What do you do if you are a retired electronic and mechanical engineer with 41 years of experience, and a passion for ultra-high speed photography? Like Fotoopa, you make your own kick ass laser rig to take these cool photos:


That's Fotoopa—photograndpa in Dutch. His setup includes his own custom shutter—which can fire at five microseconds—made around an Arduino controller and custom aluminum parts, extra lenses to search for insects in focus, and a reflected laser light system that allows him to move around anywhere to shoot his photos. The rig can work in broad daylight or total darkness, and it doesn't need any setup except adjusting the sensitivity of the lasers depending on the ambient light. The whole thing is self-contained.

According to him, the focus range detector works from 1mm to 700mm from the camera, and the firing mechanism is capable of detecting flying objects two millimeters in diameter. Extremely impressive for a do-it-yourself machine. And the results are as good as the technology.
Fotoopa, we salute you, Sir. [Flickr via Makezine]


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