Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category
Thursday, March 12th, 2009 |
I originally wrote this post last November but for unknown reasons never published it. I might as well, because I couldn’t find any instructions for my setup on the internet. It’s extremely low cost and only uses a couple of flashes.
The setup basically involves my Nikon D80 with an SB-800 attached, plus a Sunpak 555 connected to the SB-800’s sync port. There is nothing else fancy about it. The white background is just a pile of A3 paper spread out over my desk.
The most confusing part is the Sunpak flash. Mine is second-hand and there is very little documentation regarding how to actually operate it and whether it plays nice with my other gear. Well, it does. It has two ways of syncing to a camera: it has a weird proprietary sync port which requires a cable that I can’t find anywhere, or via hot-shoe or a regular sync cable using the STD-1D module. That’s the cheapest module and is a lot cheaper than the various TTL modules.
Anyway, I point one flash at the subject and the other at the ceiling. Then it’s just a matter of trial and error to get the flash exposure right. After a few minutes, I was producing great quality product shots which I never thought would have been so simple. The only key is to overexpose the flash a bit so that the overlapping edges of the paper blow out and disappear while keeping the subject properly lit. Everything is in manual mode.
Here are some samples. Sorry, I’ll find some more interesting (and a greater variety of) subjects next time.
Calculating flash exposure
- Shutter speed is totally irrelevant because all light is coming from the flashes.
- Aperture can be freely used to adjust depth of field and overall exposure, no need to worry about background exposure because there is none.
- ISO - no need to explain that
- Flash exposures - normally I start at max for both and reduce them until I get a good balance. The direct (non-bounced) flash can be turned down a bit to reduce shadows.
Posted in Photography | No Comments »
Saturday, April 26th, 2008 |
Bored shitless on Anzac Day, so what better to do than head up to the top of Mt Dandenong once again - this time circumventing the entry fee at Sky High and just going down a steep walking track in the dark.
Click on the photos to open a larger version.
Here’s the panorama I took, spot the light pollution.
Close-up of the city skyline, 34km away using a 200mm lens.
Same photo, cropped and annotated:
Posted in Photography | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 |
Hmm, I seem to have gathered a decent amount of stuff over the years.
(crappy picture yes, but obviously all my good cameras are in the photo)
Left to right:
Nikon AF Nikkor 70-300mm f/4-5.6G
Nikon AF Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.3-5.6G
Nikon D80, with:
Nikon AF-S DX VR Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED
Nikon F90X, with:
Nikon SB-600 (broken locking pin, permanently attached), and
Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
Nikon D70, with:
Tokina 12-24mm f/4 DX
Bronica Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 EII
Sunpak Auto 555 (need to get coupling modules for Nikon/Bronica)
Bronica ETR-SI, with:
Bronica Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 EC
220 Roll Film Holder
Spare 200 roll film holder
Polaroid 360.
Posted in Photography | No Comments »
Sunday, April 6th, 2008 |
This is just testing the new gallery functionality in Wordpress 2.5. If this works, I won’t have to develop my custom gallery.
Posted in Photography | 1 Comment »
Friday, February 29th, 2008 |
The awesomeness of my own vintage Polaroid convinced Jacob to also purchase a 360 - here are the unpacking photos.
35 year old packaging yay:
30 year old batteries ftw:
Fresh batteries, $20 of them.
Posted in People, Photography | No Comments »
Monday, January 21st, 2008 |
My D70 is still waiting for repairs, and they called today saying that it won’t be another 7 days until they can even take a look to find out what’s wrong. Oh well, I sort of understand, with the repair centre being closed for Christmas and all.
What does that mean to me? I have to find other ways to take photos. I’ve finished two rolls of film on the F90X and they should be ready tomorrow, although I won’t have a way to put them online as of yet. I’m too impatient and like my photos immediately as I do with a digital camera, so over Christmas, I’ve been getting myself busy with my vintage Polaroid camera.
