Bob wrote: "I'm speaking from a position of almost total ignorance here, but surely a bullet is travelling 2 or 3 times faster than sound? Over the short distances involved is it really possible to do this?"
bullet velocities can vary between 700 fps and 2300 fps for common guns. There are other more exotic ones that approach 4000 fps. I could make some custom loads that would be around 500 fps but the pictures may not be as dramatic. I'll be conducting these experiments in daylight at a rifle range unless I can figure out some way to build a bullet trap in my basement. <G> I would have thought a light or electric trigger would be better. e.g. fit the trigger or the hammer of the gun with an electrical gizmo to fire the flash. I will try to do this in daylight with flash equipment set relatively close to the target for maximum power. My camera will be a bit further away with a telephoto lens (I don't want splattered fruit all over my lens!). I thought I'd stop the lens down to f/22 and shoot at maximum flash synch speed. Hopefully, the flash duration will be short enough to freeze the bullet and the small aperture will minimize the daylight exposure on the film. At 700 fps a bullet travels 5.6 feet in 1/125th of a second so I have to eliminate daylight as a light source. This may require a box with the flashes poking through holes in the side. A flash duration of 1/50,000 of a second would give me bullet movement of .168". That might be the best I can reasonable expect. I don't know what the shortest possible duration of my flash equipment is. I have an AF400FTZ and a METZ 50 MZ-5. They can supposedly be operated together. Hopefully the combination in TTL mode will give me the short flash duration that I will need to make this work. This isn't something I'll be doing next week unless the weather gets a lot warmer. Thank you everyone for all your input and suggestions. Hopefully I'll be able to report back that I got some really cool shots. Tom Reese
