Well after about 30 apples, and 30 .22 gauge bullets, I realized that it is impossible to capture a bullet going through an apple without the right equipment or lighting. I captured some great explosions of the apple with a .22 gauge shotgun, but no luck with the bullet. Considering some bullets fly at 1200m/s, even at a 1/4000 shutter speed, the bullet would travel 1.5 inches in that shot. FAST!!! I really wanted to get this type of a picture for this challenge so I had to find a way to make it happen. So I decided to add a bit of flavor to it.
I saw this air gun a while back and decided to give it a try and make one. Not knowing how it would work and how it would shoot a bullet, I went ahead and built it. Below I have a link of what it looked like, and how I built it. I set the apple on some old wallpaper and used a music stand behind it and layed some wallpaper over it. I had some good light outside so no extra lighting was needed.
I loaded a muzzle loader bullet with thumgum into the chamber, I filled the chamber with Co2 and shot. Success....it blew the apple up, but no bullet in shot. After another run to the store for more apples, (thanks to my wife) I tried different PSI's and distance's to try and capture it. My friend Todd stood about 20 ft away, he would yell 3....2....1...FIRE....at that moment I hit the trigger. We filled it to about 200PSI and after a couple of blurred shots I adjusted the shutter speed and ISO, he shot....and boom, I had a bullet in the shot, but it was too much OOF. After about 15 more, I did a back flip, I got one. Went home put it on the computer and saw a success. So after about 50 apples, 30 bullets, 20 muzzle loader bullets, lots of rags to clean my setup, the lens, and my face, I got my shot. The End.
Note: No apples went to waiste during this shoot. All were used to make wine.
Adjustments:
Shot in Raw
Sharpened, Curves, Brightness, Saturation
In Jpeg
Brightness & Contrast, Selective Color, Hue & Saturation
Curves, Boost Contrast Again
Resize Image, Neat Image, Sharpen, Neat Image, Sharpen
Heal slightly behind bullet, and on foreground piece of apple.
Resize, Add border, Save for Web
Thanks everyone for all the great comments and votes, I did get a few during the challenge that said this was impossible and trick photography so I believe thats why the low votes, and have even recieved e-mails saying still its no good, but I do have the original unedited ready to send out to anyone in question. I am happy for the top 10 though. So thanks again.
Statistics
Place: 6 out of 138 Avg (all users): 6.8743 Avg (commenters): 8.5909 Avg (participants): 6.4828 Avg (non-participants): 7.0684 Views since voting: 8524 Views during voting: 535 Votes: 175 Comments: 43 Favorites: 7 (view)
Have to give you props for even attempting a shot like this. I see this type of photography and am always in awe. Ya done good. Great capture - I didn't vote on this challenge, but it would have scored well with me. It's always amazing to me to see all that can happen in a single moment in time.
I built a similar "potato" gun back in college for a project. It had a 6-inch diameter 10-foot long barrel and fired a 2 lb projectile 1,000 feet up in the air. Lots of fun! I used tennis balls to test it before launching more intricate stuff.
After reading your pain staking story, I think a better title for the picture would be Apple Sauce!
Well done, I can't imagine what the studio must have looked like after 50 apples
Wow, wow, wow, Sean, I'm really impressed by the effort that went into this. So it's really "real". Awesome!
I think this shot should have won a ribbon. You probably got low votes from the people who express their socio-political views on guns (or apples. ;-) ) this way instead of rating the quality of the picture.
Congrats on the top ten placing. I am so glad to see this placing so well. I was fairly sure I wasn't looking at a bullet in flight but I couldn't workout how else you cold get an apple to explode like that. It was worth all the time & effort
Awesome picture! I'd like to see it on the front page. Is it real? Did you really catch the bullet right after hitting the apple or is it some kind of setup?
I've looked at this a number of times and I think it is just a little too chaotic. The foreground blur takes away from what would otherwise be an amazing capture amazing capture.
I'm blown away by the timing of this image (forgive the pun)and the amount of time it must have taken to get this image with impecible clarity of the speeding bullet. Superb, outstanding, fascinating, spectacular! A 10 without question. This takes the challenge to a whole new level. If this isn't the blue ribbon winner I'll be very disappointed.
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