Fun with Steel Wool

Thought I’d share a pic from the Coe Playground of Science event held earlier this week at Coe College. Whenever sparks are involved whether from a welder, blowtorch or, in this case, an ignited steel wool pad being spun from a metal cable, I usually don’t shoot at a shutter speed faster than a 1/15th of a second. For this shot I braced the camera on the ground and shot as Coe College sophomore physics major Charlie Goetzinger spun the pad around. I was shooting in the aperture-preferred mode and had my aperture set to F2.8. The camera decided to give me 1/6th of a second as my shutter speed. I got some 1/15ths and a few approaching the one second mark as the meter read the scene’s changing light level as I held the shutter down and the motor kicked in. I shot one of the earlier demonstrations but there was just too much light in the sky for the sparks to show well.

This was the picture I decided to turn in. I love how the sparks photo turned out but I think the look on Lucas Sennett’s face as he encounters a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach illustrates the evening’s events more accurately.

Jim

~ by Jim Slosiarek on November 2, 2008.