The eyes have it

Day 30

Meet Kaa. He's a patient at work. He's a big, beautiful Diamond Python, but right now he's not feeling too good.

Today was an OK day. I had a bad start - could not get my xray factors to work. I was getting a little agitated as our oxygen delivery was late, and we were running low on gas for the anaesthetic machine. All the while no matter what factors I used, I could not get a decent exposure. Finally the server on the digital xray developer crashed, and I was then able to get one plate through with good exposures. They happened to be the first factors I used, funny. Or not.

I just assumed my run of bad days was continuing :) But then we had a lull in consults, and Kaa piped up and volunteered to model for me.

Shot with EF 35mm f/2 set at f/6.3, 1/200s iso2000! 580EXII on-board, bounced to ceiling, with FEC +2 from memory. Oh, and 31mm of extension tubes in behind the lens :)

You can see my hand, and camera, in the reflection, as well as Robyn, my nurse. I was holding my camera in one hand, using live-view to focus by moving the camera in and out. My left hand was holding Kaa near his head, and Robyn was holding the remaining 2 metres of him!

Welcome to the 'hood

Day 29

Uhuh. One of those days.

Actually the day wasn't too bad. I just could not get anything to work on my PAD today. I think I need to get some serious sleep. Bad pics for a few days in a row.

I think this is the last self portrait while I am not pulling a stupid face. From now on it will be stupid face or no face.

Smoke was from smoke machine - too late in the night to be using chainsaws. Softbox 10 and 2, brolly at 7:00. Outside at 10pm. In the dark. With spideys.

Day 28

Isn't she cute? This is a bad photo of Vids. I am having a bad day.

You know how whatever Midas touched turned to gold? Today, whatever I touch turns to shit. Maybe instead of Midas I can call myself My-ass... cos that's where it looks like my pics came from today.

I was meant to get to a Hindu wedding this morning to cover the ceremony, just to get some "refresher" experience in how things progressed, the best angles, where the action is etc. Our wedding was 12 years ago :) We got there just as they were about to take the "seven steps" or Saptapadi. That means we were REALLY late.

Awesome.


Anyway, things went downhill from there as my attempts at establishing myself as an "authorised" photographer were getting nowhere, and I had seriously, just given up. As I had not really touched base with the Bride, and had not even met the groom, I could not really get the rapport, or "bond" I feel is important to get the right attention from the couple... you know, the occasional glance at the camera and a smile etc when you hover in front of them ... this was not happening. It was all crap. And because I was a late comer, establishing myself in the "unlce and aunts with a good camera" pecking order list was not happening either.


I managed to get a few crap, high iso images before tossing the camera back into the bag, eating, saying hi to the bride, and leaving.


Upon arriving home, Vids requested I take a pic of her in her Sari. She had just gotten the blouse made during our recent trip to India. So, both tired and cranky, we went to the garden to try getting a nice pic. I was not thinking, and not in the mood to play. Nor was I going to force Vids to stand in the sun while I played numbuts with my camera. I wanted shallow DOF, but could not be arsed going inside to get a ND filter. So what we have here is a crap pic of a lovely gal in a lovely sari. One can only dream if I had put an ND filter on and kept the background from blowing out, and used my flash for fill, we could have had a nice pic.


85mm f/2 at f/3.2, 1/125s, iso100, 580EXII held off-camera for fill. And that just goes to show you again how little I was thinking - I should have gone to 1/250s to cut things back by 1 stop. I was having a bad day :(


I could have used High Speed Shutter sync (HSS) for my flash, but I don't like using HSS flash unless I can avoid it, as it often really reduces the effective range/distance the flash can work in, and with an 85mm lens I was quite a way back. Better to stick to the x-sync speed or below and use ND filters if needed. I know it sounds odd, but it is true (trust me, as you can see, I know WTF I am talking about! ha ha haaaaaa).

My lesson for today... THINK before you push that button. And, once again, half arsed efforts get half arsed results... or more pleasantly, "what ye sow, so shall ye reap". In programmers terms, garbage in, garbage out.

Day 27

Day 27

Today was our social outing at one of the clinics I work at. This is my fave clinic and the Team are just awesome. They can make a bad, bad, bad day pass with only a mild headache. It's a shame one of the Team is leaving, for hopefully greener pastures. Victoria, second from left, will be trotting off to Melbourne, for much nicer Lattes, much nicer Vego tucker, and hopefully some new career prospects now she has finished her studies. It will be sad to see her go :(

We had just finished a few games of action packed, breath taking, adrenaline pumping.. croquet. Yup. Oh, and they had also finished a few drinks and were enjoying it just the same.

