High Power Flash Units for Use With Ultra High-Speed Cameras

The Specialised Imaging SI-MSFH500 flash system offers the flexibility of four controllable high intensity flash lights for use in scientific and industrial environments.

When using high speed cameras to record transient phenomena very short exposure times are necessary to arrest image motion typically of a few nanoseconds duration. The overall time window for which the image capture occurs will be from a few hundred microseconds to a few milliseconds, so short duration high-intensity illumination sources are required for this type of recording.

Specialised Imaging now offers two high power flash units generate extremely high intensity illumination for short time periods that can be easily controlled and precisely synchronized to match the time frame of an event being recorded by a ultra high speed camera. The high intensity light is focused to a 6mm spot size which is then transmitted to the area of interest via a flexible fibre-optics lightguide. The flexible light guide allows the user to direct the light onto the object under study.

The flash units operate on the principle that electrical energy is stored in large capacitors and then released on command into a specially designed flash tube and in doing so creates a high energy luminous discharge. Xenon, which is used in the flash tubes, unlike other some gases, produces a spectral output which has energies at virtually all the wavelengths of the visible spectrum making it suitable for both film and solid state sensors. The life of the flash tube is rated in thousands of hours so rarely requires replacing. Requiring just a small power source to produce the necessary levels of illumination the new SI high power flash units are cheap to run as they use very little energy. The SI flash units also produce negligible amounts of heat because the illumination results from the excitation of gas molecules. As the luminous intensity is much higher than conventional tungsten lighting the illumination from a SI high power flash unit can be concentrated onto much smaller areas of interest.