Photographer captures moment a bubble bursts

Fred Dawson

Fred Dawson

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Fred Dawson LRPS
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Report in the Times
"In an age of fantastic photographs of the far reaches of space, and the wonders of CGT special effects in science-fiction films, a photographer has captured spectacular images of something far simpler in his own back garden.

This tiny, exploding world is the last moment of a soap bubble.

The super-slow-motion pictures were taken by Richard Heeks, from Exeter. Equipped with a macro lens, Heeks waited for a windless day. And to make certain he wasn’t chasing wayward bubbles for hours, he found a secluded spot behind his home where even the slightest breeze could hardly be felt.

A shutter speed of 1/500th of a second made sure that he was able to freeze-frame the chain reaction as the touch of a finger popped the bubble, which appears to crumble away, leaving just soapy droplets hanging momentarily in the air"
 
Reminds me of the series of pictures of a bullet piercing a soap bubble from the early party of the last century.

Still, a nice picture.
 
Voyager said:
Reminds me of the series of pictures of a bullet piercing a soap bubble from the early party of the last century.
Click to expand...
Found it.

Lucien Bull 1905.

i_1_12_b.jpg
 
Amazing pic.

Everyone will be messing about with bubbles now.
Lots of potential.

Even a baloon with talc or flour in it being burst.
 
some guys did this a year or so ago on HD film too - they do loads of high speed experiments and then slow them right down, the balloon popping one was really good, so was the skateboarding one :)
 
That's amazing! Thanks for sharing the link!

I can see lots of 'bubbles' threads appearing soon :lol:
 
I find that I just play with the bubbles and forget the camera!! really should grow up a bit :)
 
That's a cool photo, see the bubble photos flood in :lol:
 
That is a really cool photo! I still want to have a go at water drops - let alone something like that!

I have seen something similar using water balloons - it was a portrait of a guy holding what appeared to be a ball of water - it was set up using a water balloon / bomb, and the guy was holding a small knife (not seen due to lighting etc) with which to pop the balloon.

Heres a link to the shot (I found it on a wakeboard forum!):

http://www.wakeworld.com/MB/Discus/messages/87667/630032.jpg

And here is the link to the original thread on the forum:

http://www.wakeworld.com/MB/Discus/messages/87667/630031.html?1223836173
 
"A breathtaking picture of the exact moment when a bubble is burst has been captured with a slow-motion camera."
I want one of these slow motion cameras they speak of, that can take photos at 1/500th of a second :eek::lol:
 
Fred Dawson said:
Report in the Times
"In an age of fantastic photographs of the far reaches of space, and the wonders of CGT special effects in science-fiction films, a photographer has captured spectacular images of something far simpler in his own back garden.

This tiny, exploding world is the last moment of a soap bubble.

The super-slow-motion pictures were taken by Richard Heeks, from Exeter. Equipped with a macro lens, Heeks waited for a windless day. And to make certain he wasn’t chasing wayward bubbles for hours, he found a secluded spot behind his home where even the slightest breeze could hardly be felt.

A shutter speed of 1/500th of a second made sure that he was able to freeze-frame the chain reaction as the touch of a finger popped the bubble, which appears to crumble away, leaving just soapy droplets hanging momentarily in the air"
Click to expand...

nice of The Telegraph to put one of "The Times" articles on their website too.......:bonk:
 
cool post - just read it on the daily mail (hangs head in shame!) and thought I'd post it here...
Good thing I searched first ;-) should have known the TP folks are very quick!!!!!
 
Cant see nothing good in that at all. My missus got pictures of bubbles bursting from my gob when I am asleep :D
 
Tell you what, you don't want to buy the guys camera 2nd hand though - imagine how many shutter releases its got on it!!! Probably round the clock!

I was curious though as to how he got a sequence of three images of the bubble bursting unless he was actually using a very high speed camera....
 
Aye that's not all the same sequence I don't think ... I think it's just lots of different bubbles rather than a series of shots of the same bubble...
 
Fred Dawson said:
Report in the Times
"In an age of fantastic photographs of the far reaches of space, and the wonders of CGT special effects in science-fiction films, a photographer has captured spectacular images of something far simpler in his own back garden.

This tiny, exploding world is the last moment of a soap bubble.

The super-slow-motion pictures were taken by Richard Heeks, from Exeter. Equipped with a macro lens, Heeks waited for a windless day. And to make certain he wasn’t chasing wayward bubbles for hours, he found a secluded spot behind his home where even the slightest breeze could hardly be felt.

A shutter speed of 1/500th of a second made sure that he was able to freeze-frame the chain reaction as the touch of a finger popped the bubble, which appears to crumble away, leaving just soapy droplets hanging momentarily in the air"
Click to expand...

I would like a few more details on this. He says he used a macro lens, not that it makes any difference. You mention a chain reaction, I assume you mean frames per second. Most cameras have a speed of 4 FPS which is 250ms per shot. the actual shot at 1/500 is 2 ms. Now the bubble has half gone at 1/500s so it will have all gone at 1/250s (4ms) He must have been quick when to fire the camera. If you have noticed, most of these fast shots use a flash in a dark room as electronic speed is far superior to mechanical speed. 1/8 power flash is about 1/5000. (200us) the flash being triggered by sound, for instance a balloon bursting. Certainly not a bubble bursting. So could we have a full detailed description for this shot.
 
classcams said:
I would like a few more details on this. He says he used a macro lens, not that it makes any difference. You mention a chain reaction, I assume you mean frames per second. Most cameras have a speed of 4 FPS which is 250ms per shot. the actual shot at 1/500 is 2 ms. Now the bubble has half gone at 1/500s so it will have all gone at 1/250s (4ms) He must have been quick when to fire the camera. If you have noticed, most of these fast shots use a flash in a dark room as electronic speed is far superior to mechanical speed. 1/8 power flash is about 1/5000. (200us) the flash being triggered by sound, for instance a balloon bursting. Certainly not a bubble bursting. So could we have a full detailed description for this shot.
Click to expand...