This pic was taken quite late, well after sunset. I had the iso at 2500, so there's a LOT of noise. Shot at f/4, 1/25s, with a 580EXII as slave, handheld at camera left, triggered by onboard flash in eTTL mode. The ambient was some rather dull "floodlights" on the croquet green. I guess I could have gotten a nicer pic by dropping the iso a bit, and using a flash ratio instead of both at 1:1, but it was kinds run and gun and my mind was more focused on the my 4yo who was bored to the point I thought he was going to break something.

Poor kid was bored because the moment we got there, the dragon hostess of the Club loudly announced "no kids on the court" and "children can't play". Immediately the bottom lip quivered and he sat down arms folded and wanted to go home. She could have let him use the "practice" pitch around the back. Hag.

Anyways, he managed to resurrect his mood, and had a decent time. Such a good kid sometimes.

We had some BBQ tucker, played another game, then some dessert, and came home.

Here's the Team in a more natural pose.

Gear P@rn

Day 26

I have often wondered why my bag is so heavy. Today I decided to totally empty it to see why it felt like my shoulder was about to fall off after walking for 10 minutes carrying it.

This was a simple set-up, with a single exposure. I was going to be all arsey and do a double exposure, using some of this gear to shoot the pic, then replacing it and shooting it again, then combining the two images.... Nah.

This was all shot using a Canon SX120IS. This is just a point and shoot camera, which is not a bad little PnS at that. I tend to use it in manual, with manual flash control etc. As you do. This pic was iso200, 1/200s, f/6.3. I used the flash on minimum just enough to set off an optical trigger. I had the optical trigger under an OLD Canon 299T flash. Now this is an awesome bit of kit. It was designed for the old T model Film Canon cameras I think. It is essentially useless to use modern day automatic gizmo wielding kids. The big upside of this flash is that it has a built in light meter, so it can actually meter it's own exposure for you, if you know how to set it up. So essentially it can run in "auto" mode, if you put the right settings (F.no and iso) in to it. Quite a clever thing for $30 on eBay... and at 30yrs old it aint too bad. It is not in my everyday bag as it is too big, and because it only has a few settings that I don't find any more convenient than my YN460II's, so they get space priority.

Esentially what you see in the pic, I carry most days. Sometimes I carry the YN460IIs in another bag, other times I jam them into the top of my LowePro Stealth Reporter 650 bag. If I  add my mac-book pro, it all weighs a ton! This pics obviously does not include memory cards, spare batteries, lens filters, flash gels, camera straps etc, all of which ARE in the bag too :)

The 350D (Middle Row, Right) does not focus accurately any more. It may be a simple fix, but these days I don't have the time nor the mindset to play with unreliable toys. If I am doing a job for someone (paid or not) I cannot have gear that lets me down. I am going to have to get a new camera body to replace it soon.

I am falling in love (again) with prime lenses. This time I think I have keepers. My primes now are the 35mm f/2, 85mm f/1.8,  135mm f/2L and an old Asahi Pentax m42 mount 55mm f/1.8 lens (total manual control) These are all great creative lenses. The 35mm seems to be on my 60D most the time these days, seconded by the 85mm, then my 24-105mm zoom.

Anyways, 5 to midnight, time to hit the sack.

Aussie Aussie Aussie - Oi Oi Oi

Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi

Day 25

Today is January 26th. Australia Day. This is an interesting day. Generally speaking, Aussies are not overly patriotic. Actually, Aussies are not overly anything. Today we celebrate being Aussie. Now this opens a can of worms I am not going to discuss here. But I think it is sad when I see the words "Aussie Pride" and the Southern Cross used by "patriotic" people to excuse racist behavior. Call me weird, but to me, that is very un-Aussie.

Moving on.

Today's pic is not quite what I had in mind, but I sort of like this one - as much as I can ever like a self-portrait!

Softbox 9:00 and 3:00, reflective umbrella 6:00 high, bare flash 12:00 low with blue gel. 35mm f/2 set at f/6.3 I think, iso100 1/200s. Triggered cammera via YN602. I think my batteries in my camera or my wireless are going flat - 1/250s gave me not a full x-sync :( Shot with EF35mm f/2 lens - rapidly becoming one of my fave lenses!

PS: The beer is from Belgium, the flags and sunnies are made in China. I think the singlet is too, and I know for sure the flashes, wireless transmitters and backdrop are. The Camera is Japanese made, and so are the lenses.

Now that's being Aussie!

Dr Fred

Day 24

This is Fred. I work with Fred at the Animal Welfare League hospital. Fred is an amazing bloke, and a great colleague. As you can see in the photo, he really enjoys life. An inspiration and an amazing person to work with. Here he is speying yet another dog. This is probably his 10th for the morning. He's very quick, something I can only dream to emulate :)

I snapped this pic through the glass window in the wall that separates the two operating theatres. The red hue you can see on Fred's scrub is actually my reflection. No flashes, no crazy light set-ups. Just some fluro tubes above and the tungsten from the surgery light. A bit of photoshop to bring out some charactor in the shadows, but that's it.

