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Household Objects Shooting

This page is dedicated to shooting random household objects with an air rifle.

In all these pictures, pellet entry is from the left hand side.

Instant mashed potato.
Not a King Edward
The shocking power of the pellet is so great, that about half of the potato is reduced to paste. Interestingly, the entry hole from the left is much bigger than the exit hole on the right.

Punching a neat hole through glass.
40W Light Bulb
The glass removed by the pellet is reduced to a fine powder, this can be seen emerging to the right.

That's one dead biscuit !
McVities Chocolate Digestive

The exploding apple
Only 35p a pound
In contrast to the potato, the exit hole is bigger than the entry hole. Two thirds of the fruit is reduced to jelly.

A Rorschack ink-blot test in 3D !
Psycho-analysis using milk...
This is my favourite, a miniature milk container. You can see the foil lid being lifted on a column of liquid.

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The Rifle

A BSA Mercury .177 achieving nearly 830 feet per second with RWS match pellets.

The Camera

An old Pentax spotmatic on "time" setting in total darkness. Ilford XP2 400ASA black and white film rated at only 200ASA (using the Zone system) to give better shadow detail.

How it was done

The shutter on the camera was left open in total darkness. About a foot to the right of the object is two sheets of kitchen foil held very close together, but not touching. Each sheet of foil is connected to one of the two flashgun contacts.

The rifle is aligned so that when the shot is fired, the pellet passes through the object and hits the sheets of foil, touching them together and setting off the flashgun.

To avoid harsh lighting, the flash was bounced off a white card. The camera was placed 4 feet from the subject with a 105mm lens set to f5.6 with the reflector board about 2 feet from the subject. The flash gun was set to quarter power to achieve a shorter flash.

Improvements

I should have used a neutral colour background paper, and the camera angle could have been better, also a proper high speed flash gun would achieve a much sharper image. An audio flash trigger would enable the camera to capture the pellet in mid air.

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Last Update - 19 April 2000.