Photo Journal  

 

From here, you can see the alignment of the gun, which is held down by C-clamps.  Further down, you can see the bulb and behind the bulb is the BB trap.  The yellow box next to the gun is the safety light switch.  To the left of the bulb, you can see the flashes and behind the flashes is a black backdrop of our setup.

This view shows our Apple II+ Intervalometer timer and the Gameport interface box that we used to connect and time our setup . The rotating mirror is in the center of the photograph with the laser pointer situated above it on a rather precarious setup of bars.  The Nikon D1 was situated on top of a tripod aimed at the rotating mirror to allow the rotating mirror to display different images of bulbs on varying places of the film.

A closer view showing the camera aimed at the rotating mirror, the monitor we used for viewing the photographs after they had been taken by the Nikon D1 (simply to make our lives easier) and the computer intervalometer for timing.  Off to the side our time-consuming black backdrop is present as well as the pedestal for the bulb.

In the beginning, there was light.  This is a picture of the camera catching the lit bulb in the mirror.  As the mirror moves forward, the light exposes a new part of the “film” (digital media, in this case) and we get a streak of light.  Unfortunately, we were lacking in distinct bulbs.

Next we were able to see bulbs, but we had problems seeing all of the bulbs.  We were able to fix this by changing mirror delay in a guess-and-test method.  Our calculations were able to get us close, but we had to fine tune things through experimentation.  This picture is a series of our attempts, starting at the beginning (bulb_10_bbafvp.TIF) and ending at a successful capture of all the bulbs (bulb_13_bbafvp.TIF).

 

We used both large and small bulbs in our escapades, this being an example of our small bulbs.  This is pretty typical – they gave a smaller streak of light throughout and were not as noticeable because they did not have the silica powder coating of the bigger bulbs that helped reflect the light from the flashes.

 

By changing the flight time, we were able to see all parts of the break of a light bulb as the BB hit it.  The streak is from having the bulb on the entire time.  Getting pictures like this, of varying degrees in the stage of breaking, turned into our project.  For more pictures and intimate details of the project, see Analysis and Discussion and Photo Gallery.