12/5: Tennis ball being struck

[russotto]

Originally posted by Undertoad
To get the image, a flash unit had to be set up with an audio trigger so the photo could be shot via the sound of the racquet hitting the ball. It would seem that setting up the trigger is the key to this sort of high speed photography.

The other thing is that you need to do it in darkness. Mechanical clockwork shutters aren't fast enough to capture this sort of thing. So you leave the shutter open and use the flash to get the shot.

An electronic (e.g. LCD) shutter might work nowadays (or might not), but obviously didn't exist when Edgerton worded on this stuff. I believe he invented some of the flash tubes used to do it, also.