1/4000 shutter speed can freeze bullet?

can 1/4000 shutter speed can freeze bullet fired from machine gun?

What does this have to do with Nikon?

Yup, and it can make a helluva mocha frappe latte too.

Set your camera to 1/4000, have your friend stand about 300 yards away from you, and when you see the bullet coming at you, fire the shutter...

Hahaha.. Good answer Brian!! :P

 

But interesting topic though. How do you supposed to take pictures of bullets? I've seen pictures of it but don't know how it was done.

It has to be done with a high speed strobe triggered by either the noise of the gun or the projectile striking a triggering mechanism. The shutter is locked open for the procedure. No still camera I know of has a shutter speed fast enough to freeze a bullet's travel; nor are typical on-camera or studio flash units adequate for this.

 

I'm answering this question reluctantly. At the rate these questions are deteriorating the next will be to ask whether a chromed or black finish Nikon is best for a snipe hunt.

I agree with Lex. The amount of info on Photo.net is really stunning. Look for it! Or get out a calculator and figure it out. You'll probably see about 1 ft. of the bullet's path, and maybe 2mm of travel will give an acceptable blur. Do the math. Or just try my first suggestion.<br>

Toan, check out the work of Harold Edgerton and this thread<Br>

<a href=http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000aIx> http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000aIx </a>

Here's a 98# "bullet" that the camera shutter captured without a strobe.

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/1452111

Remy, I'm getting really confused by the physics here... absolute zero temperature = absolute zero motion? Please explain. And anyway, wouldn't it be better at around -273 Celcius?

A more serious answer now, or at least a couple of suggestions:<br>1. Make a high-speed shutter, method 1 might be the standard lab method of using 2 x linear polarising screens, 1 is fixed and the other rotates. As it rotates it screens all light. Method 2 would be a 'bicycle wheel' completely filled in with opaque material, except for a slit of the right size. Turn the bike upside down and get an athletic type to turn the pedals. Camera shutter open, very short exposure occurs when the slit passes the lens.<p>I did try experimenting with a bullet once, I used an 'ordinary' flash of maybe 1/30000th sec. The picture, taken on 5"x4" Polaroid, clearly shows muzzle smoke, damage to the glass and, surprisingly, deviation of the bullet. Perhaps most surprisingly, the damage is very minor at this point - apart from the stem of the glass all that was left after the bullet passed through were tiny slivers and the pic demonstrates that the disintegration occurred <b>after</b> the bullet had passed through.<p>Don't bother looking for the bullet, I worked out that during the exposure it had travelled about 2.7"!<div></div>

The U.S. Air Force test lab for munitions has some 'custom' camera equipment: reportedly, 10,000 frames a minute (or a second) and images are made of aircraft guns firing shells.

 

 

Not highly recommended as a basement project for the winter months....

About 20 years ago when 1/4000 speed became available on cameras starting with Fm2 I remember seeing a picture of a frozen bullet in an ad for the camera in Modern Photography magazine of the day. It was not a very clearly frozen picture of a bullet like the ones shot with a strobe but it was a regcognizable bullet flying in the air.

<i>

The U.S. Air Force test lab for munitions has some 'custom' camera equipment: reportedly, 10,000 frames a minute (or a second) and images are made of aircraft guns firing shells. </i>

<p>

When I worked in a camera shop, I had a customer who would come in every couple months and buy 30 projector bulbs (ELH) at about $30 each. I asked him what he did with them, and he said he used a camera like that (I've forgotten the exact specs). He was doing ultra-high speed photography of explosives (I think it was used for analyzing the explosive wave front), and he needed a 'ton of light' to deal with the rediculously high shutter speeds involved. The explosion consumed the bulbs.

I have yet to encounter a situation where I thought 2000/4000/8000 were a distinct 'action stopping' advantage over 1000. I'm sure there are some out there (airplane props? helicopter rotors?) but I haven't run across them.

 

What the extended speed scale does for me is give me more options for exposure control and narrow depth of field. If I'm using 200 speed film and an 80-200/2.8 lens, and I want to work wide open (or one stop down at f/4) for isolation, 8000 gives me the 'head room' to do so in full sun. As the sun goes away (clouds are a fact of life in Seattle) I can use the same film and aperture at more 'normal' shutter speeds.

I'm wondering if anyone has tried those extreme shutter speeds, and large apertures

that Todd used, with a wide lens? It might be something to experiment with here in

the desert. Todd, what film were you using to do this?

 

And From, you'll need much slower shutter speeds just to accommodate the fungus

blocking your lenses. But, playing with bullets may resolve your quandries.

<i>can 1/4000 shutter speed can freeze bullet fired from machine gun? </i><p>

 

Let's assume a machine gun firing 5.56mm NATO, since you didn't give any info. You're looking at a muzzle velocity of something like 3,000-3,200 feet per second.<p>

 

Now, divide that by your 1/4000s shutter speed, and you're looking at your bullet traveling 9 inches during the exposure. If that's what you're looking for, then "yeah, it'll work."<p>

 

Instead, you might want to consider a long exposure of a gunner walking the rounds on target, as tracers can be pretty striking. If you want to capture the bullet mid-flight, you're probably gonna want to go with a much slower shutter speed and a really fast flash.

