Announcement of Award Winners

"SLOW MOTION VIDEO AWARD 2016" was held for the first time this year. We received more than 100 videos not only from Japan but also from all over the world. We appreciate very much for your entries.

After reviewed by our four judges, Mr. Shinichiro Ito (judge chief), Ms. Eleanor Stride, Mr. Ryohei Funatsu, and Mr.Takeharu Eto, the videos for "Excellent Video Award", "Scientific Video Award", "Artistic Award", and "Entertaining Video Award" have been chosen.
Since there were so many excellent works, 9 videos were additionally chosen for "Fine Work" or honorable mentions, as these were popular among the judges and were very close to the awards.

This contest was established to broadly gather fantastic slow motion images taken with high speed cameras and to share such fine works with everyone. By doing so, we are hoping to expand the possibilities of the future of slow motion images.

Please visit our website to watch the award-winning works and nominated works.

EXCELLENT VIDEO AWARD

Supersonic Soda Jet Phred Petersen

Capture Speed : 52,888fps

Outline

A plastic soda bottle, pressurized with CO2 to approximately 350 kPa, was released from a toy water rocket launcher. A Schlieren system visualized refractive index gradients within the fow of gas escaping from the bottle, and the development of shock diamonds or Mach disks in the jet can be clearly seen. Colour was introduced with a three-filter mask at the light source.

Review and Comments

Selection of experiment materials, color schlieren technology, camera performance, and timing are all combined and form excellence in every aspect.
A familiar cola bottle looks like a jewel, and the video captures the way it moves slowly while delivering a shock wave. This is the video suitable for the 1st Slow Motion Award.

サイエンス賞 − SCIENTIFIC VIDEO AWARD −

Senko-hanabi as Dancing Drops Chihiro Inoue

Capture Speed : 1,000fps~100,000fps

Outline

Senko hanabi, or sparkler, is a Japanese traditional firework widely popular since the Edo period (the period between 1603 and 1868).
Until now, however, how sparks pop out and divide themselves has been somewhat shrouded in a mystery.
The applicant successfully captured a high-speed, time and space-resolved image of the firework for the first time in the world.
The video has revealed that the sparks of senko hanabi are droplets, jumping out due to the rupture of the bubbles formed on the surface of the fireball. And the "pine needle sparks" of the firework where arrays of delicate branching sparks are observed can be formed by the splitting of the droplets in a chain of up to 8 times. This work reveals a part of the mystery that has intrigued people over several centuries.

Review and Comments

A hand-held senko hanabi lends a poetic feature to Japanese summer. Much different from those fireworks displayed in the sky, senko hanabi's sparks are delicate and ephemeral, and because of such nature, the mechanism of the generation of the sparks has remained unknown. This video successfully captured the microscope size subjects at the nanosecond level under very fine light intensity to clarify the generation of the sparks. The applicant's photography technology is amazing and defies the conventional common sense of high-speed videos.

ARTISTIC VIDEO AWARD

shock wave kaleidoscope Harald Kleine

Capture Speed : 330,000fps

Outline

This sequence shows the results of two experiments in which the interaction of a shock wave with a cylindrical obstacle placed a short distance in front of a wall was investigated. The shock wave first passes over the cylinder and then reflects from the wall. The process was visualised with a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, for which the resulting fringes represent lines of constant density. The first test was run with a monochromatic laser light source, while the second test used a white light source and produced polychrome fringes, each of which corresponds to a certain density value. Both visualisations depict highly complex but also beautifully symmetric patterns that evolve in a kaleidoscopic fashion.

Review and Comments

This video captures shockwave propagation at extremely high speed in color mode. The shockwave propagation spreads as if it were a kaleidoscope, and because it is so vivid and beautiful that one almost mistakes it for a CG image.

ENTERTAINING VIDEO AWARD

Candle (experiment)
Simultaneous Fall Kentaro Takesute

Capture Speed : 240fps

Outline

【Candle (experiment)】
When the candle light extinguishes, white smoke rises. This smoke is made of "wax" gas that has gotten cold and become small droplets suspended in air. When flame from a lighter is brought close to this smoke, the "wax" droplets burn one after another and finally the candle starts to burn again.
【Simultaneous Fall】
"In high school physics classes, it is a classic mechanical experiment.
There are two balls: one for free-fall motion and the other for horizontal projection motion. When the motions start at the same time, you can see that the movement is exactly the same in the vertical direction."

