First I'd like to thank everyone who took part in this poll. It will be very difficult, if not impossible, to determine which gun Indy is using while shooting out the back window of the car. However, your participation with this poll has helped answer some questions.
My goal with this entire excercise was to see if you would be able to tell the difference between a 4 inch barrel and a 5 inch barrel in a photo with the photo being out of focus and the barrel almost pointing directly towards the camera. That would then indicate weather it was the S&W or Colt - both which were rented for the filming of this scene. When I made the comparison photos I was very surprised how both guns looked almost the same even though one of them has a 4 inch barrel and the other actually has a 5 1/2 inch barrel. To make matters even more perplexing is the fact that the gun with the 5 1/2 inch barrel is actually my S&W model 1917 which is considerably bigger than my Colt Official Police!
That's right, one photo shows my Colt Official Police and the other shows my S&W 1917! You would think that the difference would be obvious but it clearly isn't as we can see by the poll numbers and simply how similar both photos look.
OK, now to reveal the identities!!
Top is the S&W 1917 (Large frame 45 caliber)
Bottom is the Colt Official Police (Medium frame 38 caliber)
So by a 2 to 1 margin most of us did identify correctly one of the possible guns - the Colt Official Police. That's good. What's not so good is that one third of us wrongly identified Indy's gun as a S&W 1917 which is way off from what it could have been. I'm sure if I had had a S&W model 10 with a 5 inch barrel as they had available to them, and had I made the photo comparison with that gun, It would have been even harder to tell any difference.
In conclusion this little exercise has shown us that it will not be possible to positively identify which gun Indy used while shooting out the back window by using a simple photo comparison. The good news is that we can and have positivly identified the guns used in the other 2 scenes filmed in the car:
#1 - Willie Juggling Gun is the Colt 38 cal OP revolver w/ 4" barrel.
#2 - Falling Gun is the S&W 38 cal w/ 5" barrel and swivel.
For more info see this thread:
http://indygear.com/cow/viewtopic.php?f ... 86&start=0
Please post any comments, questions, or thoughts regarding this little exercise of mine. I would especially like to hear what details in the photo comparison made you choose one gun over the other.
Thanks again for all your help!!
