Photo Journal

Session 1: February 23-25

    This was our first day of working on our project.  Dr. Winters instructed us on the proper usage and safety measures we would be using for our particular rifle.  Once we knew how to use the rifle, we set about setting up our experiment.  We tapped up a black backdrop behind the CD, set up our flash unit, moved our pellet trap into place,  and used our clamp to hold the CD where we wanted it.  A diagram of our setup can be seen on our Methods and Setup page.  We then set up our camera on a tripod a distance away and determined the proper focus and zoom needed for the optimal picture. 

    Now it was time to find the delay necessary to see the pellet in our picture.  After a little experimentation we found the proper delay.  Since none of us were quite sure what exactly would happen when we shot the CD, we experimented with shooting the CD from different angles to see how it would react.  From this we discovered that we would need a protective shield to protect the camera from flying debris.  Here are a few pictures from our initial setup, which remained the same throughout our project:

    We took a few pictures in order to determine the right amount of exposure, focus, and zoom.  After we had determined exactly how the CDs would react and had our whole set up finished, we were done with our first session. 

Session 2: February 27-March 2

    Now that we had all of our setup ready and camera settings, we were ready to begin our first real photo shoot.  Here are a few of our first photos that didn’t come out so well.  We learned that the quality of the image also depended upon the color and design on the front of the CD.  We afterwards decided to use CDs with a solid non reflective cover on the front, as they would show up better in the picture.  

As you can see, the reflective CDs did not show up well in our pictures

 We were also working on getting our timing down so that the collision could be better captured in the image.  We were also having trouble getting the entire CD to crack when shot, so we began drilling holes in the CD in order to weaken up it and allow it to crack much easier.  This is what the CDs looked like after they had been drilled to weaken them up.  We had to experiment with different methods of drilling the holes before we found a successful method.  Our final method was to drill around 10 holes in one concentrated part of the CD where we planning to shoot it. 

By the end of the shoot we were able to get several good images.  An ongoing problem throughout our experiment however was being able to line the CD up directly beneath the rifle.  This is largely due the fact that the rifle had a fair amount of leeway to move around within its harness.  Despite this problem we were able to get several good pictures. 

Session 3: March 3

    With our first session of photos under our belt, we decided to use our second photo shoot to make sure that everything about our pictures was perfect.  We used CDs that we drilled with a great deal of holes to makes sure they would break nicely.  We also switched our previous glass shield for a brand new one which was much cleaner and clearer.  We also began using a white piece of paper above the pellet trap, and firing a test shot in order to determine where the shot was going to help with lining up the CD.  Using these new changes we were able to capture several more high quality photographs.

    After we finished our second photo shoot we were happy with the quality of our photos.