Faster than a speeding bullet!

[PennsyPlinker]

Greetings all

We were cleaning out a storage room in the house, and came across some pictures that never made it onto the walls when we moved. Below is one of them. This is an unretouched photo taken back in 1985. It has suffered the ravages of time, including getting wet at one point, so that the emulsion on the paper is welded to the glass of the frame. The story behind it is below.



Right after Mrs. Plinker and I got married, we bought a house. At the time we had no children, so we converted our spare bedroom into a darkroom for black and white photography. We also made friends with some folks at our church who were of the same age. My friend Mike and I would get together on Sunday afternoons after church and shoot in his backyard. Eventually he and his wife bought a house in town just about a mile down the road from us. We were still close, but we lost our shooting range, and with it our Sunday afternoon past time.

One day in church, Mike came up to me and asked me what I thought about trying to take a picture of a bullet coming out of a gun. We both knew it had been done, but we were poor, low tech kind of guys, so we didn't have the fancy stuff that other photographers had access to. We discussed the problem over the next few weeks, and came up with various solutions. We were attempting to bring together the desire to do something really cool with our love for shooting, my photographic experience, and his studies in electrical engineering.

We would come home from church, swallow our lunches whole, and I would race down to his house. We would then set things up in his basement, run our experiment with a roll of film, jump in our cars and race back to my house to develop the film. If we did well, we could be hanging the film up to dry and still have enough time to eat dinner and make it back for the evening service. Our first few attempts were failures, but we were having a blast (so to speak) and we kept on trying. This picture was the end result of several weeks of experiments.

The successful combination worked out this way. Mike built an electrical circuit using an LED that would trip the flash of my camera any time the beam of light was broken. We set the flash at its lowest power setting, which according to the information printed on its side gave a flash duration of 1/23,500 sec. the flash and camera were set up on a tripod off to the side of the shooting booth, which was a bench with the LED poking up through a black cloth, and a backstop full of rags. Our light source, which can be seen in the picture, was a penlight with a plumbing fitting over the end to restrict the spread of light.

The gun was a .357 magnum, loaded with light loads to slow the bullet down as much as possible. To get each shot, Mike would aim the gun at the box of rags, with the barrel lined up so that the bullet would pass over the LED. One he was braced and ready to go, I would turn out the lights, and open the shutter on the camera. He would fire the gun, I would close the shutter and turn on the lights, and then we would repeat the process. We shot an entire roll of film, and raced to the darkroom at my house to develop it. Prints were made later on that week for anyone who wanted one. What you see above was the best of several shots, in more ways than one.

Of course, some people did not believe us. They accused of us hanging the bullet from a string, and other fanciful ideas that sprang into their heads. They could not conceive that two kids could do such a thing with low tech methods. But we didn't care. We had lots of fun. We also had big plans of photographing bullets going through apples, cutting cards in half, and improving the image in all sorts of ways. But advanced education, little babies, and all the other cares of life got in the way, and this was the last time we ever got to shoot in his basement. Not long afterward our darkroom came down to make way for a nursery, and it has not been resurrected to this day. I may never make another shot like this again, but I am glad I have this one. I hope that anyone here reading this finds it enjoyable, and if there are any questions, I will be glad to try and answer them. Who knows if someone else out there can duplicate this and do even better with some of the stuff available today!

[normanvin]

Pretty cool story.

Coincidently I am going shooting on Monday. I will be getting paid for it. We are trying to do some stuff with ballistic material. the company wants to see how the new stuff stands up to the old stuff before we have to spend big bucks to have it tested.

We have a guy that took some photography classes. he is hoping to catch the bullet as it enters the ballistic pad. I will post the pics if he pulls it off.

[CommonHighrise]

That is beyond cool. Ive seen a million and one 'bullet in flight' photos, and dozens of super-duper slow motion captures of the same, but to think that image came from some, pardon the term, 'good ole' boys' in a basement, blows my mind.

Think there'd be any way to get a good hi-res scan of that, even with it adhered to the back? Id love to buy a print to hang up.

[PennsyPlinker]

Thanks guys! CHR, look for a PM.

[1blindref]

Very cool indeed! I love the black and white photo.
Thank for sharing

[4XLT]

that is the ultimate of cool man, thanks fro sharing the story with us !!

[PennsyPlinker]

Thanks guys, I am glad you enjoyed the pic and the story behind it.