Another attempt at a Faraday cage, this time made from schedule 40, 3" steel pipe fittings.  Another Al wire explosion (#2, see table), another camera glitch, back to the drawing board.

I modified the above Faraday cage by adding a piece of 160 X 160 mesh 304 stainless steel wire cloth over the 1/2" hole drilled to act as a camera aperature.  Another Al wire explosion (#3), no camera glitches!  Unfortunately, the video is not all that interesting.  The aluminum wire explosion produces no sparks and all the video captures is one frame of total blue-out (from what I have read, a simple wire explosion like this produces a plasma temperature of ~20,000K, meaning that the visible output spectrum is blue shifted compared to sunlight, which originates in the Sun's 5776K photosphere) and a tinny sounding bang.  Also, I was so busy futzing with the camera, that I didn't record the residual capacitor voltage quick enough (it drifts upwards after a shot, as power flows through the spark gap's trigger lead into the caps).  Next up, magnesium.

Tried magnesium, it works great (see table) and is visually indistingushible from the aluminum wire, but even with the modified Faraday cage, the camera glitch is back.  I'm beginning to wonder if EMP is the problem at all.  When all else fails, do the math.  The wire loop, from capacitor ground terminal to spark gap output terminal has a measured inductance of 0.3 microHenry and the capacitor bank has a measured capacitance of 1.488 microFarads.  This implies an operating frequency of 240KHz, with a corresponding wavelength of 1200 meters for any emitted RF energy.  I doubt that this 1" X 2" X 4" camera contains any 1200 meter conductors capable of resonating with the fundamental.  While I can't rule out some portion of the emitted energy being at a higher overtone (a.k.a. harmonic) of this frequency and, hence, shorter wavelength, it seems unlikely that there would be enough energy radiated at higher frequencies to effect the camera's electronics.

So if it isn't EMP, what is the problem?  Well, the wire explosion does radiate electromagnetic energy at shorter wavelengths, namely light.  Perhaps the glitch is the camera's response to the rapidly varying illumination.  The operating frequency calculated above suggests that the discharge time is 1.04 microsecond (1/4 of a cycle), which is probably much shorter than the acquisition time of one video frame (1/30 second, max).  For an explosion conducted at 30KV, the stored energy is 670 joules and average power level is ~ 640 MegaWatts.  That is a seriously bright flash.  I'm guessing that HP never considered such an application and that the camera's exposure controls can't respond quickly enough to compensate.  I tried to test this by adding illumination (a 60 watt bulb) to the scene (Mg_2 &3 in the table) in the hopes of forcing the camera to it's minimum exposure setting.  Two tries, one glitch, time to stop worrying about it.