Thanks to a screenshot showing the photo's Exif (Exchangeable image file format) data, we can see that Mills used a Sony A1 – which remains Sony's flagship mirrorless camera – and captured the photo at a 1/8000s shutter speed, which is the camera's maximum shutter speed when using the mechanical shutter.
To reach that speed, Mills had to shoot wide open at f/1.6 with a 24mm focal length. He also used multi-pattern metering (which decides the exposure based on the whole frame, as opposed to center or spot metering) and was naturally shooting in manual mode for maximum control.
As Mills explained: "I just happened to have my finger on the shutter and I heard the pops and just kept shooting. I didn't know what I'd captured, but when I got to my laptop, I can see that bullet flying behind his head, because it's definitely not in the frames right before it and it's not in afterwards – it's only that one frame. I was shooting at 1/8000s – it captured that streak behind him".
In a follow-up article on The New York Times, the retired FBI special agent and firearms expert Michael Harrigan said the photo "absolutely could be showing the displacement of air due to a projectile", and some ballistic math suggests that 1/8000s shutter speed would make it possible to capture the bullet in those particular circumstances.
However, despite the Sony A1's fast maximum shutter speed and 30fps burst shooting mode, it's also a very rare event. Capturing a bullet in flight usually requires a high-speed camera and, as Harrigan explained, "catching a bullet on a side trajectory as seen in that photo would be a one in a million shot". But he also concluded that "if that's not showing the bullet's path through the air, I don't know what is".
Some other recent examples show that it is possible to capture bullets using the best professional cameras. In 2022, the Swedish photographer Göran Strand used the Nikon Z9's 1/32,000s maximum shutter speed and 120fps burst mode to capture a bullet leaving a biathlon rifle.
In response to that shot, the pro photographer Peter Russell wrote a lengthy breakdown of how difficult it is to shoot a speeding bullet even with the Nikon Z9, while also pointing out that slower shutter speeds (of between 1/8,000s to 1/16,000s) can actually improve your chances capturing the shot (albeit while showing more movement in the shot, like the Trump photo above).
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