Elias Amador

You might try a Vela flash, here is their blurb: http://www.vela.io/vela-one-high-speed-flash:

" VELA ONE HIGH SPEED FLASH
VELA POP HIGH SPEED SOUND TRIGGER

Vela One: The fastest flash in the world
The Vela One is the fastest flash you can buy. Take pin-sharp photos of supersonic bullets and explosions using a normal SLR. The pulse width is adjustable between 500ns (1/2,000,000 sec) and 5µs (1/200,000 sec), which is fast enough to freeze a high velocity rifle bullet in flight.

Your flash is too slow. High speed photography relies on a fast flash. Just like shutter speed with action photography, it's the duration of the flash that is important when capturing bullets and explosions. A typical speedlight has a duration of around 1/20,000 second (50 microseconds) on its fastest setting. This may sound fast, but a bullet will travel over 5cm or two inches in that time and will be so blurred it's almost invisible. Studio flashes are even slower. For pin-sharp shots you need a much faster flash, and the Vela One is 100 times faster. With a flash speed starting at 1/2,000,000 second, or 500 nanoseconds, the Vela One will stop a supersonic, high velocity rifle bullet in its tracks.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH HIGH-SPEED PHOTOGRAPHY
We've all seen the beautiful high speed shots of bullets passing through playing cards and apples. If you want to take these sort of photos today, you will either need a high speed camera costing tens of thousands of dollars, or a dangerous and expensive air gap flash. These use a high voltage spark to generate the short, bright flash needed. As they run at over 25,000 volts and need regular and dangerous electrode replacement, it's not surprising you can't buy them commercially. If you want one you either need to buy a vintage one for thousands of dollars, or you must build one yourself. Many super talented people have done this, but it's not an option for most of us. We wanted to solve this.

THE VELA SOLUTION: A MILLION LUMENS
To solve the problem we turned to LEDs. Until now this has been impossible, as high speed flashes need to be extremely bright in order to get enough light onto your sensor in such a short period. We worked out we'd need to aim for up to one million lumens. If we used regular ultra-bright (500lm) LEDs we would need around 2000 to achieve this. This is obviously far too expensive and impractical. Instead we turned to the latest "chip-on-board" LEDs. These are designed for for applications such as exterior lighting of large buildings. Even at ten times the brightness of the regular LEDs we'd need 200 of them, which is still far too expensive and impractical. This is where we had to get clever. After months of experimenting with different circuits and LEDs, we have built a circuit that drives nine LEDs up to 20 times brighter than rated, without damaging them or overheating, pumping out up to one million lumens. We've flashed our test units hundreds of thousands of times, and they power on through. That's years of normal use, and far longer than a speedlight will last."

The great photos of apples + speeding bullets make downloading the Vela web page worthwhile. I was unable to copy them here.

Buckeye73

The Vela Flash sounds like it would work but I don't want to spend $1,500. for one project.

Shutterbugger2 Loc: Chicago

As I recall from reading his book, Edgerton used a 1 micro farad capacitor operating at 20,000 volts, to power an air spark. The spark traveled along a quartz tube that served to quench the spark for shortest duration.
I forgot how he triggered the spark.
As I recall the book was Electronic Flash, Strobe (1970). I seem to have misplaced it.
~Bob~

Elias Amador

Edgerton's book: 'Electronic Flash, Strobe' is available from Amazon for a mere $175 to $1,255 - cheap. His book: 'Flash, Seeing the Unseen' is also a bargain, at some $1,400. When you buy a copy, please lend it to me.

bdk Loc: Sanibel Fl.

get a pellet gun and hollow pellets ..they will look a lot like a 9mm bullet .. try stopping one of them, many shoot at speeds of 480 FPS , you may be able to get it coming out of the apple. just a thought ,

TomiGami

Since the blur is in one direction and the background is constant, how about shrinking the image in one direction to unblur. Just a theory. You know the length of the streaking bullet and the length of a bullet. Their ratio should provide a shrink ratio. Easy to try.

Vaun's photography Loc: Bonney Lake, WA

Nice images anyway! Some interesting ideas put forth on how you might be successful in capturing the bullet in flight. Hope you can succeed without spending a fortune!

mundy-F2 Loc: Chicago suburban area

I do not have any help for you, but the apple shot is nice.
Mundy

BartHx

It was the general's apple, but it was rotten to the corps.

GMAT

Adam I warned you not to bring that apple near me.

hpucker99 Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

You can find these in estate sales....

GMAT

Adam I warned you not to bring that apple near me.

Julian Loc: Sarasota, FL

JBRIII

I can't express how much I agree!!!!!

I know it is not proper to say, but so true. By the way my wife of 49 yrs agrees.

JBRIII

A few months ago, my interest of the moment was high speed photography. Lots of old books available. Imaging trying to do 100,000 frames per sec. with film. Not just a lighting problem, film does not like moving at those speeds.