Underwater Explosions Captured at 28,000fps and 120,000fps

The Slow Mo Guys have captured some amazing things for their YouTube channel—including this amazing footage of glass shattering at 340,000fps—but their latest creation might be our favorite yet. Click play to see a firecracker explode underwater at a mind-bending 120,000fps.

Like their glass shattering video, this footage was captured with the Vision Research Phantom V2511, which allows them to capture unimaginably high frame rates while keeping quality acceptable.

In fact, at 28,000fps, they’re still shooting nearly 720p.

By the time they speed it all the way up to 120,000fps, they’ve dropped below even standard definition, but the resulting shot makes the low res totally worth it. They actually captured it twice, once at f/11 and once at f/2.8 so you can see all aspects of the explosion clearly.

In total, that explosion they captured lasted just 0.010004 seconds but they can stretch it out to a total of 50 seconds at 24fps. Bonkers.

Check out the video up top, and be sure to stick around till the end because they do another test where they focus the camera on the surface of the water so you can see how it reacts to the explosion. It’s not quite as mind-blowing, but still a great way to kill a few minutes at your desk this afternoon.

(via Sploid)

Discussion