chris_muller Posted January 16, 2005 Share Posted January 16, 2005 I am a young ameature photographer and i have another hoppby of firearms...so hoping to combine the two i need some help with the lighting...i have a EOS 10D and a 550ex. these will be an outdoor shoot so do you think that i will be able to freeze the path of the bullet with the combination. any help would be appreciated! thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
howard_anderson1 Posted January 16, 2005 Share Posted January 16, 2005 If you are trying to capture a picture of a bullet in flight, that information would be in science and technology literature using specialized strobe equipment with a lot of safety concerns. This should be done only after a lot of study and some work with technicians who have worked in this field. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jim_gifford Posted January 16, 2005 Share Posted January 16, 2005 Tracers, sure. Otherwise, the path of the bullet isn't gonna show. Well, okay, if you're taking pictures of 155mm howitzers, you can probably see the shell. But typical handgun or rifle ammunition? Not good odds, sorry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skipd Posted January 16, 2005 Share Posted January 16, 2005 Chris, do a little math to answer your question. If you're really lucky, the 550EX might have a minimum flash duration of 1/5000th of a second (only guessing), but is probably not much faster than 1/1000th of a second - especially at full power. Assuming the best for the flash speed and to make sample calculations easy, how far would a bullet travelling at 2500 feet per second go in 1/5000th of a second? You surely wouldn't be able to replicate the frozen-in-time shots of bullets you've seen with the 550EX or any other commonly available flash unit. Another significant problem is triggering the flash to go off at the right time to capture the bullet in front of the camera. The bottom line is that this sort of thing can't be done with every-day equipment. It takes some really specialized hardware to do the job the way you probably imagine it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris_muller Posted January 16, 2005 Author Share Posted January 16, 2005 well thanks for the responses....it was just an idea...(that i will probably try anyway)...i think that i was thinking a little ahead of my league but i will imprivise and get back to you with the results....its kinda cold out but that might only add to the effect... thanks for your help Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lb- Posted January 17, 2005 Share Posted January 17, 2005 http://www.woodselec.com/HowTo.htm intersting read. cheers lucas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jim_leonard Posted January 17, 2005 Share Posted January 17, 2005 Well, as a quick comparison... my 550ex has a duration such that a pellet fired from my inexpensive (the low end of something that isn't just a cheap plastic gun, I think it claims 580 feet / sec) will be illuminated by the flash for about a distance of 1 inch at the lowest manual flash setting. More interesting is things being shot with the pellet gun because that won't be moving as fast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
erik_dahlbeck Posted January 17, 2005 Share Posted January 17, 2005 That comment on 155 mm howitzers was pretty close. Try photographing 120 mm mortars firing. They're about slow enough for it to be done with normal equipment. :-) Small arms tracers are also fun to shoot (with either MG or camera, hehe...). 84 mm recoilless rifle (Carl Gustaf) and similar rounds should also be possible to photograph. You'd need an army though... ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve_levine Posted January 17, 2005 Share Posted January 17, 2005 Harold (Doc) Edgerton at M.I.T. did this first, with a high speed strobe(which he invented).Even a pedestrian .22 long rifle bullet, leaves the muzzle of a rifle at 1200 feet per second.This means at 1/1000 of a second exposure, the bullet has moved 12 feet!At 1/10,000 of a second ,the bullet has moved 1.2 feet. If you watch carefully in bright light, many similar speed bullets can be seen with the nakid eye as they race down range.Freezing them with a strobe, is another story. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nikos peri Posted January 17, 2005 Share Posted January 17, 2005 Google for a sound trigger. The gun shot will trigger the camera, and you can adjust the actual moment the camera fires by adjusting the placement of the microphone. (Simple math of sound speed vs bullet speed). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markci Posted January 17, 2005 Share Posted January 17, 2005 **** Even a pedestrian .22 long rifle bullet, leaves the muzzle of a rifle at 1200 feet per second.This means at 1/1000 of a second exposure, the bullet has moved 12 feet!At 1/10,000 of a second ,the bullet has moved 1.2 feet. **** Wow, that's some pretty bad math. Try 1.2 feet and .12 feet. .22 LR rounds are a terrible choice anyway -- many handgun rounds are slower. Many .45 loads are around 800 fps. Or you can hand-load and make it about as slow as you want. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markci Posted January 17, 2005 Share Posted January 17, 2005 *** The gun shot will trigger the camera *** Good luck with that. The sound triggers the strobe, not the camera. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nikos peri Posted January 17, 2005 Share Posted January 17, 2005 Sans the sarcarsm Mike, yes, the action stopper is firing the flash, not the camera shutter. I assumed the OP and yourself had the photographic wherewithall to understand that basic assumption. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nikos peri Posted January 17, 2005 Share Posted January 17, 2005 Sorry, your name would be Mark, not Mike... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stephen hazelton Posted January 18, 2005 Share Posted January 18, 2005 Try shooting in the dark and photographing muzzle flash. Works well with black powder weaponry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emre_imamoglu Posted February 1, 2005 Share Posted February 1, 2005 <a href="http://www.fotografya.gen.tr/issue-7/caral/soz04.jpg">A Turkish Photojournalist's capture.</a> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexdi Posted February 1, 2005 Share Posted February 1, 2005 Emre: That's a Photoshop job. Even with the negligible muzzle rise from the shutter speed necessary for that shot, the bullet isn't aligned with the gun. Further, the bullet portion of the rifle round is much smaller than what appears in this shot. It looks like someone found a stock picture of an unfired round and motion-blurred it. It actually appears larger than the barrel of the gun. DI Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jim_gifford Posted February 3, 2005 Share Posted February 3, 2005 Perhaps the "Turkish photojournalist" shot is of a grenade round fired from the rifle? It would be comparatively massive, and comparatively slow. The more common approach nowadays is a grenade launcher affixed below a rifle barrel, but the weapon in that photo does not appear to have such an accessory launcher. Be well, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bob_tinsley Posted December 11, 2007 Share Posted December 11, 2007 Yup, that's a rifle grenade in that turkish photog. picture. You can tell, he's using the rifle launcher adaptor and ladder sights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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