How to stop a bullet?

revenater · Aug 12, 2012

I am going shooting (with guns) later with my husband and some friends, I want to use this as a photo shoot also I want to freeze a bullet as it exit the barrel. So my question is what shutter speed and iso should I try? It is an overcast day so not much sun light and it will be in an open field. Any help would be appreciated. I shoot with a canon 5d mark II if that helps any.

Mach0 · Aug 12, 2012

revenater said:
I am going shooting (with guns) later with my husband and some friends, I want to use this as a photo shoot also I want to freeze a bullet as it exit the barrel. So my question is what shutter speed and iso should I try? It is an overcast day so not much sun light and it will be in an open field. Any help would be appreciated. I shoot with a canon 5d mark II if that helps any.

ISO would be whatever it took to get a properly exposed subject with fast shutter speed. I have never shot this before but if it were me, I'd spray and pray lol.

Animaniac888 · Aug 12, 2012

Bump up your ISO as high as you can without murdering your image with noise and use the fastest shutter speed you can. Perhaps you could try to use a flash to freeze the bullet.

amolitor · Aug 12, 2012

This is normally done with a strobe (flash) which is carefully synced to the firing of the gun. Given that a fairly slow bullet moves at 10,000ish bullet-lengths per second, you're not going to get a clear photo of the thing with any shutter speed, even if you can solve the synchronization problem (which you can't, without electronics or a great deal of luck, or a great number of trials, or all three).

cgipson1 · Aug 12, 2012

^ What Amolitor said! Nearly impossible without the right gear!

revenater · Aug 12, 2012

Ok thank you I guess camera stays at home this time around

bobandcar · Aug 12, 2012

Hell just try it, so you mite have to delete a photo.

Fastest shutter possible with a flash is what I would try.

revenater · Aug 12, 2012

bobandcar
thanks I might do that my hubby wants pictures of him shooting his new pistol anyways.

AaronLLockhart · Aug 12, 2012

good luck. even with a 1/8000 shutter this is next to impossible

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/general-gallery/294975-muzzle-blast-recoil.html

table1349 · Aug 12, 2012

Actually it isn't that hard, if you have a decent ability to build electrical devices or want to spend the money.
Camera Axe

Stradawhovious · Aug 12, 2012

cgipson1 said:
^ What Amolitor said! Nearly impossible without the right gear!

Shutter speed has nothing to do with it. Even at 1/8,000 you wouldn't have any luck at all. It's all about the light.

I have tried with normal speedlights..... Nikon B-600, SB-25, SB-28 etc, and none of them, even at their lowers power settings (shortest flash duration) are fast enough to even begin to capture a bullet in flight. That would translate to about 1/30,000th of a second burst of light.

I've circled the bullet here......

This was with a sub sonic .22 out of a handgun. The bullet speed on this was less than 500fps. If you are shooting anything of a harder caliber than that, it will be moving MUCH faster. .45 will be 800-900fps, 9mm will be moving 1,000fps or so etc. If ou get into rifle country, a pill from a .30-06 will be moving close to 3,000fps.... so you can see the issue here.

Unless you have absolutely no ambient light, and a flash capable of over 1/100,000th of a second burst of light ($3,500+ microflash), I say you don't stand a chance. Sorry!

AaronLLockhart · Aug 12, 2012

Stradawhovious said:
Shutter speed has nothing to do with it. Even at 1/8,000 you wouldn't have any luck at all. It's all about the light.

I have tried with normal speedlights..... Nikon B-600, SB-25, SB-28 etc, and none of them, even at their lowers power settings (shortest flash duration) are fast enough to even begin to capture a bullet in flight. That would translate to about 1/30,000th of a second burst of light.

I've circled the bullet here......

This was with a sub sonic .22 out of a handgun. The bullet speed on this was less than 500fps. If you are shooting anything of a harder caliber than that, it will be moving MUCH faster. .45 will be 800-900fps, 9mm will be moving 1,000fps or so etc. If ou get into rifle country, a pill from a .30-06 will be moving close to 3,000fps.... so you can see the issue here.

Unless you have absolutely no ambient light, and a flash capable of over 1/100,000th of a second burst of light ($3,500+ microflash), I say you don't stand a chance. Sorry!

You just said shutter speed has nothing to do with it, and then said that you would need a speedlight with 1/30,000 burst speed to capture it... Which would still require a shutter fast enough to capture it.

So, please elaborate how shutter has nothing to do with it?

Stradawhovious · Aug 12, 2012

revenater said:
Ok thank you I guess camera stays at home this time around

Bring it! You can get some great shots at the range!

usayit · Aug 12, 2012

AaronLLockhart said:
You just said shutter speed has nothing to do with it, and then said that you would need a speedlight with 1/30,000 burst speed to capture it... Which would still require a shutter fast enough to capture it.

So, please elaborate how shutter has nothing to do with it?

Flash photography has two exposures:

Ambient exposure which is framed by the Aperture and Shutter speed.
Flash exposure which is framed by the flash pulse and aperture.

In situations like fill, the photographer needs to take into account both exposures. If you take ambient (as indicated by Stradawhovious) out of the picture then you are only working with flash exposure as the only light source is the short pulse from the flash. In this case, you need a very short pulse of light to stop action the bullet in flight and an appropriate aperture. Shutter settings play little to no role.

Stradawhovious · Aug 12, 2012

AaronLLockhart said:
You just said shutter speed has nothing to do with it, and then said that you would need a speedlight with 1/30,000 burst speed to capture it... Which would still require a shutter fast enough to capture it.

So, please elaborate how shutter has nothing to do with it?

High Speed photography 101.

If your only source of light is a 1/30,000th of a second burst of light, you shutter can be open for an hour and still get the same eposure as if it were only open for a fraction of a second. Besides, the sync speed for any camera is generally not over 1/250th anyways.

All of these images were taken with long shutter speeds, and the only source of light was a short burst of light from the flash. Much faster than any shtter speed my camera is capable of.

6.1 second shutter speed.

1/60th shutter speed.

1 second

2 seconds

I could go on, but I think those make the point. Fact is, in this type of photography, shutter speed really has nothing to do with the image captured. As long as the shutter is open when the light source fires, you will get the image, regardless of ho long it is open.

Now..... if there was enough ambient light to affect the exposure, all of the above would be nothing more than a blur.