Review and Comments

This educational and entertaining video conveys the fascination of science captured by an iPhone 7 - a high-speed shooting equipment that has become very familiar in our life. The quality of this video is an excellent proof of the fact that high speed cameras are no longer special equipment.

FINE WORK

Visualization of cascade wake by smoke wire method Koji Sawada

Capture Speed : 7,200fps

Outline

By utilizing a high speed camera, the wake of the two blade cascade was visualized by the smoke wire method.

Wind of light Takafumi Tachibana

Capture Speed : 240fps

Outline

Fleeting things, transience, the flow of time. What I expressed in the video is the world beyond the invisible night sky.

against the flow Koji Imagi

Capture Speed : 240fps

Outline

I like shooting nature as a theme. I thought a waterfall is suitable for my theme as it possesses high liquidity and strength. What I wanted to capture in slow motion was the dynamism of the waterfall. The energy that the waterfall creates is massive and it is almost impossible for a man to resist the flow of the waterfall. Shooting a slow motion video is to try to capture things that are impossible to capture - like standing against the flow of the waterfall.

A monster!!! Aiko Okamoto

Capture Speed : 240fps

Outline

All of the staff members in our café kept surprising themselves.
Slow motion, really fun!
Please come and visit us at 2k540 IRONCAFe.
Fun and cheerful staff are waiting for you!

Laser induced cavitations and shock waves Sennosuke Kawamoto

Capture Speed : 240fps, 20,000fps, 5,000,000fps

Outline

Pulse laser (wavelength: 532 nm, pulse width: 6 ns) was focused in liquid (silicone oil, 1 cSt), and the generated bubbles were photographed at high speed.
The theme was to see that the phenomena observed differ depending on the shooting speed. So, I recorded the same phenomenon at three different shooting speeds (240 fps, 20,000 fps, and 5,000,000 fps).
At the shooting speeds of 240 fps and 20,000 fps, I observed the occurrence of laser-induced bubbles and bubble groups, while the occurrence and propagation of underwater shock waves (speed about 1500 m/s) were observed at the maximum shooting speed (5,000,000 fps).

In-situ megaframe-rate X-ray radioscopy of a high speed electrical fuse breaking Xavier Just

Capture Speed : 5,000,000fps

Outline

Breakdown of an electrical fuse imaged with MHz hard X-ray radioscopy: the silver filament of a high speed fuse studied breaks under applied high current. As a detector the high-speed
visible light camera (Shimadzu HPV-X2) was lens-coupled to a LYSO:Ce scintillator.

Leidenfrost Droplets Phred Petersen

Capture Speed : 18,000fps

Outline

Different liquids were dropped onto a metal surface, heated above each liquid’s boiling point, from a height of approximately 0.5m. Rather than wetting the hot surface, the droplets ride on a cushion of their own vapour as they spread, before breaking up in different ways, infuenced in part by the surface tension characteristics of each liquid.

Liquid Jellyfish and Piercing Drops Alexander L. Klein

Capture Speed : 20,000fps

Outline

In this video we show the impact of a focused laser pulse onto a millimeter-size drop of dyed water. The drop’s life was recorded by a high-speed camera at 20 000 frames per second (FPS) with a continuous background illumination. We keep the focussing conditions of the laser constant but vary the laser energy. The fluid dynamics response can be quite different: at low laser energy the drop deforms into a jellyfish like shape, but more or less explodes after it is pierced at higher energies.

How to kick a knuckle shoot
High speed X-ray on soccer ball impact Takeshi Asai

Capture Speed : 1,000fps

Outline

【How to kick a knuckle shoot】
The impact of a knuckle shoot by a professional football player. The impact was made as if to push out the ball mainly with the metatarsals of the ankle joint. This suppressed the spinning of the ball, and the ball became instable with irregular swinging.
【High speed X-ray on soccer ball impact】
The world's first visualization of the interaction between the ball, the foot, and the shoe during the ball impact in football. It can be understood that deformation of the shoe and the ball greatly differs depending on the impact part of the foot.