So now you're "From makati" instead of "From Phillipines". We all know who you are, fungus guy. Looks like you're having a ton of fun with us. Have you posted in the Leica forum yet?<p>As stated above, Harold Edgerton used a special very high speed strobe to capture his bullets ripping through apples, etc. It is possible to capture somewhat of a streak of a projectile with a high shutter speed, and as long as you are some distance away, and the angle between the trajectory of the projectile relative to you is reduced. Look at the shot of the howitzer firing. The photographer is at an angle that you are almost looking down the barrel of the gun. So, you can see the HE round.<p>I seem to recall a picture of the battleship Missouri (can't recall which war, but I think Korea) taken from another ship, showing the rounds in mid air after being fired from the 16" guns. That must have been taken with a Speed Graphic 4x5 camera, with top shutter speed of 1/500 (?) Thus, it is possible to reduce apperent motion by being far away and being along the trajectory of the projectile. Hence, the suggestion above to stand in the path while a "friend" fires a rifle at you from 300 yrds away is exactly "dead" on. Train photogs know this by taking head on shots of advancing trains. (Hint: they usually stand to one side of a curve in the track, rather than ON the track, to do this).<p>If I recall my chemistry, at absolute 0 K, there is no internal molecular motion within the substance. However, the substance will still have mass and volume. If that substance was moving, then there is no reason why it should cease to be moving. By Newton's 1st law, and object once in motion will continue to do so by inertia, until another force causes deviation of its motion. So, at absolute 0, the bullet will be as dense and contracted as it ever will be, and will exhibit superconductivity, but should still be travelling.

Silly me. I used to shoot at 1/2 sec to freeze tracers at night. Looked mucho latte frapacino!

 

Actually, if you really want to freeze a bullet, take the entire photo underwater. Everything will tremendously slow down. The downside is, that light gets affected too.

I'm in agreement with Derek. But perhaps reducing the projectile speed is the answer in this case.

 

Typical handfired projectile muzzle velocities can range from several hundred feet per second in the case of a pellet gun up to 4-5000 fps in the case of some of the saboted varmint rounds. At the lower end of the scale, it's conceivable to me that you could freeze a projectile in flight without a strobe assuming that you could trigger the shutter effectively. Perhaps something like ballistic chronograph screens could be used to do that, I don't know.

 

Interesting question...

If you read his post history you will see he posts just to "play" some sort of "Game". He even changed his name, it was "From Phillipines". Look at his postings and decide if you want tospend your time trying to help somone who is just "playing" a "Game"

 

Rob

IM not playing with you guys i really just dont know what to buy "NEWBIE HERE" ok fine from now on i will not post here anymore it seems this forum is just for professional people only no place for newbie

 

 

THanks to all who answered my questions

Let's say that the bullet is travelling at about the speed of sound, or about 1140 ft per second. During a 1/4000 sec (0.25 milliseconds) the bullet will have travelled about 3 1/2 inches.

 

On the other hand, if you just throw the bullet at about 1/20th that speed you might have something to work with.

so, lex, what's your consultation fee? while i still manage perpendicularity most of my waking hours, i find i'm starting to resent it. this is causing me great anxiety, and fido, my queer weimerheimer, as well: needless to say, fido is very dependent on my continued perpendicularity. help save my self respect! and the love of my dog!

Let me give some insight from the perspective of someone who had all sorts of arms, the ability to fabricate ammunition of differing veloicity, a chronograph, free use of an indoor gunrange, a sound trigger, and the electronics aptitude to modify the basic 283 circuit to get it to go as high speed as possible.

 

To answer the question, its no. Machine gun fire is in excess of 3000fps from a 5.56mm gun, or between 2500fps and 2800fps from a 7.62mm machine gun. In these instances, the bullet will appear as a short stripe on the film IF you manage to catch it at all. Here's why: The shutter is not open the whole time. A slit moves across the film gate. When the slit is in a certain position the bullet will come whizzing across the slit making a blur or if illuminated "just so" the bullet will appear as a stripe. The bullet is so fast in relation to the shutter, you will see where the "slit" was when the bullet went by.

 

However.... I was able to fabricate up some .38Special handloads that just barely sort of leaked out of the barrel of the revolver. These were chronographed at about 600fps. Much slower than that and any load I could construct was liable to get stuck in the gun. Using a 283 and modified varipower module, with sound trigger, I was able to successfully "capture" bullets about 2-3 feet from the gun. They were shot with the lights out at the range, so only the shooter, gun, ejecta, and bullet were visable. Interestingly, the ejecta - the gasses and fragments of powder, were ALWAYS in front of the bullet! Yes, they exit the barrel at a greater speed than the bullet (read Hatcher's recoil chapters). Secondly, the bullet was still a streak, but about 1 to 1.5 inches long. From that, I was able to deduce the 283 was firing at about 1/60,000 to 1/75,000 sec, and that was the limit of the circuit.

 

Hope that helps!

Bullseye or WW231, Charles? ;>

 

I remember some of my experiments trying to "leak" a HBWC out of a .38 Special. My buddy thought I was crazy and was always nervous one would get jammed in the barrel. I think the slowest I safely managed was around 550 fps from a 4" barrel. Too chicken to try any slower.

 

I did manage to jam a bullet in a 9mm once. Not lack of powder, tho', but insufficient case tension and the pressure curve went flat. Not proud of that one.

 

Then there were those odd reports of blown-up guns resulting from some weird propagation effects that supposedly can occur when using too little, rather than too much, gunpowder, especially Bullseye. Never saw this happen but I decided to stop taking chances while all my fingers were still intact.

 

Never occurred to me to combine the two hobbies. Hmmm... Lessee, if Tri-X is comparable to Bullseye or WW231, what's the equivalent of Tech Pan?