Thirty-one breaks

Everything we have published, with the rate it was captured at, how long it runs, how many people watched it, and the frame on which the material stopped holding together.

Licence a sequence

Lake ice, 140 mm, cored at Dąbie before dawn · 19 January 2026 · camera Rzepecka

Contact sheet

Tooth count on each strip is the capture rate. The struck tooth is the frame the material gave way on.

A sheet broken into large angular plates, photographed from directly above

Pane 6.8

54 000 fps8:12 · 4.1 M · laminated glass · gave way on frame 104TC 00:04:11:08 → 00:12:23:14

A single drop of water rebounding into a thin crown above a still surface

Drop 212

25 000 fps9:21 · 3.4 M · one litre, 2.1 m · crown at frame 1 980TC 00:00:00:00 → 00:09:21:02

A splash crown rising out of dark water with droplets suspended around it

Thaw

11 000 fps7:03 · 1.6 M · meltwater on hot steelTC 00:01:40:00 → 00:08:43:11

Frozen surface lit from below, cracks branching away from a central point

Cold Snap

11 000 fps11:40 · 2.7 M · river ice 140 mm · gave way on frame 61TC 00:00:12:00 → 00:11:52:09

A fan of water bursting upward, every droplet frozen mid-flight

Standpipe

120 000 fps5:39 · 2.2 M · a brass nozzle at 9 barTC 00:00:04:00 → 00:05:43:06

Cracked ice filling the frame, lines crossing at shallow angles

Bone China

187 000 fps6:58 · 9.8 M · a dinner plate, 1.9 m · gave way on frame 12TC 00:00:00:00 → 00:06:58:00

An empty concrete hall with square columns receding into shadow

Forty Tonnes

2 500 fps14:05 · 6.3 M · 300 mm cube, 28-day cureTC 00:02:00:00 → 00:16:05:18

Twenty-five more in the archive, 2019 onward, every one still up and none of them re-cut.

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The same plate, twice

Left is what a normal camera gives you at 24 frames a second: one blurred frame and a noise. Drag your pointer across and it becomes the same half-second at 54 000.

Before: a broken plate on concrete, seen as a single settled frame — 24 fps ⟷ 54 000 fps · Elevator 4, 6 June 2025

After: the same plate resolved into separate shards with the glaze still parting — 24 fps ⟷ 54 000 fps · Elevator 4, 6 June 2025

Plate 04

Catalogue comb

Eleven published films. Bar height is views, the comb under each bar is its capture rate, and the figure on the baseline is its runtime. The fastest films are not the longest ones — at 187 000 we only have 0.9 seconds to spend.

Coarse: 960 to 2 500 fps. Five teeth to the centimetre. Concrete, timber, anything with a dust cloud.
Mid: 11 000 to 36 000 fps. Water, ice, glass at full sensor height. Two thirds of the catalogue.
Fine: 54 000 fps and up. A palisade. Short films, small sensors, enormous lighting bills.

VIEWS (M)10 M512:339601.914:052 5006.311:4011 0002.77:0311 0001.69:2125 0003.410:0236 0007.68:1254 0004.17:4480 0005.25:39120 0002.26:58187 0009.84:18187 0001.2raterun

Broken slabs of ice floating apart on black water after the impact

9.8 MFrame 12 of 128 760 · Bone China · 6 June 2025 · camera Rzepecka, light Byk

Most watched

Bone China

A plate from a house clearance on Jagiellońska, dropped 1.9 metres onto a ground steel anvil, filmed at 187 000 frames a second on a sensor 256 pixels wide. The whole event lasts 1.4 milliseconds. We spent two days lighting it and eleven minutes shooting it.

Rate: 187 000 fps · shutter 1.1 µs
Light: 4 × 18 kW continuous, 400 A supply
Takes: Five. The first four missed the window.
Delivered: 6:58 at 24 fps · 1.3 TB of source retained

We do not re-cut films once they are up, and we do not licence a clip to anybody who wants the crack sped back up to real time. If you need it fast again, film it yourself.

A camera on sticks facing a lit backdrop in a dark hall, cables taped to the floor

Want one of these made about your material?

Full day 9 400 zł · two cameras 13 900 zł · files on a drive before we leave

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