Capturing moving objects with a normal camera usually leads to disappointment, especially if the object is travelling fast. But now there’s a gadget for amateur photographers that allows them to take professional-looking motion photos. The Vela One uses strobe lights to capture fleeting moments and its abilities have been showcased in a series of photographs showing ball bearings smashing into fruit, sweets, biscuits and light bulbs, among other objects. The shots show the moments after impact - the showering of crumbs, sugar and glass, splitting skins and jets of juice. Previously, such clarity could only be achieved through the use of expensive, high-voltage systems, but Vela Labs, the firm behind the light, claims it enables amateur photographers to take high speed photographs with a basic DSLR camera. The Vela One rig captures moments that last just two millionths of a second and costs from £495, putting it within reach of amateur photographers.
The Bristol-based company’s founder, Matthew Kane, said: ‘At that speed, you can see things that are just impossible for the human eye to recognise. ‘If you splat a grape at two millionths of a second, you can see the way that it uncurls the skin around it.’ The 35-year-old explained that a super-fast flash is needed to capture such moments, because there is no shutter speed fast enough to snap a bullet or any other object travelling at a similar speed. ‘A normal bullet will travel seven metres in a millisecond, so there is normally no way you can take a photo of a bullet because it will just appear blurred,’ he said.
‘The way that we do it is by using a slower shutter speed and a faster flash which simply freezes the image of a bullet in mid-air. ‘The Vela One is a hundred times faster than any normal flash that you can buy on the market and means that amateur photographers can take photos of things that are going three times the speed of sound.’ He has only photographed air bullets so far, but says: ‘I can guarantee that it can capture real bullets because I've accurately measured the speed of the flash.’
Mr Kane is raising money for the light on Kickstarter and says he has already received interest from distributors in the USA, Canada and South Korea. ‘This product will cost the same as a new lens for your camera and will mean that you will be able to take beautiful photos that very few people have been able to take before,’ he said. ‘The current technology used for this kind of photography is based around high-voltage lighting. Using such equipment is incredibly dangerous. People can get killed. ‘I'm excited to see what kind of pictures people are going to come up with. I think that people are going to come up with amazing things.’ The Vela One Kickstarter campaign has over £16,000 of its £25,000 target just one day after opening, with some ‘early bird’ offers already sold out. The rig can be pre-ordered from £495 and is estimated to be ready to be shipped in May 2015.