Kirlian photography - electronic engineering meets parapsychology

Kirlian photography is an interesting photographic technique of capturing corona discharge of objects. The images basically contain only edges in a form of blue glow. Note: one of those photos is visible in "The X files" intro - read the whole article to know why!

In this post I will present my minimalist approach with common materials and without complicated construction. The results aren't that good as with more complex setups, but I think that they are still really interesting.

Materials

  • A camera with modifiable ISO and exposure time.
  • 10-30kV high voltage supply.
  • Tin foil. I used a foil in a form of adhesive strips because it's easier to stick it to surfaces, but a regular one can be also used.
  • Small piece of glass.
  • Slats or other things to put everything in place.

High voltage supply (10-30kV) made from CRT television flyback transformer

Old CRT monitor or TV is a great source of electronic components that can be used in DYI constructions. One of them is a flyback transformer that can provide 10-30kV output. The input voltage can be in a range from a couple of volts to over a dozen of volts, power consumption is a couple of watts. In my construction input voltage is 9V, power consumption is 5W.

A flyback transformer is driven by one or two transistors that should be also extracted from the same TV or monitor, those are high voltage transistors, that are hard to substitute and if bought separably can be expensive.