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

First topic message reminder :

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.)

Ed Hall wrote:
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....

I was guessing what I was looking at, but I never heard of what you just posted!!  Next time I get to the range during a match, I'll ask them to show them to me.  Makes perfect sense, now that you've explained it!!

Is this only for major matches like Camp Perry, or are these tools fairly common?

mikemyers wrote:Is this only for major matches like Camp Perry, or are these tools fairly common?

Pretty common used at every match I've ever been at, nearly every competitor has at least 1 in their shootbox.  Almost required when scoring a target where the competitor is shooting Jacketed ammo because Jacketed ammo leaves such a jagged hole.  Larry's Guns sends them out in the mail so his shipping is minimal. Last time I bought them I bought 10 (20 overlays) I give them to new shooters.   They do have a tendency to get misplaced so if a buddy needed one they usually gave me 2 bucs or better yet bought me a beer later.

http://www.larrysguns.com/Products/Scoring-overlay__SCORINGOVER.aspx

- Dave

dronning wrote:

http://www.larrysguns.com/Products/Scoring-overlay__SCORINGOVER.aspx

- Dave

There's a whole lot of people here who I should buy a beer for....    :-)

Quick question - Ed wrote "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.  Clicking on the link you posted, it isn't clear - does the "kit" include two, or do I order two kits?  Yeah, I'll get extra, as I'm constantly misplacing things I bought months, or years, ago.  I know I have them, but only find the original after I order a replacement.

It isn't clear but if you read the reviews it does say it comes with 2 overlays.  Extras is always good, finding the extras is even better!
- Dave

I usually only remember I have extras (let alone finding them) after I place an order.   Seems to happen more often over the years for some reason. 

The two sets that I can never find came in Perry welcome packs.

To drift further, anyone interested in Photoshop but doesn't want to spend that money, take a SERIOUS look at GIMP.  It's free and more and more effort is being put into making it look almost exactly like Photoshop.

I tried GIMP, but got lost.  Very powerful, but a steep learning curve.  I ended up buying "Affinity Photo", which in many ways is like Photoshop, and in some ways even better.  It is certainly better than Photoshop Elements that I've been struggling with.  "https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/".

Until now, just about all my photo editing has been done with Adobe Lightroom, but I have the last version that you can buy off the shelf.  From now on, all those products will be subscription only, which I have no interest in.

For this forum, I've gotten lazy.  Take a photo with my iPhone, upload it to my computer, edit in Lightroom, export a small copy of the finished image, and post it here.