Coil photograpy idea

• To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
• Subject: Coil photograpy idea
• From: wwl-at-netcomuk.co.uk (Mike Harrison) (by way of Terry Fritz <twf-at-verinet-dot-com>)
• Date: Fri, 05 Mar 1999 11:53:32 -0700
• Approved: twf-at-verinet-dot-com

I just had an idea about a new way to get potentially good , or at
least diffrent. pictures of a coil firing. 
I have a CCTV camera which has a fast shutter mode, and also a genlock
(external sync) input. If I generate a dummy frame sync for it to lock
onto, derived from the mains frequency via an adjustable phase delay,
it ought to be possible to take fairly fast (down to about 1mSec I
think) 'snapshots' at fairly precise, repeatable intervals relative to
the mains cycle, and therefore observe different stages in the spark
formation, as well as observing the effects of such things as spark
gap firing jitter etc. The result could either be recorded on video
tape for frame-by frame analysis, or better, (unless a VCR with very
good stillframe is used), digitised to hard disk.
(I also have a very good zoom lens so I can keep it well away from the
coil :-)

Has anyone tried anything like this before ?

I've just bought a PCI video capture card, but probably won't have
time to play with it for a couple of weeks :-( 
but I definately will try this & will post any news.

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