#179 Two Years Apart…

Quite a lot usually happens in 2 years. Luckily for me, this didn’t. Going back to the same place on Grimsay, North Uist and being able to take the same picture, only better. It was always my intention if I went back to try and get this picture again of the light trails of cars going over the causeway from Grimsay to North Uist and I think I have a winner in what is going to go onto the canvas I still have yet to get printed up. The original one from 2009 was blurry and was from the first couple of months with my A200 DSLR. Now in 2011, having had the camera for a good few years, I knew it better and how to work it better (along with editing photos in photoshop), and it is much crisper. It is sharper, has better colours and even has a sheep on it! The same principle was used as the first one, layering the images up instead of one continuous shot, this was because of the sheer lack of cars going across the causeway at 11 o’clock at night.

I could see cars in the distance exiting Balivanich on Benbecula, crossing the causeway to Grimsay and I would get excited thinking this would be another one only for it to turn off before.

The original from 2009:

The 2011 version:

#169 I still need some baffles…

The impending electronics drive is soon to start as soon as a soldering iron with a fine tip makes its way to me. Practicing PicAXE programming is the order of the day when it gets underway. One thing I would need for all this prototyping is wire, and to save it from getting tangled up in a big mess I made this… and I say made, all I did was make some holes in the plastic bit of this coffee jar and there you go, a wire dispenser.

The only thing I might end up doing is to make some baffles or rearrange the way in which the wire is wound just to keep them separate and not get tangled up, but for the time being it is very simple and works. What more do I need.

#159 DJCAD Degree Show

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#148 Little Planets

I like little planets I do.

By taking a regular panorama and turning it into a polar panorama, you get something that looks like a little planet. Having completely forgotten all about them, recently whilst stopping off in South Queensferry and not having my normal camera to play with, I recruited the use of my iPhone and some photography apps. One of which was 360 an app which automatically creates and stitches together a panorama. One of the options once it has been created is to make a polar one and here you go.

The output straight from the application was this:

But with a little quick tweaking in Photoshop, I got this:

And in case you were wondering, my last foray into little planets was a few years ago and here it is (made using a panorama on Uist):

#145 A Makeshift Studio

A few days ago, I started to dabble in making a makeshift light box to take pictures in of small objects. To do this I used the tutorial I found or was forwarded to a while ago (I’ll post link later when I’m back on my iMac). The result was relatively good if a bit small. All of the paper I had, no matter which sketchbook I tore pages out of to get paper to make it, none of which was sturdy enough to make it stand on its own, reinforcing it with cardboard strips did help but I was then left with the problem of it being really wonky and hardly big enough to fit anything decent inside to take photographs of. Another additional problem was that I couldn’t get my camera in at a decent angle for some things I was wanting to take a photo of.

This image below is what I ended up with and just look at how shoddy it looks:

That was Saturday. Last night I gave the whole lightbox/mini studio thing another shot and I took a different approach. I was thinking bigger this time. Remembering I had a sketchbook of A2 layout paper I started taking a few pages out of it and got to work. I took some blu-tac and put some on the sides of the paper and put it 20cm above the surface of my desk, letting the rest of the paper drape down and onto the desk. This left a short portion of white on the desk which would have been obvious on the photos, so I overlapped another piece of layout paper onto the one I had already positioned. Excellent. This sorted out the background for the photos, but the next bridge to cross was lighting.

With the first iteration of the light box I made, the built in roof helped with the diffusing of the light, avoiding the obvious reflections and the horrible direct light the desk lamp would have given. This version did not have a ‘roof’ so I had to improvise some what. I remembered something I had read somewhere on the internet, of someone at a motorshow and they had their DSLR with them. They wanted to avoid harsh highlights and shadows gotten from the use of the flash so they taped a piece of tracing paper or something close to tracing paper onto the flash of the camera which apparently helped them out massively with producing better shots. So what I did was I cut down a piece of layout paper (since I didn’t have my smaller layout pad to hand) and some more blu-tac and loosely wrapped the paper around the shade of the desk lamp (doable because it was an anglepoise style lamp) and attached using the blu-tac. Wrapping it round loosely meant air could get in and circulate so the paper would not get so hot which could cause a fire. That was something that was mentioned by the photographer talked about above at the motorshow who said that after constant use of the paper on the flash, a burning smell occurred which meant he had to stop and change paper every so often.

