Today I did some fine-tuning of the timing for my pictures, and experimented with different amounts of delay.

First I took a bunch of test shots to get the timing of the flash as exact as possible. I can now freeze the pellet within about 1/10 of an inch of where I want it.

I now input a delay in nanoseconds, so the progress of the balloon's popping is based on time. (I used to specify the distance into the balloon where I wanted the pellet frozen, but since the speed of the pellet varies, that meant the delay was variable too.)

This shot was taken about 926 microseconds after the pellet should have reached the edge of the balloon. That's just a hair less than a millisecond.

As you can see, the balloon is almost completely popped. The tears are pretty close to meeting up on the back side of the balloon.

I love the way the trails of cornstarch wrap around the curve of the balloon, and the subtle ripples in those cornstarch trails.