Apples

I'm trying to get back into taking more pictures and updating this blog more often. My wife was out and Reuben was in bed a couple days ago so if I was going to do anything it had to be inside. This is what I ended up with. For more info, check out Behind the Scenes

1/125 sec, f/36.4, ISO 100, 35mm (56mm eqv.), hand-held, SunPak 622 @1/128 power ~12cm above, slight right.
View Original


1/125 sec, f/28.1, ISO 100, 55mm (88mm eqv.), hand-held, SunPak 622 @1/128 power ~12cm above, slight right
View Original

1/125 sec, f/36.4, ISO 100, 55mm (88mm eqv.), hand-held, SunPak 622 @1/128 power ~12cm above, slight right
View Original

Behind the Scenes

Here's a shot exposed for the ambient light in the room. The apple was (badly) edited, otherwise that area would have been completely blown-out (totally white). It was about 7:45 in the evening so sunlight was still coming in the windows. The ambient was quite bright, I had to close down my aperture quite a bit (f/28 and 36) to block out the window light. With the flash so close, about 10 - 15 cm, 1/128th power was enough to properly expose the apple at that aperture. The flash was actually in the shot for the first one and needed to be edited out. A spray bottle was used to add the water droplets.

In the first photo, you can see that the table reflects some light back up to the lower part of the apple. For the second photo, I wanted the lower part of the apple to go completely black so I found a blouse (I think that's what it's called) in my wife's closet that's made of a black, fuzzy, light-absorbing material and set the apple on it as you can see in the photo below. This killed the reflected light. In the last photo, the apple was on a white piece of paper.

Where Have I Been?

It's been a while since my last post. Things have been a little slow around here lately since I pulled a muscle in my back a week ago and was confined to the couch for about four days. I'm mobile now, but not quite back to normal.

In other news, I'm starting a new job today so it's hard to say how much time I'll have for pictures. The first little while may be stressful, but I'll get something new someday.

I had to go back a ways to find a picture for today. I'm a computer programmer by day. I have a friend who has recently started a website (http://maritimes-jug.ca/) for programmers in my area who are using a programming language called Java. He mentioned to me that he'd like some sort of Java related image to put in the header of the site. It didn't take me long to come up with an idea for an image. Java could also mean coffee, which many programmers seem to run on, although I never picked up the habit. I thought mixing the two would be fitting.

Behind the scenes

Here's the original, unedited photo. I should have took a picture of the whole setup too, but I did not.

1.3 sec
f/8.0
ISO 400
18mm (35mm eqv. 28.8)
ambient lighting

I used a polarizing filter to get as much reflection off the coffee as I could. I wanted to have some bubbles and maybe some steam coming off the coffee, but with an exposure of more then a second, that wasn't possible. I tried using a straw to blow some bubbles, but they would pop during the exposure, moving the remaining bubbles and making ripples that would blur the reflection. I would have needed to add more light, which I didn't have.

For the reflection, I wrote a simple program (all it does is print "Maritimes JUG" on the screen). The different colours are done automatically by the text editor to help programmers read it easier and point out potential errors. Then I took a screenshot by pressing the "Print Screen" button on my keyboard and pasted the screenshot into GIMP and flipped it up-side-down so that it would appear right-side-up in the reflection.

I had two pieces of computer paper in front of the mug to reflect more light back up to the mug to light the side a little more.

As far as editing, it's hard to say. It was a while ago and I didn't write anything down. I know that it was cropped :) Other then that, your guess is as good as mine. Looks to me like the white balance was cooled down a bit to get a whiter keyboard, which also made the light part of the reflection in the coffee more blueish. More work to make the keyboard whiter should have been done. Then a curves adjustment to brighten the highlights quite a bit and darken the shadows just a little to bump up the contrast. Then the blur tool to smoothen out the vertical-ish lines above "String args[]" in the reflection. I'm noticing now that I was a little sloppy and blurred the tail of the "g" in "Jug{". I'm such a slob! Looks like the mouse cursor is just below "println", must have cloned that out. Then a little sharpening with the unsharp mask. And lastly a vignetting type thing to darken the left and right sides a bit to bring the viewer's attention to the reflection. I think that's it.

Kiwange

1/50 and 1/80 sec, f/5.7, ISO 400, 55mm (35mm eqv. 88mm), hand-held, halogen lighting and a little on-camera flash for the orange

This is another joint effort with Alain.

Behind the Scenes

Snacks

Christmas Brunch

Musical Punch Bowl

Sorry, things have been slow on the blog lately. I just need a break every now and then.

Here's an example of my playing around with a technique called shaped bokeh. I think I have the technical part down, but I haven't really come up with anything too inspiring yet. There's lots of tutorials out there explaining how to do this so instead of taking the time to write another one, just to make myself look smart, I'll direct you to the one I used: http://www.diyphotography.net/diy_create_your_own_bokeh.

1-20 sec, f/1.8 (well that's what the camera was set to, I guess to find what it really was you'd have to calculate the area of the music note shape and then find what the diameter of a circle with the same area would be, then divide that into the focal-length), ISO 800, 50mm (35mm eqv. 81mm)

Behind the Scenes

Canon PowerShot A510, 1.6 sec, f/2.6, ISO 50, 5.8mm (35mm eqv. 37mm)

You may notice I made a couple adjustments that are not in the tutorial. First, I made it easier to add different shapes without having to make a holder for each one. And second, I didn't have any black paper that would block out all light, so I used aluminum foil with cardboard to hold it in place. I figured that this would also allow me to have cleaner edges than paper would. However, the foil is much more delicate, I think.

Studio Alain

My friend Alain set up a little studio in his basement using white fabric and some halogen work lights. It worked better than I expected.

Summer!

We skipped spring and went right into summer! Not really, the strawberries are from Florida, not sure where the pineapple is from. They were on sale this week. Yum!

Sick Shots

I've been sick all weekend and today so I haven't spent much time out of bed. I managed to stumble around the house and find a few shots.

Pinhole "Lens"

The Pinhole camera or Camera obscura is the most primitive camera, invented about a thousand years ago. It was a simple device, basically a light-proof box, big enough to sit inside, with a small hole to let light enter and project an image onto the opposite wall. At first, recording of the image was done by manually tracing the projected image. A less manual method of recording was not discovered for another 600 years.

I made a pinhole "lens" for my modern camera. Although it's not really a lens, because it has no glass. I took the lens mount from my extension tubes and cut out a piece of cardboard to fit snugly inside. Then I got a pin and made a hole in the middle and attached it to my camera. The smaller the hole the clearer the picture. My first attempt at a hole was too big, the pictures were quite blurry. The cardboard was too thick to make a good, small, clean-cut hole all the way through, so I removed a larger piece of the cardboard and then covered the space with aluminum foil, since it's very thin and blocks 100% of light. Then, with the cardboard laying flat on a table, stuck the pin in again. This way I got a hole that was only the size of the tip of the pin. The pictures are still a bit blurry, but good enough, I guess. The depth of view seems to be infinite, there's never a need to worry about focus. Objects near and far look the same. Due to the small amount of light, all these pictures needed a 20 - 30 second exposure. Below is the first attempt:

I'm not really sure if there's any point to all this. It makes for an interesting effect, although, you could probably get the same effect by editing the picture afterwards. I just thought it was a cool experiment, it makes you think a little bit about how light and cameras work and how easy it is to take a picture now compared to long ago.

Here's some with the smaller hole. For some reason the dust on my sensor becomes very visible when using the the pinhole lens, not really sure why. I've never cleaned my camera since I got it 3 or 4 months ago. I should learn how to do that sometime.

Candles

Here's some candles.