Light bulb burn out (No extra gear)

[pascalbovet.com]

If you wanna try this yourself.. Be careful!! The glass is really sharp and you’re dealing with power..

I wanted to take those shot because I was fascinated by similar shots I saw on flickr..

First you have to break the glass of the bulb.. It is recommended to break / manipulate the light bulb in a freeze bag or another plastic bag, because there are a lot of sharp little shards..

One can use a drill to create a small hole on the top (or wherever you want) of the bulb.. The duration of the burn is depending on the size of the hole.. A small hole will result in a long burn..
If you completely break the glass, the duration of the burn will be below one second, but the smoke formation will be more intense..
One can see the difference on the images below:


Small hole
Those were shot with a short exposure, large aperture and without flash.. The bulb was manipulated with a dril, the burn out duration is longer and therefore you get more shots.. The images were taken in a row (with 1/500s exposure and without additional light sources)..





Completely broken
This is no fake or post processing trick.. The bulb and the smoke were really captured in a singles shot..
On that one I used bulb mode (longer exposure as above), smaller aperture to compensate the longer exposure and a flash to freeze the smoke..
The Flash was below the table, behind the smoke flashing towards the camera, manually triggered, 1/2 power

On the second image I had to recolorized the smoke as I had a green “lens flare” on the bottom of the smoke.. But I tried to get as close to the original color as possible..

Sorry for adding two pictures, but I think once can clearly see the different result from two different approaches on photographing a light bulb burn out..

Camera Parameters for first series:
Sony A100
Sony 18-70mm @ 26mm
ISO 100 - f5.6 - 1/500s

For second:
Sony A100
Sony 18-70mm @ 30mm
ISO 100 - f18 - 2s (bulb mode)


All my howtos are available on my homepage pascalbovet.com

Regards
Pascal

If you wanna try this yourself.. Be careful!! The glass is really sharp and you’re dealing with power..


Hope this tutorial helps..
If you have any questions or need more information, please let me know..
Appreciate any comments and criticism..

[windrider86]

So, if I drill a hole in a light bulb it will explode?

[pascalbovet.com]

So, if I drill a hole in a light bulb it will explode?

No no.. Its just the wolfram wire which burns.. But no worries, the bulb will not explode.. Its just smoke inside the bulb..

[zona5101]

pretty sweet capture!

[yomigirl]

Pretty neat shot! i'm afraid to try it cos i dont have fire extinguiher :x

[WAD]

Very cool. Will have to try this someday! Thanks for sharing!!

[pascalbovet.com]

Thank you for all your comments..

[mowais]

thank you pascalbovet, thank you for shearing your all tutorials are awesome!

[sk66]

So, if I drill a hole in a light bulb it will explode?

If you spray it with a mist of water it will explode....

[WAD]

I will be trying this at some point.

Thanks for the tips!! Looks great!