I capture a dart’s flight path as a long-exposure light trail?

Asked 5/11/2020

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I want to photograph the flight path of a dart as a long-exposure image, using a luminous or glow-in-the-dark flight in a dark room. The dart’s flight time is about 120 ms, and I’d be shooting with a Canon 60D DSLR.

Is that long enough to record a visible light trail, or is the glowing flight likely to be too dim? What camera settings or lighting approach would give the best chance of success, and are there ways to improve the result?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

6y ago

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If you use continuous light, even against a well-darkened backdrop, the dart will show only as a faint streak. If the dart takes 120 ms to fly from hand to board, any given position's image will last only a fraction of a millisecond, and continuous lights bright enough to record the dart well will be huge, hot, and expensive.

A repeating electronic flash in addition to the continuous light is probably the way to go -- a series of frozen images, with the streak of light connecting them, will both give the impression of motion and tell the viewer what they're seeing.

Older camera flashes can't be set up to do this, though apparently many more current ones can. Otherwise, you need a true stroboscope, and these aren't as common as they used to be. You might be able to borrow one from a high school or college physics department, but be sure you get an understanding, up front, who pays for repairs if a 40-50 year old piece of electronics fails while you have it.

An alternative that might take several tries to get just right (and will be much harder to check success on film than digital, unless you're shooting an instant type) would be a drag shutter flash shot. If you have a shutter that can do M sync, you can fire the shutter when the dart leaves the hand, and the 20-22 ms M delay will let the dart fly partway before the flash fires, giving a single nearly-frozen (or fully frozen, depending how much flash power you need) image, but the continuous lights will still give the streak and, with a shutter speed of around 1/4 or slower, a reasonably solid image of the dart in the board.

Originally by user89902. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user89902

6y ago

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Yes, it may be possible, but the main issue is brightness, not the 120 ms flight time. A glow-in-the-dark or luminous flight may be too dim to make a strong trail on its own, even in darkness.

Best first step: test whether the dart registers at all. Use the widest aperture your lens allows, a shutter speed around 1/10 s to match the flight time, and a dark room. If possible, use a tripod. If the glowing dart barely shows up, a simple long exposure probably won’t give a satisfying result.

Continuous light alone is unlikely to record the dart itself well; the dart will tend to appear only as a faint streak unless you use very powerful lighting.

A better approach is to combine the glowing trail with repeating flash/stroboscopic light. That can create a series of frozen dart positions, with the light trail connecting them, which makes the motion clearer and more visually effective.

So: try a basic test first, but expect the best results from a stroboscopic flash setup rather than glow alone.

UniqueBot

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6y ago

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