The final change I made was to change the light bulb in my lamp. The one that I use in it has a warm white light. Very yellow. The one I changed it to in order to take the pictures, and the one I got with the lamp when I bought it was a very white light, quite cold and clinical. It was, going by the white balance preset in Aperture 3 afterwards, quite close to daylight in a way.

And that was that. I could angle the light where I wanted it, and switching between my 50mm prime and my 18-55mm lenses I was able to produce some quite good photographs of model cars, my new Mr Jones Watch and a few other things. I spent roughly 3 hours taking photos last night which I was quite happy to do as I hadn’t taken so many for quite a while.

Here is the updated light box/studio

The changes for next time? I think next time I am going to make a few more changes to this. The first one is that I am probably going to buy a large A0(ish) piece of paper to use. The larger space would be useful for taking larger objects, or being more adventurous with smaller ones. I was limited a few times when taking some pictures that I ended up seeing the edge of the paper. Use a tripod. I spent most of the time resting the camera on the desk and taking pictures that way. It became a bit of a problem when trying to take shots from above, especially when the shutter speed was quite low for some of the pictures. Make a better or bigger light diffuser to cover the light and possibly position it a little further away from the bulb itself. There was a number of times when I saw the light reflection and I know it could have been done a bit better. The final one is probably the use of some helping hands, either the small crocodile clip style or just getting someone in to give me a hand, but trying to hold up a piece of kappa board as a reflector, adjust the light and hold on to the camera at the same time did get a bit tricky at times, which did end up with some blurry images.

Apart from that, it ended up quite well. Over 300 photos were taken, that being an average of about 100 an hour for those of you who didn’t want to work that one out. And the quality was astonishingly good for something made in under five minutes. Some of the photos of model cars looked just as realistic as full size car images.

Here are some examples of the photographs taken using the makeshift studio:

#126 New Glass

Finally, after a few months of avoiding using one of my lenses for my DSLR, because it was broken, I have replaced it.

Way back in November or December, whenever we had the thundersnow (I survived Dundee thunder-snowstorm 2010 haha) my basic kit lens for my Sony A200 effectively gave up. The autofocus stopped working which meant when I was using that lens on my camera, it would make funny noises whenever I switched it on and off. Eventually, as in a week or so ago it just jammed completely leaving it effectively as an 18mm prime lens. Not very convenient since I had spent most of the winter with just my 50mm prime on the camera instead

After a trip to the shop where the camera was bought not long after the lens gave up I was told to look on eBay or similar for an alternative as it would be cheaper than repairing it. I only just took up that advice and went hunting. Originally I tried looking for a like for like replacement, an 18-70mm zoom lens. After looking at ones which essentially had the same problem I had with mine, I settled for a tidy looking, used 18-55mm zoom lens which arrived the next day.

It is good to have a small zoom lens again. There have been a few times where I have needed one recently but had to make do with my 50mm. And because it cost very little, if it does break (which I’m hoping it doesn’t) it won’t cost much to replace.

#103 Lost in a Virtual World

I won’t lie. I have spent most of the Christmas holidays playing Gran Turismo 5 instead of doing anything remotely related to anything else, but I feel as though I deserved a break. I set myself the goal of getting a Red Bull X1 (X2010 as it is now known) and with a few days to spare I achieved it. With over 1000 cars, some of which have been modeled to a high standard, using the in game photomode has become a good way of letting the time drift by without even realising it.

So without further ado, here is a random selections of photos taken inside GT5…

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#75 Got it in the Bag

The new university year has started and so the work has started.  What is our first task? To make a bag. And here it is. More details are to follow, as are images, but here is the finished product so far. It was a good team effort and turned out quite well considering it was a practice.

#70 Back from the Printers

As I mentioned in post #61 I was in the process of putting together a book called the Principles of Driving & Racing, which was done as a personal project. It was eventually completed after a few long days of hard graft. Once it was uploaded to the Apple Printing service, and a week passed whilst it was being printed, it arrived on my doorstep and looked fantastic.

This of course was the first version of the book and there are changes which I am going to make to it eventually and get another book printed. This may hopefully lead to selling it to people as the general opinion I got from tweets I made on Twitter were generally positive and a few people showed great interest in it.

Just can’t get away from cars can I?

#59 Mixing it up

What do you get when you cross good old photography with computer editing? Some pretty spectacular results. Especially in the case of Joseph Ford. Personal favourite images are those of the buildings in the shape of games consoles. Loving his work.

Link: Joseph Ford Photography