We were shooting tonight at Korsholm's Indoor Shooting Range in Skjern, Denmark. Jason Marais took a couple of photos while I was shooting a Blazer in 6.5 x 55. He took this photo of what we think is the bullet head in flight, or is it? We would like to hear your comments.

Whether or not this is a picture of a bullet in flight will depend largely on the shutter speed on the camera, or on the duration of a stroboscopic-like light flash.

Depending on the load, the muzzle velocity of the bullet from your 6.5x55 was approximately 2500 feet per second.

If your camera had a shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second, the bullet would have moved about 2.5 feet during the time the shutter was open, so the image of the bullet would be a streak that long.

If, somehow, you had a shutter speed of 1/10000 of a second, the bullet would have moved about 0.25 foot (3 inches) while the shutter was open.

In order to have a photo of a bullet in flight, you would need a shutter speed -- or stroboscopic flash, or recording time on a digital image -- of a duration on the order of only 1/100000 second (to produce a bullet streak of 0.025 foot (or 0.3 inches). It's possible, but unlikely, I think, that you somehow achieved that.

If you are interested in photographing bullets in flight, a good place to begin would be to study the work of the late Harold Edgerton. See Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Eugene_Edgerton

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bullet or not, it's a great photograph!

Small enough to see without sliding the image halfway to Zimbabwe:

slic pic!!!!!!!!,,you scan.'s really love the 6.5X55!!!!

LE270, as you said the speed of the flash will determine how long in flight the bullet is illuminated. The flash will fire for a far less shorter time than the shutter is open. As shown in the photo there is also the begining of a muzzle flash. I'd go with remarkably good luck on timing the picture.

quote:

Originally posted by Sam:

LE270, as you said, the speed of the flash will determine how long in flight the bullet is illuminated. The flash will fire for a far shorter time than the shutter is open. As shown in the photo there is also the beginning of a muzzle flash. I'd go with remarkably good luck on timing the picture.

A flash set to Manual will flash for 1/1000 second. It's a common duration. Set on Auto, they can be as short as 1/40,000 second. At 1/1000, a rifle bullet would show about a three-foot smear across the frame. At 1/40,000, you'd see a smear of just under an inch, assuming 3,000 fps.

Sweet pic dude! I'd say you got a bullet.

As far as all these comments about how many feet the bullet would be streaking across the pic...I'd say disregard them. These calculations would only apply if the picture was taken at the exact instant the bullet left the muzzle. But it looks to me that the picture was taken an instant before the bullet left the muzzle.

Also, I downloaded the pic to my desktop and looked at the EXIF data. But I really don't believe it.
1) Shutter 1/8 sec
2) F-stop 2.6
3) ISO 800

Considering how dark the entire photo is, with these numbers everything ought to be BRIGHT! Thanks for posting I love it!