I thought I'd occasionally add just an "everyday pic".. of everyday things in my life, and the things in my life I like a lot, or have some character, or both.

Day 23

This is Vidya, my wife. She agreed to be my model today, even though we're both more than ready to hit the sack.After work today we met a uni mate for dinner. We had planned to meet in Castle Towers, which is basically across the other side of town. For us, all the action seems to happen across town! We live South West of Sydney, just east of Liverpool, and all of our mates are either in "town" proper, or in the Hills. So we spend a lot of time traveling. To make it even better, Vids works in Camden, I work in Penrith and Kemps Creek. We spend a LOT of time in the car.

Today I was toying with "clam-shell" type set-ups. to see what I could come up with. I learned a lot from these pics. To get less shadow I need to have been between the umbrellas - here I was ever so slightly to the right of the umbrellas. This caused the shadow on the left side (ride side of photo) of  the models face, which, for clam-shell is a big no no. Also I should have pulled the fill up to the same power as the main. There's no real rules for clam-shell, but I guess ideally there would be little shadow and mostly flat, even lighting.

60" umbrella at 7:00 high, 42" umbrella 7:00 low, softboxes at 10:00 and 2:00, blue gelled flash at wall (drowned out by umbrellas).

Played with tones in Photoshop, smoothed skin a little. Otherwise very little work (2 minutes max) in Photoshop.

Smokin Hearts

Day 22

Back at work today after one day off. Was a steady day, one or two moments of craziness and frustrations... but on the whole not a bad day. Today's pic I was hoping to take a photo of some guests, but by the time I got home an showered after work, they were waling out the door. So I had to do another improvised indoor shoot.

So I'm just playin' today. I decided to see how hard/easy it was to shoot smoke... it'd be nice to have some lovely curls of smoke to compose into photos, or at least the ability to create them if I wanted to :)

So today's pic is just that - smoke. The smoke has come from one of those scented smoke cone thingies - I didn't crop it out so it looked more believable. This is a freaky shot - I put a red gel on my flash, and I had a blue gel on the wall behind. I focused on the cone, and then snapped a few shots to see how it looked, and this is what I got. I DID cut the blue out by reducing the blue channel output, as it looks better on black. But the smoke itself is 100% SOOC, honest to goodness.

Splish Splash

Day 21

Today was a great day. A bit of a sleep in (no work!!! yippeee!) and a fairly leisurely get ready to go out. I say fairly leisurely because we had a time limit and a 4yo to get ready, AND I was trying to take a bit of gear that needed tearing down and packing up. In the midst of all this we had our friends pop over with their son to play for a while, so it was almost a miracle we got out the door before midday.

We then headed up to a little caravan park near Sackville. I don't know the exact locality, all I know is we took a little putt putt ferry and got there. I have been there a few times. It is set on the banks of the Hawkesbury, I believe. Very pretty, a lot like the farm we had when I was a kid. My Aunt and Uncle  have a van up there, and they stay there occasionally. They have been going "up the river" for well over 30 years. Their van is aptly called "Updariva". I love them a lot, they are a great couple and it's such a great thing they are my Aunt and Uncle :) They have both had their rough trots, and they smile and keep on battling on. My Aunt you can see in the background with the umbrella - she has had at least ten malignant melanomas removed, and undergone countless surgeries to have lymph nodes and other bits removed. She's a real battler and a real inspiration.

Today we had a nice chat over lunch, then a splash in the river. It has just rained so the water is a muddy brown.

This photos was taken with my GoPro Hero2. I used the FishEye Hemi Photoshop plug-in to reduce the fisheye a bit, adjusted levels and sharpened a bit. I love this little camera. One large light up high at about 5:00 position I think, judging from the shadows. Full power :)

Noir

Day 20

Today I thought I would try black on black. I have never really tried this, and I was keen to see how it would go. However, I had to first unpack my bicycle, which I had only half unpacked after I returned to Sydney from Hong Kong 13 months ago. It still had no pedals, and I had packed hard foam-rubber around the tubes to protect it, and they were still on it. I had also gaffer taped cardboard to the frame. I learned the hard way, gaffer tape comes off real easy in the first day or so, but 12 months later it is not so agreeable. So I spent the next 45 minutes cleaning gaffer residue off my head-tube and carbon seat-post, as well as off the top-tube, all the while trying not to scratch the black metallic (soft!) finish. Finally we have a bike with pedals, mostly clean finish, and most the bits found.. except the cover for the rear flasher, you can see the batteries in the pic :)

The end photo is ok. A little bit of levels in Photoshop. I'd like to have more specular light off the tubes but I had limited room for my softboxes, so the ideal angle was not possible. If I turned them toward the bike, the backdrop became visible. So this was the best I could do today.

