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Set Up |
| 1 | We spray painted empty soda cans white, so that they would reflect the colored flashes that we would use to photograph the can. |
| 2 | We then positioned the can close to the flashes, approximately in the center of the table. Two full cans were then placed on either side of the empty white can to act as support while we put books on top. |
| 3 | The black felt covered books (5 books) were placed on top of the three cans exactly centered. These 5 books were covered in black felt so that they would not reflect the flashes. If they had reflected the flashes, the books would cover up the previous images of the can. (see here) |
| 4 | Next the frame was placed around the cans and felt covered books. The frame was used to prevent the books from falling and damaging the photographing parts. |
| 5 | The other books were then placed inside the frame on top of the felt-covered books, so that there was enough weight on top of the can to crush it. This was a good use of physics books! |
| 6 | The supporting cans were then removed while Richard held up the books slightly to remove the weight from the supporting cans. Now, the only thing the weight was resting on was the empty white can. |
| 7 | Now we set up the camera. We used the Sony DKC-FP3 digital camera. We zoomed the camera all the way in on the can, and set the aperture to 5.6 and the film speed to 100. Now we focused the camera on the empty can. |
| 8 | Then we aligned the laser with the optical sensor. We did this by making sure the laser was behind the can, so that there wasn’t a fat laser in your eye. Then we angled the laser horizontally to the left of the camera, and lowered the laser so that it was about a centimeter below the felt-covered books. The laser was put at this height, because we found that some cans did not fully crush until they dropped below this point. We also made sure that there was a minimal glare on the felt at the bottom of the books, and that the laser did not produce a glare on the can by reflecting off the optical sensor. The camera, laser, and optical sensor were all placed on tripods so that they would be at the same level as the can. |
| 9 | The flashes were positioned on either side of the rack (see picture), two on each side, with the first two flashes on the left of the camera, and the second two on the right. These flashes were covered with colored filters, and fed into our interface. The optical sensor was also plugged into the interface. We used different orders of filters, as we observed which order worked best. See individual photos for order. We used these external flash units so that we did not have to use the cameras own flash. |
| 10 | We used the yellow interface first (which has 16 outputs to operate 16 flashes, but we only used 4 flashes), and the blue one second (which has exactly 4 outputs which is what we needed), and used the software Multiplexer, and Intervalometer 2 respectively. These softwares served as timers for our flashes. For more information on how the computer works see 4 in Photographing. We set it up so that when the optical sensor no longer received the laser beam, the flashes were triggered sequentially (see individual experiments for delays and intervals). For details on triggering system, see number 4 in Photographing section. |
Continue on to Photographing!!!!