Miops Smart Trigger First try

In late December I purchased a Miops Smart Laser Trigger.   I sort of  gave myself a Christmas present.  So….. I had to try it out.

A gathering of stuff to make it happen

• Miops Smart trigger
• Nikon d7200
• Sigma 17-50mm f2.8 lens
• Siuri tripod
• 4 Flashes of various makes
• 4 Wansen remote flash triggers
• Aquarium

The setup procedure was first to clean the glass on the aquarium as good as possible before putting in the water.  A challenge for something that had been in storage for many years.  Then I arranged an assortment of supports, including tripods and step ladders as you see in the setup pic, in order to properly position the flash units.  The light angles had to be just right because of the reflection possibilities with the water.  I simply used a white sheet of paper for the backdrop behind the aquarium.  Actually it was a piece of tracing paper so I could get some back lighting through the paper.  I tried using a golf ball for the first attempts, but was not happy with the results.  Then I remembered these plastic jewels which added a much needed ‘splash’ of color.                 

The idea here is that even the fastest camera shutter speed is not fast enough to stop the motion of the shot. 

So for the shot, the room is blacked out, and it is the flash that has to stop the action.  The catch 22 is this —  the duration of a flash on full power is also not fast enough to stop the action.  So you have to set the flash on a low power setting which decreases the duration of the flash.  The trouble with that is, it does not give you enough light for a good exposure.  Soooo…..  this is why you increase the amount of light by using 4 flashes, all at the same time, all set at a low power, which give the short or fast duration.  

Set Up Pic — Click on any pic for a larger view

Finally, I had to set up the laser trigger.  You simply aim any laser at the receiver eye in the Miops trigger, which is plugged into the camera.  Then anything that breaks the beam will trigger the shutter.  There is a time delay in micro seconds that had to be set on the trigger, which was done with some trial and error. 

The problem I then ran into was getting the crystals to fall through the beam.  And also, just a few inch variation in the position I dropped them from, made a big difference in how the camera caught them entering the water.  So it was something else to figure out.  Click on the setup pic to get a closer look.  You can see I made up a board with a hole in it.  It also supported the laser light I was using.  That let everything happen in a consistent manner so I could get a decent number of successful shots.  On another side note, I had to squeegee the glass each time between shots so that the glass was always clean for the next shot.

The results, to me, were only pretty good.  But I know there is a potential for some really special pictures out of this setup after some more adjustments.  I learned a lot about what I might do differently the next time, so look for another try at this later in the year.  (Also of note for later this year – I will try this same technique to capture some hummingbird stop action shots.)