When the Nikon D200 fall out in 2005 , it was a big hit . ( At the time , Gizmodo said it was “ pretty rawkin . ” ) But would you believe that a decade - erstwhile tv camera aim could handle extremist mellow f number picture taking , like the awful smoke - blasted peanut butter cup inject above ? Turns out , a well designed workflow is all it get .
The image of peanut butter cup slaughterwas a fun Halloween treatfrom the smart common people at MIT ’s Edgerton Center . You might recognize the name as it come from Harold “ Doc ” Edgerton , the famous MIT professor and champion of hands - on learning that make a similar gamey speed photo of a bullet passing through an apple all the way of life back in 1964 . For the photo of a bullet extend through three peanut vine butter cups , Dr. Jim Bales , Kris Bronner , and Moseley Andrews recreated Edgerton ’s original limit up except for one key difference . rather of using a heavy format picture show camera , however , this year ’s team used a regular erstwhile Nikon D200 and a 105 mm macro crystalline lens .
Again , the Nikon D200 is a groovy camera . But it ’s not really equipped with the shutter stop number to capture a bullet mid - flight . So what Bales and company did — like Edgerton before them — was create their own shutter of sorts . The scientist set up the pic shoot in a completely dark room and left the camera shutter open . Then , they used a SPOT strobe visible radiation from Prism Science work to illuminate the conniption for just 500 nanosecond . That ’s one half of one one-millionth of a endorsement . Very tight , indeed .
So you must be wondering : How did they know when to activate the shutter ? Sound and elementary math , my friends . A quarry rifle borrowed from the MIT rifle team was used to fire the bullet , but a reasonably dewy-eyed microphone set - up was used to activate the strobe Inner Light at the exact right time . Dr. Jim Bales explained to me in an email :
We do this using the same method Edgerton used . We have a mike just up range from the subject . The first strait to reach the mic is * not * the sound of the break loose gunpowder in the rifle . Rather , the first phone to reach the mic the transonic boom that accompanies the supersonic bullet as it flies through the air ( the “ scissure ” of a bullet pass by ) . We have a unit of measurement ( a StopShot , by Cognisys , Inc ) that triggers the strobe when it detects that sonic roaring .
And that ’s it ! It would n’t needs be easy to create this set up in your own photo studio , given the caliber of equipment postulate and the danger of displace a rifle indoors . It ’s exciting to know that you little old DSLR is up to of some unbelievable thing under the right circumstances . Also , go science !
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