High speed shooting shooting

pullandbang

Yesterday I tried (unsuccessfully) to get a photo of shot leaving the barrel of my gun. I tried a variety of shutter speeds from 1,000th to 8,000th of a second but all I got were boring shots of the barrel. I'm using Canon 40D which gives about 6fps (I think) and I fired off a burst as each shotgun blast was happening. My mate pulled the trigger as I fired the camera.

You'd imagine I'd get something leaving the barrels - smoke, a blurry trail, anything. But no, nothing as you can see below. The bottom shot where the barrel is pushed back to the right is the backward movement of the barrel caused by the recoil - but still nothing coming out the end!

Am I approaching this the wrong way? Should I be using slower shutter speeds? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

ThOnda

Yes, you are approaching it in a wrong way. The basics of high speed photography is open shutter, do action, get triggering signal by contact/sensor/microphone, time delay, flash the flash, close the shutter :-)
Good luck with that and don't shoot anybody.

Borderfox

Try it from the front Denis, guaranteed results I reckon its a matter of timing and being lucky. I shot some Hurling over the weekend and the ball is only in one frame of every 10 fps burst

http://www.alaska-in-pictures.com/data/media/9/barrell-of-a-gun_5207.jpg

pullandbang

Borderfox wrote: »

Try it from the front Denis, guaranteed results

Knew a chap that tried that once..........................Lord rest him!

The basics of high speed photography is open shutter, do action, get triggering signal by contact/sensor/microphone, time delay, flash the flash, close the shutter

ThOnda, say that again......slowly........(I used to be blonde before I turned grey)

ThOnda

Basically, the high speed photography is done by using flash to do the exposure. Duration of light flash from an electronic flash is much much shorter than possibilities of electromechanical shutter.

Google is your friend, there are really nice tutorials out there. Sorry for not helping more. Please, don't shoot me...

macnab

HHHHHHHHmmmmmmm, now I am going to have to try that too ha ha, I havent touched the gun since I bought the SLR so maybe this is a good excuse to marry the 2 hobbies.

CabanSail

SLR is also the acronmyn for Self Loading Rifle.

Saint_Mel

CabanSail wrote: »

SLR is also the acronmyn for Self Loading Rifle.

And you can buy one in Gunns .................:eek:
I'll get my coat ...

Morrisseeee

Pullandbang shoots no shot !
Shoot aboandoned due to no shot being shot !
No shot shot during shoot !

....and my fav:
Pullandbang shot the shoot with no shot !

/...just trying to come up with some headlines

pullandbang

Morrisseeee wrote: »

/...just trying to come up with some headlines

Of course you forgot the obvious......the one about firing blanks

hcnyla

A member in the South Kildare Camera club, Stephen O'Reilly, did exactly this late last year. His effort is below. I believe he used a very long shutter speed, >10 seconds in a pitch black room. He built a sound detector unit which fired a flash at the moment the bullet was fired. I think! It may have been a light detector also which detected the flash from the bullet, I can't remember.

I can give you his email address if you wish and you can ask him about it yourself. The result of his effort is below.

pullandbang

Don't think I could discharge a shotgun in a room :eek: but it could be done in a dark field.

If you could PM me his email I'll ask him about triggering the flash.

Thanks.

balcol

Hi folks

Yep It's my shot flickr link below.... Actually I used a laser pointer aimed at a light sensor to detect the passage of the bullet. The idea of using sound was not good as the bullet's speed was 377 m/s and sound travels approx 300 m/s which meant that a change in the distance between the gun and the microphone would mean a change in the distance the bulet would have travelled before the flash fired. The lighting I used was a battery of flashes set to auto shutdown at f/8 giving a flash duration of ~50uS (1/20,000 sec) which if you do the math means the bullet will travel about 19mm during the flash period. Any slower would have meant a blur instead of an image. The electronics was quite simple, the photodetector fed one side of an operational amplifer the other side being fed by a potential divider which set the trigger sensitivity, the output of the op-amp fed the trigger of a bank of thyristors one for each flash. If you want any more info, send me a flickr mail and I'll see what I can do.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenoreilly/3545851961/

Best regards

DK32

Here are a few taken on my brother in-law's stag.

pullandbang

DK32 wrote: »

Here are a few taken on my brother in-law's stag.

I have lots of pics with smoke from the barrels. In fact in the one below you can see the smoke, the plastic wad (just left of bottom of pole) and the clay actually breaking (left near top of pole). The chap that took this one of me just got lucky with the timing.



However thats not what I was after. It's exactly what balcol posted - the shot as it leaves the barrel - in my case a bunch of pellets. Will have to put the thinking cap on.

sheesh

could you use a strobe so? at night. the strobe would only be on for a few milliseconds the bullet would only appear in one place as it would be out of frame by the time a second flash from the strobe. it would be an interesting project.

plus it would involve guns!:eek: