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Conclusion

    The goal of our project was to capture images of a bullet shattering two bulbs hung in a row. Though we originally planned to shoot three bulbs and use multiple flashes with colored filters to show progression of the bulbs shattering, we ended up shooting only one or two bulbs with a single flash unit for the majority of the project due to time constraints.

    The bulbs were hung from a ring stand in a row and the gun was located at the side so that the bullet would hit one bulb after the other. Using a Nikon CoolPix 990 digital camera and Vivitar 283 flash units, we photographed various bulbs getting shattered by BBs and pellets. We used a piezoelectric sound trigger to set off the flash, and also a resistor to create a shorter flash. For a few pictures we used colored filters of blue, green, red and orange on four flash units to capture a progression of the bulbs bursting. Our camera settings were: an f-stop of 5.5, bulb shutter setting, and ISO rating of 400. For our last few pictures we switched to using a camera with a functioning zoom.

    We started off by shooting only one bulb with a single flash and then proceeded to using two bulbs. We also took several pictures with the colored filters and multiple flash units, but went back to using only one flash unit (see Method and Setup).

    We encountered various challenges throughout the project such as finding the appropriate time delay, pumping the rifle the right amount of times to create the desired shatter, aiming the rifle so that both bulbs got hit, broken chords, etc. However, we still were able to capture some good images of bulbs bursting (see Gallery).

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