Fly through a stop light camera on red with the hood open and one injector at a time disconnected and propped up in plain sight? :D

Several modern digital cameras have a movie mode. Almost all do. Some of the "prosumer" ones -- the mid-range $300-500 models that aren't full SLR but do have some advanced features, are capable of several hundred frames per second in video mode. You could then split out just the ones you wanted to keep. I'd be looking in that general vicinity for something that specifically advertised high speed capability.

What about a good old film SLR (very cheap these days) in a completely dark box with the shutter held open? Blast the injector and strobe at the same time. B&W film would have to be used to get the granularity and speed you'd need. You'd have to get that online and hunt down a lab that would develop it for you (or do it yourself).

I've got lots of that sort of equipment; I love the old Minolta manual focus stuff. I never thought brand loyalty meant all that much, but I have to say, I've tried them all, and those just fit my hands the best. Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Mamiya, everybody back then made excellent stuff.

I'm curious how you're proposing to synchronize the firing of both, though. The injector spray and the flash strobe are both only tiny fractions of a second long, and I can't think of a good electronic way to synch them. I guess you could just take repeated shots and hope you got lucky.

internet it.. i looked into a DIY setup like that that involved a sound trigger

I'm looking for a piezo pressure transducer to electronically log the pop pressure.

I think the cheapest way to get images is in the dark, on black background, get a good manual focus lens, manually triggered external flash (or two from different angles), prop open the exposure. Give the pop tester handle a crank to fire off several pops and manually fire flash at some point hoping to catch one. Rinse and repeat, try to mix up your trigger points. Use a steady stroke on the handle, and by ear you'll get a rhythm for the pop frequency. Trigger +/- relative to an anticipated pop. Play with different ISO settings for detail or speed your choice. Digital or film your choice. You'll get several different action points of a injection event. Enough to piece together a story.

Roy,

I have a digital SLR that also does hi-def video. HD (16:9)1920 x 1080P -20fps, 1280×720P -30fps.

Casio also make a hi-speed handheld. I don't know the model number.

Cool
 

When are you back so we can test it?

Don't think a 30fps video camera will work. Probably need something around 240fps (?) but, not completely sure.

Someone mentioned Casio already, but more specifically, look at the Casio High-Speed Exilim cameras (models starting with EX-F)

e.g. http://www.exilim.com/intl/ex_fc100/features.html

They are relatively inexpensive consumer-grade cameras that supposedly shoot at up to 1000 frames/second.

I've never used one of these, but I've read about them.

Wow
 

That looks nice... :)

The slo-mo's from the olympics have enough sample rate and shutter speed to show the 240Hz flicker of the lighting, probably HID's.

Wouldn't that be 120Hz? The AC waveform (and therefore the arc in the lamp) hits zero twice in a 60Hz AC power system. Arc lamps don't care which way the power is flowing unlike LED's. Now with electronic ballasts the frequency may be much higher.

Then you have to also think about 3 phase with each leg being 120 degrees out of phase with its neighbor. A fun thing to do is to take a desk fan and look at sodium street lights through the blades at different speeds. If you're lucky there will be a speed at which you'll be able to see the flicker.