The black and white, type 667 film is brilliant, and that’s what I’ll be showing you in today’s post. Be warned, I don’t have a proper scanner and these are just photos of the prints taken when my D70 still worked. They look heaps better in real life, nice contrasty blacks and brilliant sharpness.
My very first photo, I was pleasantly surprised.
I really liked this one, shows something you don’t usually find in Melbourne.
And this one is just cool.
Parliament House:
Posted in Photography | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 |
I do have a habit of taking photos as many of you know, and since my D70 is dead and waiting to be fixed at the service centre, I got myself a cheap old film SLR on ebay. Mind you, it’s cheap but back in 1994 when this camera came out, it was the almost-pro amateur camera/pro’s backup body, much like what the D200 is today.
The worst thing about this camera is that there is no way to set the aperture on the body - you have to work around in Program mode if you have a G lens without the aperture ring.
The amazing thing is that my Tokina 12-24mm mounts on it and gives a full image at 18mm. Which is the equivalent of 12mm on digital. The top LCD also has a funky backlight like the ones you got on digital watches from the same era. The back LCD panel isn’t working because that’s actually a data back and not an integral part of the camera and needs its own batteries, which need replacing.
Pics or it didn’t happen:
The tiny 50mm lens in the corner is just there to stop the thing from tipping over like how it has in the last picture.
Posted in Photography | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, December 25th, 2007 |
This is my first successful attempt at stitching a series of HDR images together to make a panorama, I’m pretty satisfied with the result.
The final result is a composite of 21 separate images, taken from one of my favourite vantage points outside Crown, near the Spencer St bridge, at the little raised section which extends out towards the river. The weird curved bits are actually the railing, the middle part is a corner and is actually straight in reality.
It’s amazing how a bit of processing can turn a bunch of dull looking images into something like this.
Posted in Photography | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 16th, 2007 |
After work today, apart from going to JB Hi-fi to buy two albums I liked which I discovered by downloading them off a torrent site (i.e. record companies are full of crap because that’s $40 they wouldn’t have got if it wasn’t for music piracy), I had the camera with me and I tried to bracket a few shots to see what I could get with some HDR post processing.
Also, note that this is pretty much the first time I’ve ever post-processed photos on the same day I took them. So here you go, it’s the Melbourne GPO (converted to a shopping arcade after it was gutted by fire). You’ll just have to ignore that tree on the edge, I didn’t want to stand in the middle of Elizabeth St and I was in a rush so I wasn’t going to spend several minutes looking for a better spot to take the picture from. Besides, it illustrates how HDR can bring out the detail in the tree which would otherwise be a dark silhouette.
Click image to view full size.
On the right, what it looks like after some perspective correction in Photoshop to get some more accurate angles which are more suitable for images of architecture. On the left, the three individual shots used to compose the HDR image. Click them for larger versions.
Technical stuff:
Camera: Nikon D70
Lens: Nikon AF-S VR 18-200mm
Total exposures: 3
Time taken: 15 November 2007, 8:23:19-20pm
Shutter speed: 1/40s, 1/160s, 1/10s.
Aperture: f/5.6
ISO: 1600
Bracketing mode: +/- 2 stops
Focal length: 18mm
Images #16070-16072
Post-processing:
HDR processing in HDRsoft Photomatix Pro (too lazy to find settings)
Resize and sharpening in Photoshop.
This post’s layout will probably be totally screwed up on the auto facebook import.
Posted in Photography | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 |
Yesterday was my final day as a second year student, and I can finally enjoy a relative degree of freedom. Lots of things to do, even if I won’t get around to anything. I’ve already ordered a cheap(ish) folding Polaroid camera so that I can take Polaroid photos without wasting so much film area like a 6×4.5cm camera does.
And I might again start working on the gallery, although I’m rethinking the approach I should take so it’s all in a bit of a limbo at the moment.
Bored photoshop job (not the best photo, there were a few better expressions from John’s puppies but this was the first that I found):
Posted in Photography | No Comments »
