In the ink jet printer industry the stroboscopic visualization method is a standard tool for the charactarization of printheads. However, this method fails for thermal ink jets owing to the existence of satellite droplets which are very critical with respect to print quality. This is also true for the bubble formation inside the ink chamber of the printhead. Detailed studies have shown that the phenomenon of satellite droplets is a nonreproducible dynamic process. Real high-speed cine photomicrography forms the basis of a new test setup that allows the visualization of such highly dynamic nonreproducible phenomena. This new setup has been used to study the ejection, the free flight, and the impact of droplets of an ink jet on print media under real printing conditions.