The spin Hall effect is one particular type of spin orbit torque that describes the finding that in non magnetic metallic materials (NM) with large spin orbit coupling, an electrical current can be converted into a pure spin current which flows transverse to the current flow direction. This spin current can diffuse into an adjacent ferromagnetic film (FM) and can exert a torque on the magnetization of FM. For sufficiently large torques (related to efficient charge to spin current conversion) switching of FM has been demonstrated which can be used to e.g. write magnetic bits in future magnetic random access memory devices. We use several techniques to examine the efficiency of charge to spin current conversion. For example, to probe the influence of an injected spin current on the dynamics of the magnetization of FM of a microstructured NM/FM bilayer sample, time resolved magneto optical Kerr microscopy is used.