Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

Today is Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day! So I'm going to try to get out sometime today to and use the pinhole lens I made a while back, this will be the first time since then. I've been going through a dry spell photographically over the last little while, maybe this will get me going again. Hopefully I'll be able to get the photos from today up in a timely manner, my computer has been on the fritz lately. We'll see.

About Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day
Wikipedia Page

Splash!

1/160 sec
f/19
55mm (35mm eqv. 88mm)
ISO 200
lighting: Sunpak 622 Super Pro @ 1/128 power on camera left, reflecting off a white background

1/160 sec
f/14
55mm (35mm eqv. 88mm)
ISO 200
lighting: Sunpak 622 Super Pro @ 1/128 power on camera left, reflecting off a white background

Behind the Scenes

Update:
Actually, the camera in the picture is Alain's 50D with a 50mm f/1.4, but the pictures above were taken with my XSi (450D)

Splash!

1/160 sec
f/16
55mm (35mm eqv. 88mm)
ISO 200
lighting: Sunpak 622 Super Pro @ 1/128 power on camera left, reflecting off a white background

Bath Time

Reuben's graduated to the big tub.









All:
1/160 sec
f/2.8
ISO 200 or 400
50mm (35mm eqv. 81mm)
Sunpak 622 flash reflected off white tub and ceiling

Splash!

1/160 sec
f/16
55mm (35mm eqv. 88mm)
ISO 200
lighting: Sunpak 622 Super Pro @ 1/128 power on camera left, reflecting off a white background

Splash!

Did some more splash photos. I finally got a flash (I'll talk more about it later), which makes things much easier. No longer do I need to worry about having the fastest shutter speed possible, so I can close down the aperture to get a deeper depth of field.

I think this picture is interesting because it's actually two drops colliding in mid air. The first drop makes a splash and then a drop from the splash moves up and hits the next drop coming down. There's many other, much better, examples of this on the web, but it's the first time I've caught it.


1/160 sec
f/16
55mm (35mm eqv. 88mm)
ISO 200
lighting: Sunpak 622 Super Pro @ 1/128 power on camera left, reflecting off a white background

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.

Reuben's Getting Bigger

I never run out of photo opportunities with Reuben around.

1/100 sec, f/1.8, ISO 1600, 50mm (35mm eqv. 81mm), hand-held, ambient lighting

1/60 sec, f/1.8, ISO 800, 50mm (35mm eqv. 81mm), hand-held, ambient lighting

Urban Spulunking

Found a cave (a.k.a. storm drain) near my house with lots of huge icicles.


1/15 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400, 55mm, hand-held

1/40 sec, f/5.6, ISO 800, 42mm, hand-held

1/10 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400, 25mm, hand-held

1/60 sec, f/5.6, ISO 800, 55mm, hand-held

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

Old Houses Downtown

1/400 sec, f/9.1, ISO:200, 43mm (35mm eqv. 69mm), hand-held

Splash!

1/4000 sec, f/1.8, ISO 800, 50mm (35mm eqv. 81mm), tripod, halogen lighting

Thanks to Alain for the use of his hand :)

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.