After yesterday’s expedition into macro photography, I wanted brighter lights. The brightest I could find were 100 watt equivalent fluorescent bulbs so I hit other sources. I checked on-line and found bulbs up to 400 watt equivalent (85 watt fluorescent). I purchased one and only then did I notice the reviews that said it was “awesome, and unlike other bulbs of this type only a foot long!” Hm… So, my room may now have a lower clearance. I was curious to see to what extent and found a sub-community that’s interested in high-power daylight bubbles: pot growers. I think I have a source of a compact high-power 600 watt equivalent bulb, I just need to contact someone by the name of “ScoobieDoobie” to get it. Maybe his friend Al Toker or Reefer Sutherland can provide an alternative…
Tag: photography
Macro Shouldn't Work that Way
It’s New Year’s Eve and I spent it updating the Ockanickon webpage and avoiding cleaning. During the avoiding time I decided to try a trick I had heard where one could create a fake macro lens by cranking up the f-stop, triggering the aperture button on the lens while removing it and placing it backwards onto the body. It worked. I was in no way prepared for that.
Here’s an example:
Computer case screw at the closest distance my 30mm /1.4 would handle
And here’s it after reversing the lens on the camera body:
Reverse 30mm on body
Note that the depth of field is about a thick as a pubic hair.
Here’s a better example of the depth of field generated by this process (in this case, f/8.0ish)
That’s a Mana Drain I bought that had been lit on fire. More specifically, that’s the burnt edge.
I finished with an obligatory shot of a ballpoint pen tip.
Obligatory Shot of a Ballpoint Pen
If you go to the Flickr page and view the f-er full screen you can make out the lights I used to take the shot. These lights are also visible below:
I need to get a lightbox.
Meerkat Revenge
After yesterday’s encounter with Capt. 10K camera I sent him pictures from the event and he replied with a link to some pictures he’d taken of meerkats for his daughter who apparently loved them. He had a few, some blurry, some with only one and others where they were far away. Now the ball was in my court as my counter strike was devastating:
He asked me my secret to get them to look at me and I simply replied “Monopod”. BRA HA HA HA HA
The Best Camera You Have…
I volunteered to help at the Area 5 meeting and finding all the rooms set up and the National Commissioner about to speak I ran to my car and grabbed my camera. I set up with my 70-200 f/2.8 on my Xsi and began snapping pictures of the event. Shortly after someone walked over eying my self and looked at me saying “I just wanted to see how small your lens was.” Really, that’s your opening from one Scout volunteer to another? He walks me out to his hardcover Pelican case containing an L-series 100-400mm ($1600), 1Ds Mk III ($6000) a set of teleconverters ($800) and a gimbal head setup on a carbon fiber stand ($1200) and began showing me the pictures he took switching between his 1Ds Mk III and his D40. He then started showing me pictures he’d taken… on his iPhone. I asked if he posted them anywhere and he said no. Awesome, you can pick out pilot’s nose-hairs as they break the speed of sound but you show them to no one. This is the photographic equivalent of masturbating. At the end of the day he’d still not taken more than a 1/2 dozen shots. The best camera you have is the one you have on you.
It should be legal to steal from people if you’d put the equipment to better use than they would.
Spreading Joy, Unintentionally…
A friend of mine apparently has a picture of me on his refrigerator several hundred miles west of here. I’m not normally a fan of being in posted pictures but I’ll make an exception in his case. His family was visiting him and whenever one of his relatives walked by the fridge she’d break out laughing, someone else asked her the cause and she said “this guy” pointing to my picture.
For the rest of the stay, whenever she needed a pick-me-up she’d walk by my picture and laugh. She wanted to make a copy to bring home to help her out of funks. I wonder if I replaced the people that come in stock frames that’d prove therapeutic for department store workers.
Camera Rapid Response
Coworker: Gha… Do we have a high-megapixel camera that can focus on just the interference pattern on these two films while filtering out glare from overhead lights?
Me: Kind of, give me a few minutes *runs to car, gets camera, tripod, and polarizer, returns*
Coworker:Â Where did you get that?
Me: My car.
Coworker: Do you drive around with that stuff hoping for weird cases where an excess of camera equipment will be useful?
Me: Maybe….Yes.
The photos came out well. I make inconsistent deformations in thin-layer films with sub-wavelength spacing look good.
Effeminate Photo Onslaught
I get a good number of photos passed to me from people who’d like a little tweak or are looking to do something specific outside the realm of picasa or Microsoft Image Editor. Apparently an estrogen bomb went off in PA as these were the Adobe Lightroom folders I added today:
Ryan’s Kitten
Apollo’s Rainbow
Kyle’s Sunset
My man license would have been revoked if I received a request to edit “Mike’s Daisies”.
Post Office Critics
I brought my passport stuff to the post office to get it approved and sent and discovered the postal workers were far from parochial:
Agent 1: Do you have your pictures.
Me: Yes, here. *passes photos*
Agent 1: Where did you get these done? CVS?
Me: Yes. How did you know?
Agent 1: The noise pattern, it’s diagnostic of the camera they use. Normally, they center the head more, but this person did much better. Diane, what do you think of these?
Agent 2: Wow, normally they the nose as the focal point making the ears a bit blurred, this person focused on your eyes. Maybe they got someone from Walgreen’s, they tend to do that.
Agent 1: Ward’s always did the best, but they’re no longer. Remember when Rite-Aid switched to using the Fuji Fine Pix cameras in 2002?
Both at once: Such saturated greens. *laugh*
This is why America has the best postal service on the planet. I wonder if they could tell me the age of the photo taker based on the height of the shot and the amount of arm-shake.
Camp Night Shots
I’m making a more active attempt to provide a narrative with photos, so I added some sausage-making instructions with some shots I took at camp at night.
[flickr album=72157621490786969 num=10 size=Thumbnail]
Three-Legged Monopod
I’m a sharpness whore. A hint of blur can destroy an otherwise fine picture and I refuse to shrink the photo to cover the movement so I sprung for a monopod to improve sharpness without having to use a tripod like a tool. I entered the camera store and asked to see their collection of monopods.
Sales Associate: Why are you specifically going for a monopod?
Me: I’m doing some shooting at a zoo next weekend and wanted something I could deploy quickly that was small.
Sales Associate: Ok, yeah you really need mobility in a zoo.
*10 minutes of hot monopod testing porn*
Sales Associate: And finally, we have the Manfrotto 682B.
Me: What’s so special about it?
Sales Associate: Â It’s a little heavier, and a little pricier, but I think you’ll like this feature *pulls out legs* it’s got three legs for added stability.
Wow… A three-legged monopod. How did no one think of that before! I wonder what they’ll think of next, maybe a three-wheeled bicycle.