It not the same bubble in all of the shots! He has used different bubbles to creat a sequence. Read the article.
 
It has to be a fake. He took a shot of the whole bubble with his wifes finger near to it. He then inserted part of another shot of, it could be grass or a part of a tree onto it. It is definately a computer fiddle.
 
Why ?

I mean, the guy probably spent an hour bursting bubbles, shooting each event at 5fps or whatever, till he got the shot/s he wanted...:shrug:
 
Definitely hit or miss, the D90 he was using has Shutter Lag of 0.208s (Autofocus), 0.067s (Prefocused) and a shot to shot time 0.36s...

Add some human reaction time for his mrs to pop the bubble and him to click the button... oh and the bubble completely bursts in about 1/200.
 
it's a nice shot, but nothing more impressive than the water drop shots posted on these forums in my opinion. It's just patience and trial and error. I give him credit for that but it's not really news worthy.:suspect:

I've seen a slow-motion capture of the bubble burst on discovery channel few weeks ago on a show called Time Warp i think..

PS: you can tell that it's not a series also from the different angles in each shot...
 
desantnik said:
Definitely hit or miss, the D90 he was using has Shutter Lag of 0.208s (Autofocus), 0.067s (Prefocused) and a shot to shot time 0.36s...

Add some human reaction time for his mrs to pop the bubble and him to click the button... oh and the bubble completely bursts in about 1/200.
Click to expand...

HI
Please talk techy, 5 ms :lol:
 
Do I detect sour grapes in some replies? Let's see your bubble shots then!
 
if you follow the flickr link posted by Werecow you'll see that he started uploading some of them over a year ago and is a member of several bubble groups.

I think they're amazing at the moment but I can now see a lot of people going for this kind of shot in the near future much like water drops and HDR are fashionable now
 
His set in flickr spans nearly a year (3 days short) and he admits to being obsessed with doing it, so it's not surprising. They're good to see, and he's done what he set out to do so fair play to him.
 
Hi all. I'm Richard, the bubble photographer you've been discussing. Thanks for the mostly positive comments. I've just googled myself, which is fun, and have been tracking down sites and discussions about me, so here I am. The press have confused things a little by saying I have a "slow motion" camera (not true, as you've noticed) and they've implied that I captured a sequence of a bubble popping, you know, as in a video sequence, which I obviously couldn't have done with the D90. Yep, I think people will probably emulate what I've done and no doubt improve upon it. Good luck to them. What I've done, that no-one seems to have done yet, is get the light and reflections nice. Not especially hard to do, but not easy either - especially as you need just the right weather conditions. I wonder if anyone will be able to do what I've done, but by using a powerful strobe. That would be interesting, because they'd be able to achieve a faster shutter speed. It's taken me a year and a lot of experimenting to do what I've done. If you get a beautifully still day though, when bubbles just hang there in front of you, then anything's possible. A bit of wind, and it's next to impossible.
 
PerfectSpeed said:
Which is what makes great photos :p


Sounds like hard lines to me :naughty:
Click to expand...

Haha good point :)

No bitterness about it, and fully congratulate richard on his shots.

I still stand by the fact that technically they're not anything special, but aesthetically pleasing nonetheless, and as Richard has said the patience needed to get nice reflections is clearly substantial, so congratulations on that.

I still don't think that it deserves a full page spread in a newspaper, but then that's not richard's decision, it's the editor's, and so congrats to richard for getting a full page spread :)
 
foodpoison said:
I still stand by the fact that technically they're not anything special, but aesthetically pleasing nonetheless, and as Richard has said the patience needed to get nice reflections is clearly substantial, so congratulations on that.
Click to expand...

I may agree with you somewhat, but nice to let people know that photography is a labour of love, unless you get those lucky Bu****s who take an awesome shot first time out :bang:
 
RichardH said:
Hi all. I'm Richard, the bubble photographer you've been discussing. Thanks for the mostly positive comments. I've just googled myself, which is fun, and have been tracking down sites and discussions about me, so here I am. The press have confused things a little by saying I have a "slow motion" camera (not true, as you've noticed) and they've implied that I captured a sequence of a bubble popping, you know, as in a video sequence, which I obviously couldn't have done with the D90. Yep, I think people will probably emulate what I've done and no doubt improve upon it. Good luck to them. What I've done, that no-one seems to have done yet, is get the light and reflections nice. Not especially hard to do, but not easy either - especially as you need just the right weather conditions. I wonder if anyone will be able to do what I've done, but by using a powerful strobe. That would be interesting, because they'd be able to achieve a faster shutter speed. It's taken me a year and a lot of experimenting to do what I've done. If you get a beautifully still day though, when bubbles just hang there in front of you, then anything's possible. A bit of wind, and it's next to impossible.
Click to expand...

Hi Richard and welcome to TP :wave:

I have also been trying for 'similar' shots' and can add they are certainly not easy , congrats on the publicity in several newspapers, must have made all the effort feel really worthwhile :thumbs:

Steve
 
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