

I have made Christmas "trees" in 2007 and 2009 highlighted by Tesla coil sparks. This year the new project will be very different.



Personalized Holiday Cards



Early ideas 2009

Here is a shot of my big Tesla coil with a rotating rod of about 7 ft being raised and a 63 second exposure taken. No colours or star yet, just a huge bushy tree of bright sparks (near the ground) and less bright streamers higher up.

(click to enlarge) Problem is that when colours are applied, the sparks are brighter than the streamers.

(click to enlarge) The streamers have poor colour saturation, particularly in the desirable tree color of green. So a modification was called for to allow continuous sparks towards the end of the rod.

Getting closer. This is an example of continuous sparks rather than streamers. The colors are more intense and any color looks good. There is a minor problem in that the sparks are bunched up. Depending on how the filters are shifted the above effects can be seen depending how the filter wheel rotated and how fast, (click to enlarge) Here is another version closer to the desired effect. More spherical in shape but more tree like with the TC secondary being the trunk. Now just have to tidy up and fit Santa in. Oh, and make a star... The Star 2009

(click to enlarge) The left photo above shows the 10 dead fluorescent tubes covered with orange cellophane that comprise the final star. This is strung up by ropes so that it is 30 feet to to top point. The center photo shows the star lit by induced currents only. The right photo shows the star lit with direct flow of current from the TC to earth via the star and is much brighter. So much so that it leaves a prominent lens flare duplicate of the star. This is actually present in the final photo as well but is covered by a lot of other sparks. There is a lot of blurring due to wind here. But to go back to the beginning of the star development ....

This caused me a lot of angst. I did try with burning CD's with only partial success. (click to enlarge) (click to enlarge) The left photo shows a simple small (5 ft) star made of CD's. They did work as expected (right photo) but would probably start burning with flames towards the end of a run. A bigger star might use 50 CD's or more and doesn't allow for many trial runs. Above is an animated gif of the burning CD's in a simple linear star. It works but is a bit tedious. Construction 2009

Here is a shot of the first version. You can see the nylon line that lifts the arm in an arc particularly in the middle photo. It is attached to a rope between the trees.

(click to enlarge) The rotating arm is shown here from a lowered position to midway then up fully.

(click to enlarge) Here, I have attached a small spray of fibreoptic lights which show the spiral course of the tip of the arm.

(click to enlarge) The left photo shows me casting a fishing line aiming for a space in the upper branches. This was used to pull through a rope between two trees which gives me a suspension point 9 m (30 ft) in the air. In fact this was too low and I later aimed for the highest branches at 14m (45 ft). A convenient "skyhook" to hang the star and also the wire that elevates the rotating rod. The top of the star ended up at 9m (30 ft) for this tree which was twice the height of the 2007 tree. (click to enlarge) This shows the pulley arrangement attached to the rope which is earthed (grounded) by the black wire that goes to RF earth in the right photo which is a pipe hammered a few feet into the ground.

(click to enlarge) The left photo above shows a close up of a double exposure with my foot and sparks hitting the ground. The center photo shows Santa checking framing and focus. It only just fits on my 18mm lens. Note the rotating filter in front. Santa's helper is in the right photo - the wife Jane - who controls whether I live or die. She calls it "quality time". S pecial effects 2009

This is how its done. The cameras exposure starts now and will remain open for 2 minutes recording any light that happens in that time. (click to enlarge) First there is a flash of Santa with the Tesla coil power OFF. He never gets close to any sparks because it is dangerous, remember. Small point is that the rod is hidden behind the Tesla coil which is well illuminated. For this to work the area behind Santa needs to be far away and black so it doesn't get lit by sparks and show up on top of Santa in the long exposure. Next, Santa turns on the rotating rod and runs away! In darkness so you don't see that on camera. The filter is changed to green and the Tesla coil turned on. (click to enlarge) The composite demo shot illustrates the rotating rod in view and sparks from the rod to the ground. After some rotation the filter has been changed to green so the only illumination (the sparks) is now green. In the actual shot you never see the rotating rod because it is never still in one spot so just blurs out of view. (click to enlarge) Ooops, In this demo shot I tripped over the camera tripod in the dark and ended up with a double image above. Nevertheless, it does demonstrate the several rotations of green at the base. In the actual shot, the TC is turned off while I (Santa) pulled on the line to raise the rotating rod and rotating the green filter to red. Note the star is lit brightly as all current is now passing through it. It overexposes but time was too short to fix that and it just makes it appear brighter. (click to enlarge) Then all that remains (above) is to continue to raise the rod while changing to yellow and then green filters in turn. Then the exposure is stopped using a radio remote to avoid jitter. Total exposure 2 minutes, f/7.1, ISO 500 on 12 MPx Nikon D300 Needless to say there is a lot happening in 120 seconds. It needs reasonable timing in near complete darkness. So quite a lot of trial runs and stuff ups. This photo in the media 2009

This made it to one local newspaper and one TV shoot. That is a bit disappointing really as I missed out on at least 3 TV shoots and 3 newspaper articles just in Australia due to the cost of having to pay for it now that I have an agent. Giving it out for free seems to be the way to go for best coverage.

It made it to some online newspaper sites however and about 110 websites including:

WAtoday Western Australia

Telegraph "Perhaps the most impressive tree we've seen this year..."

TheSun UK

http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Those_aren_t_Xmas_lights_THESE_are_Xmas_lights

Microsiervos

The links to the other 100 or so websites are here - search for "Xmas 09".

Google search for "Xmas" keyword was 21 of 24,000,000 hits in Aug 2010

Google search for "Xmas" images was 313 out of 30,000,000 Jul 2010.

Shown as a Win/Channel 9 TV news item in Western Australia on 21/12/09. Reported by Tiffany Wertheimer. Filmed by Dean Lomax with video effects by Jordan. Video runs 1:18 mins. .



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