Cinema and high speed photography

This article on wired.com marks the 107th anniversary of the birth of electrical engineer and photographer Harold Edgerton.

According to the article:

Edgerton invented stop-action, high-speed photography, helping push the obscure stroboscope from a laboratory instrument into a household item. He used the technique to make a body of work that’s revered both for its scientific advancement and its aesthetic qualities.

This high speed photography allows us to record and observe phenomena that would normally be beyond useful limits of sense perception, such as a bullet passing through an object.

The article also links to an article on Eadweard Muybridge's work with rapid succession photography.

Variable frame rates provide a range of possibilities for cinema - such as speeding up and slowing down action on the screen, and freezing on a moment of time that spans only a several-thousandth of a second.

Here is a link to an article containing images taken at various speeds, from Muybridge to the 110 attosecond (110 x 10-18) shutter speed used by Ferenc Krausz for subatomic imaging, with an accompanying description for each image.

Below is an example of video taken at 2000 frames per second: