How to take a photo of something on the inside of your handgun barrel

After three days of struggling, I finally figured out how to take photos of the inside of a barrel, to post here.  
If you ever want to do this, here's how.
I used an iPhone, but any recent smart phone will do.

• Go to a well lit place, outdoors is excellent, or a room with good lighting.
  
• Grip the barrel with your left hand. Wrap the hand around the barrel, so that a lot of your hand will appear in the photo.
  
• Position your hand to be directly over the place in the barrel that you want to show in your photograph.
  
• Aim the barrel at a light colored area, such as the floor.
  
• Hold your phone upside down, so your right hand and finger to take the photo will be on "top".  This means the camera lens will be at the "bottom".
  
• Move the phone around, and keep taking photos, trying to get the crud in the barrel (or whatever) to show up.  (Because the camera will focus on your hand, anything in the barrel the same distance away from the phone/camera should be as sharp as your hand.  It's trial and error to get the alignment right.)
  
• Be sure to hold the phone/camera steady - and take lots of photos to choose from.
  
• Finally, find the photo that best shows what's inside the barrel.  Crop that image, so all the wasted space is gone.
  

Here's what you will see, and the original photo you might take:


You can see that the camera was focused on my hand, at the same distance from my phone as the crud in the barrel.  After you select the best photo, crop it, in the phone or on a computer, so it only shows the part you're interested in:



I only cropped a little, so people could visualize the barrel.  You can crop as much as you want.  




You'll probably get as frustrated as me, because the photos won't look very good, but the more you do it, the easier it gets.  All you need is one good photo.  The rest you can delete.

(Not sure if anyone else is ever going to want to do this, but I figured I'd do this write-up and post it here while it was still fresh in my mind.)

Not easy to do.  

Some white paper directing light in helps. 

243winxb wrote:Not easy to do.  

Not easy, but you got it!  The more you take, the easier it gets.  
I'll try with white paper next time I do this.  Thanks!!

Curious - can you say more about those photos?  The "threads" are from a patch?  Did all that "grunge" come out?

I've done this before. You can also tap the part of the screen you want to focus on .

rreid wrote:I've done this before. You can also tap the part of the screen you want to focus on .

If you still have those images, can you post one or two?

There are many ways to do this.  If I was doing it "for real" I would have a "real" camera, on a tripod, controlled lighting, and use manual focus.  I thought I could do it well enough with an iPhone.  As to focus, for me, my "trigger finger" could either be tapping on the screen to do focus, or prepared to tap on the shutter button when things looked good.  The focus wasn't an issue for me, as long as my hand was at the same distance as the area of the barrel I wanted to see.    At first, I wanted to have the camera aligned with the middle of the barrel, to see the whole barrel, all the way 'round, but the best photos I was getting were those at a small angle.  Not sure why - in the middle seemed like a better idea.

Nothing beats a real camera to take photographs 

I guess the alternative would be to take the barrel and mount it to something to hold it horizontal in front of a piece of white paper, with a light aimed at the paper, then set up my Nikon D750 with a 105mm macro lens in front of it, starting maybe six to eight inches away, manually focus, stop the lens down for maximum depth of field, and start taking photos, varying the light, and other things until I got what I liked.  I would probably try a bore light at the end, which would mean lots of light.  I think the closer I could get the camera, the better.  I have other cameras that will focus one inch in front of the front lens element.  

(All that would her fun to do, but I prefer to take photos that anyone can copy, meaning nothing too expensive or high tech.  Almost every photo I've posted here in the past few months has been taken with a phone.  I used to like Android, running "Camera FV-5" app, but now I'm using the stock iPhone camera app.)

The "threads" are lead shavings displaced by the  lands/ rifling.

My photos were of a test in 45 acp using home hard cast bullets.  Online i have seen where a to hard bullet BHN will not obturate. This is said to cause leading in the barrel.

My S&W 645 barrel looks bad, but never lost accurcy and cleaned up easly with a patch and #9.  Harder is better , if the bullet diameter is correct to start with. IMO.

A different test with near pure lead didnt lead. But had feeding problems when bullet nose was deformed from hitting the feed ramp. It stuck there.

Until now, I didn't know what "obturate" means.  Found it it means "to close (a hole or cavity) so as to prevent a flow of gasthrough it, especially the escape of explosive gas from a gun tubeduring firing."

So I think you're saying if the cast bullet is too hard, and undersize, it won't "plug up the barrel" when you shoot, meaning some of the gas that should be propelling the bullet out the barrel is instead going by past the bullet while the bullet is traveling through the barrel...... because the bullet may not be large enough in diameter to "plug" the barrel.  Did I get this right?   (Never knew any of this until five minutes ago!!)

In your last sentence, too soft a bullet might be deforming from hitting the feed ramp, causing the bullet to get stuck there.  I guess this would be much worse with a dirty feed ramp, which contributed to a problem I recently had.  

Thanks for posting!   .....and thanks also for the detailed explanation.

If the bullet is too hard it will not “upset like a rivet” to obturate and lead the barrel. If it is too soft it will upset like a rivet too much and squeeze the lubricant away from the barrel and lead the barrel. There is an optimal hardness.,... and it’s also why swaged lead bullets have a maximum velocity.

You got it right, as i see it.

mikemyers wrote:I guess the alternative would be to take the barrel and mount it to something to hold it horizontal in front of a piece of white paper, with a light aimed at the paper, then set up my Nikon D750 with a 105mm macro lens in front of it, starting maybe six to eight inches away, manually focus, stop the lens down for maximum depth of field, and start taking photos, varying the light, and other things until I got what I liked.  I would probably try a bore light at the end, which would mean lots of light.  I think the closer I could get the camera, the better.  I have other cameras that will focus one inch in front of the front lens element.  

(All that would her fun to do, but I prefer to take photos that anyone can copy, meaning nothing too expensive or high tech.  Almost every photo I've posted here in the past few months has been taken with a phone.  I used to like[b] Android, running "Camera FV-5" app[/bi], but now I'm using the stock iPhone camera app.)

just downloaded that app to play with,

never been completely satisfied with the standard phone camera on my droid Moto

lyman1903 wrote:just downloaded that app to play with.........never been completely satisfied with the standard phone camera on my droid Moto

The standard camera on most phones is, and has been, more than adequate.  It's the software app that comes with the camera that is lacking, and for a good reason.  Complicated software is something most people don't want to deal with.

Good luck with Camera FV-5 - it will bring you much of the control you've got with a DSLR, and give you control of all those settings on an Android phone, with the exception of aperture (which can't be adjusted on phones).  To get the most out of Camera FV-5, I bought the paid version of the free app, which opened up a lot of additional features, including the ability to capture images in 'raw' mode.  If you're getting serious about using a phone as a camera, you also might want to buy one of the "tripod adapters" for a phone, so you can support the phone just as you would a camera.

People laugh at this, but to me a reasonably good phone can take excellent photos, as good as most people get with a full size camera.  You just need the ability to control it.  As I see it, it's just a lens, with something behind the lens to record an image - doesn't matter if it's film or a sensor.  The better the sensor, the higher the quality of images you can capture, but for making something to be viewed on a computer screen all you really need is a ONE megapixel sensor.  Don't believe this - take the number for vertical resolution on your monitor, and multiply it by the number for horizontal resolution.  If the number is less than 1,000,000 it means you have less than one megapixel of screen resolution - if your camera is taking photos with a ten megapixel sensor, that image will be downgraded to only 1 megapixel to view on that monitor.  I'm not saying the sensor doesn't matter, only the number of megapixels, which is just an advertising gimmick for most people.


Most photos I take to post here are coming from an iPhone nowadays.  I'm now using an iMac computer, so one click on an image and it's transferred to the computer.  From there, it goes into Adobe Lightroom, which lets me do all the stuff I used to do in my film darkroom a lifetime ago.  When I'm happy, it gets exported after resizing it to 800 pixels wide, which works fine in this forum.

Gee, if I could only learn Bullseye Shooting even one tenth as well as I've learned photography............  Every time I think I've learned something, you guys show me how much more there still is to learn.

1 megapixel is all you need but the advantage of a 12mp camera is the digital "zoom" it provides you.

Seems like a lot of bullseye shooters are into Photography.  Canon camp here, with current weapons of light capture being a 5D Mark II (full frame) and a 7D Mark II.  Way more money in "L" glass than I will admit to.  I also use Light Room and Photoshop C6, both are the last versions before Adobe went to the Cloud/annual pricing scheme.  Light Room and ease of meta tagging (organization) was a huge advancement to digital picture "processing".

My iPhoneX takes higher resolution photos than several of my first DSLRS.  The X takes incredible pictures so I rarely take my DSLR's with me to events anymore.  They are relegated to their intended purpose (for me) wildlife photography, which unfortunately I don't take the time to do very often anymore.

Sorry slightly of topic.
- Dave

Nikon user,

used a FM when I shot with film, and now have a D5100 and a few lenses that I don't use enough

my first point and shoot digital was a SONY so I have stuck with them

I use my phone some, not a lot,  mostly for minor work stuff and concerts where I can't or don't want to drag the Nikon

Macro mode for close shots , is what i used with Canon cameras.

Pentax user here.

Digital cameras;
K5IIs, K5II, K7

Film cameras;
K1000, Super Program, Pentax 645

+ many lenses.

Clarence

Pentax!!   They made wonderful film cameras, so compact, good lenses - I always wanted to buy one.  I found a used one in India for about $20 - it even works - Asahi Pentax - but I don't ever use the film cameras I still have.

My "do anything" camera is a Canon G7x Mk II Pro.  Reasonably small, and can do almost anything.  Still, to me, the best camera in the world, is the camera I have with me - whatever it is - which is why my iPhone X is being used so much lately - read something here, grab a photo to post, and a few minutes later it's uploaded to the forum.

I need to find a nice way to take photos of guns.  Placing them on the floor and shooting down doesn't make them look that good.  I like what the magazines do, for guns that show up on the magazine cover, but I haven't figured out a good way to take photos like that.  Maybe if I built a nice photo booth, and good lighting...   


Not that it has anything to do with this thread, which has already drifted far more than expected, but have any of you taken photos at Camp Perry?  I'd love to see photos posted in an item after their matches - but chances are, any of you going there are far too busy competing to also take photos....

mikemyers wrote:Pentax!!   They made wonderful film cameras, so compact, good lenses - I always wanted to buy one.  I found a used one in India for about $20 - it even works - Asahi Pentax - but I don't ever use the film cameras I still have.

My "do anything" camera is a Canon G7x Mk II Pro.  Reasonably small, and can do almost anything.  Still, to me, the best camera in the world, is the camera I have with me - whatever it is - which is why my iPhone X is being used so much lately - read something here, grab a photo to post, and a few minutes later it's uploaded to the forum.

I need to find a nice way to take photos of guns.  Placing them on the floor and shooting down doesn't make them look that good.  I like what the magazines do, for guns that show up on the magazine cover, but I haven't figured out a good way to take photos like that.  Maybe if I built a nice photo booth, and good lighting...   


Not that it has anything to do with this thread, which has already drifted far more than expected, but have any of you taken photos at Camp Perry?  I'd love to see photos posted in an item after their matches - but chances are, any of you going there are far too busy competing to also take photos....

somewhere I have a couple files full of Perry Pics,  however I went as a Rifle shooter, not a Pistol shooter,

IIRC John Holbrook had  nice tutorial over on one of the iterations of the Jouster Forums (Culver Shooting Pages) on how to do really good pics of your collection,

I use a table, draped with a fabric that is pulled up in the back for a backdrop,  a few bulbs above it (as natural light as you can find in bulbs, not florescent or cool white)  and take my time,

when I can, outdoors in a light shade or overcast day works for good pics too,

we put a lot of stuff on Gunbroker to sell, and the backdrop and lights do well (and were inexpensive)
my brother takes most of the gun pics, and uses he Samsung Galaxy whatever phone (has a good camera)
I use the SONY's for parts etc and download to the laptop to post

mikemyers wrote:Not that it has anything to do with this thread, which has already drifted far more than expected, but have any of you taken photos at Camp Perry?  I'd love to see photos posted in an item after their matches - but chances are, any of you going there are far too busy competing to also take photos....

There are several photo journals online about Camp Perry.  The CMP even posts a few hundred pics every year.  Here is a link to some 2015 pics where most of the ranges were under water that year, the guy shooting next to me just decided to take off his shoes because the mud kept sucking them off his feet.

2015
http://cmp1.zenfolio.com/p207834401

2017
http://cmp1.zenfolio.com/p222313582

- Dave

One of my favorite from '15, there was about 6" of water there the day before.

Thanks for the photos - water sure makes a difference.  First group looks miserable.

What are the small transparent plastic sheets with circles drawn on them, that people place over a target for scoring?  Is that to help determine whether the bullet hole crossed the line into the next best score?

mikemyers wrote:What are the small transparent plastic sheets with circles drawn on them, that people place over a target for scoring?  Is that to help determine whether the bullet hole crossed the line into the next best score?

Yep, but if it's too close you can request that the official provide a "more accurate" scoring plug and if you disagree with your scorer's interpretation you can still protest challenge it which means you pay the protest challenge fee and the target goes to the stat office for official ruling, if you win you get your money back if not you forfeit it.
- Dave

mikemyers wrote:Thanks for the photos - water sure makes a difference.  First group looks miserable.

What are the small transparent plastic sheets with circles drawn on them, that people place over a target for scoring?  Is that to help determine whether the bullet hole crossed the line into the next best score?

They're called overlays and the circle (outside edge) of the overlay only has to touch the circle (outside edge) of the ring for it to count.  Overlays come in sets of two and also have segments of the rings on them so you can reconstruct a missing portion of a ring with one overlay and the bullet hole with the other.  The protest mentioned earlier is actually a challenge.  Protests are used for other situations.