About

The internet has a population of hackers, inventors, and enthusiasts who have made an effort to provide their knowledge to the masses. This website is my effort to join their ranks.

I’m a Mechanical Engineer Technologist living in Linden, Alberta (a small community near Calgary). I spend much of my free time designing, hacking, building, etc… Many of my projects end up being used very little compared to the effort I put into their construction. Far as I’m concerned, engineering is the fun part!

Feel free to contact me at tyler@td0g.ca!

4 thoughts on “About”

    • Thank you for the kind words Alan! I’m flattered – yes, please feel free to use any media on my website for your talk. Don’t feel obliged to add credit, but if you wish to do so then I would be delighted! My name is Tyler Gerritsen.

      May I ask what the subject of the talk is?

      Reply
  1. Hey man,

    I’m trying to make an Edgerton Style flash, but I’m taking it to the extreme budget end. However, I’m stuck on the LED’s. I know how to measure the pulse time, etc, but I can’t figure out how to get the needed luminosity of the LED’s. I was wondering if you could give me a hand.

    Say that, in my setup, I have 50 lumens from a set of LED’s, which allows me to hit 1/1000th of a second at f/1.8, ISO 100. Could you tell me the math to decide how many lumens I need for a 1 microsecond exposure?

    Please, if possible, respond directly to hankackler@gmail.com

    Thanks,

    -Hank A.

    Reply
    • Hey Hank, it’s somewhat simple math so I’ll just put it up here.

      With your setup, you are exposing for 1/1,000 seconds. You want 1/1,000,000, so you require 1,000x more exposure. I notice you are using ISO 100 which is quite low, I tend to use 3200 or 6400. That will get you 32x to 64x more light, so you still require 1,000 / 32 = 15x to 1,000 / 64 = 30x more exposure. Now, F/1.8 is VERY large (I usually try for f/5.6 or smaller with my subjects) so there’s no way you can get more aperture. The only thing left now is the light output: 15 x 50 = 750 lm to 30 * 50 = 1500 lm.

      For reference, I took some photos with Edgerton at 1 microsecond (1/1,000,000 seconds) with ISO 6400 and F/7 (or thereabouts). Each LED is rated for around 3,000 – 4,000 lumens and I’m overdriving them to several times that output. So the total light output is somewhere in the area of 100,000 to 200,000 lumens.

      If you are able to build a usable flash for cheaper, I would love to find out how you managed to do it! Cheers, Tyler

      Reply

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