How can themeparks snap a crystal clear picture of you on a rollercoaster going 70mph
In: Technology
I see so many comments talking about fast shutter speed. This is NOT the primary reason they can capture sharp shots. It is tiny apertures with flash guns that fire really fast. The shutter speed is literally irrelevant. A high ISO with good quality sensor on the camera helps too.
A tiny aperture (the aperture is the “iris” of the lens) shuts out ambient light, so you can even use these flash guns in full daylight. The small aperture also give a great depth of focus, so everyone in the rollercoaster car is in focus, from front to back. Shutter speed would only be set to include the ambient background of an outdoor coaster, so the “feel” of the shot doesn’t look indoors. A few flash guns set in an array can light an entire roller coaster car very comprehensively.
Let’s talk flash gun capacitor discharge speeds. Generally common commercially available flash guns can discharge at speeds down to 1/20,000th of a second (even this speed is more than enough to capture a roller coaster). I have some flash guns that I use for high speed macro photography that can discharge faster than the average commercial flash. There are more expensive ones (readily available) that are insanely fast (in the millionths of a second). The shutter speed of a REALLY expensive sports camera(1/8,000th second) becomes utterly irrelevant at those discharge speeds. Do a google search for bullet through an apple photo etc. Those shots had shutter speeds that were relatively slow. But the flash discharge times would have been insanely fast – 1/2,000,000th/second if using something like the Vela One flashgun.
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