High-speed photography is intriguing to look at and fascinating to create. Most people are intimidated by the difficulty or the expense of taking these pictures. However, in reality it is quite simple to capture and you don't need a $10,000 high-speed camera to capture it! Using my Canon 40D and some Nikon speed-lights I was able to freeze the bullet of a pellet gun going through multiple objects. The cheapest way of getting a sound trigger is to make one yourself. If this is something you are thinking of taking on, there are many guides and places to buy parts for high-speed triggers. If not; then you might be spending a bit more on buying an assembled trigger. Either way, if you Google "high speed sound trigger" you'll most likely find some similar sites, as I did, when first looking into this type of photography. Click "More" to find out how it all comes together and how I myself was able to get some of these great shots.
When taking these types of pictures, I solely love getting a pitch-black background. To do this, I either make it so there is nothing behind the subject of the photograph or I use a black fabric that is light absorbent. The reason for this is, since we are using flashes to light our subject, they will illuminate the entire room and you could possibly have something distracting in the background. I used 4 speed-lights to light my photos, which was also used to freeze the moment. I arrange the lights on a case-to-case basis but generally I have two positioned on the right side. One would be next to the camera and the other flash on the left side. The set up that I had was one flash set on master and the rest were on slave. I interconnected the flash that was set to master with my sound trigger, so I could remotely trigger all of the other flashes to fire at the same time. I also set my camera onto manual mode so I was able to adjust the exposure and depth of field as needed. I set my aperture to about 16 (this dependson how many flashes and how close you are to the object) and I keep my ISO around 100 (obviously these can all be adjusted as needed). The shutter on the other hand needs to be arranged for a long exposure. I personally put it on bulb mode and use a remote trigger to ensure that I'll capture the image. Once you have everything set up you can now start taking the pictures.
Just a couple of more things to keep in mind while doing this; in order to use this method and have a long exposure you have to turn the lights off so to not make ghosting in your images. The flashes are the only light source for this type of image because these flashes can freeze objects considerably faster than most shutters speeds on cameras. Also, if you are shooting (with a pellet gun) your objects you might want to have some protective eye wear and a place where you are able to shoot random objects without damaging your surroundings.