Softbox (gridded) at 8:45 and 4:00 at 1/2 power, handheld snooted flash on a stand held at 12:00 at 1/32 power to get specular off top-tube. I like the possibilites here.

Day 19 - flop

Day 19

Today's pic is not as great as I had hoped. Actually, it's a complete flop. I am not happy with it at all.

To rub salt in the wound I did have the chance to take some pics of some mates where we had dinner, however I did not think they wanted to be my models, and it was not until we were leaving with a bratty tired 4yo boy that we both realised we both wanted to do the pics, but both thought the other was not keen... open channels next time?? I feel so stupid. And this photo just rubs it in.

Softbox at 2:00, bare flash at 9:00, two flashes in box with smoke machine. Crap PS to put some sand in. Crap.

Tidy my gear and bed. Better luck tomoz? I hope so.

woohooo

Day 18

Yeah. It has been one of those days. Where you feel like a flat tyre but have to appear like everything is just fine and dandy thank you very much...

I actually think my wife has more of these days than me. She somehow manages to raise a kid, do some Lab research for her PhD, work part-time as a vet, look after me, AND look after her parents. Some days you can see little cracks in her amazing resolve, but other times she seems a lot like the yobbo in the photo - some half crazed "yeah baby, all is rockin' here"... hmmmm....

Today was just a long day at work, after I had spent until 2:30am looking through old photos, realising I had deleted a lot of important ones :) AND keeping a LOT of junk. Gotta find an easy way of keeping this under control. I thought LightRoom would help, but sadly it interferes too much with my RAW workflow... maybe Bridge? Never really used it..

Anyway, the yobbo is me (as you know). I seem to do better at stupid poses than "normal" ones. Says a lot about me huh? Softbox at 10 and 2, silver reflective umbrella at 6pm above camera. Bare flash at wall behind me with green gel on front. I seem to be getting to the point I haven't used a light meter to set my flashes since about day 3, so for easy set-ups like this I am just guessing the settings pretty much ok. I learned a lot of this and the basics on how to eyeball your settings by knowing your gear and the logic behind it all from Wizwow. This was shot at f/7.1 with my 35mm f/2 lens. Gotta say I am loving my 35mm and 85mm primes a lot more than I expected to - I reach for them before I even consider my 24-105mm f/4L. Maybe just a passing fad?

Speed Demon

Speedin' on the freeway...

Day 17

We'd given up on the young fellas old bike. It was a "Hip Kids" bike, which was supposed to convert from a pedal-less push bike to a pedaled cycle. I bought it new from the company on the net. It was an awesome concept, with an amazingly bad design. To attach the pedal mechanism was pretty easy, but getting the chain, training wheels etc to go in place (and more importantly, stay in place), was just a nightmare. And I am sort of OK with tools, thanks. I gave it good time and even carried tools when we used it, which became rarely, then never. It is now sitting on the side of the road, if anyone wants it.

So today we challenged ourselves to buying a new one. I used to cycle a fair bit and have gone through the cheap and nasty bikes all the way to custom frame with Campagnolo Centaur groupset and Vento rims, which is gorgeously adorning our garage floor and gathering dust. I know a bit about bikes, although after walking throughout the bike shop I realized in the 4 years I have not been cycling, things have developed at warp speed, with funky spacey carbon frames being the norm. My steel frame will look vintage when I take it out in the next week or so. I can just imagine the conversations at traffic lights... "wow, a Classic Vintage steel bike, you must have looked after that well"...

Anyway, I was sort of appalled at the masses of crap bearings and general crap on the budget bikes, so we ended up spending a lot more than I would have expected on a kids bike. But it is so big it should last him a few years, and it doesn't look too dorky once you remove the mud guards and the pads, so I'm sure it won't be too much of an embarrassment for said kid to ride to the shops and school in a few years. Sure, he'll have to lose the training wheels :)

I remember learning to ride on one of those kids bikes that weren't quite the 27" wheel but bigger than a BMX - I think 24". I think it was even in the days before BMX were mainstream. Wow. I used to hang onto the side of the house or the fence, and climb up, then push off. I never had the training wheels. for better or for worse. My brother who had already been through training wheels and left his bike under the car, and was given one of those high-bar dragster things with back-pedal brakes to replace it. My sister got a pink bike with training wheels, also with back pedal brakes. I got the second-hand big bike with no brakes. I really should have taken the hint from my parents then - but I was too thick, I now realize.

Anyways, so now the young fella has a brand new Trek. My first "nice" bike was a Trek, but I was 23 at the time and had intended to buy a car, but (wisely) decided to spend a grand on a nice bike instead. Back then $1000 on a bike was a lot of money. My wife, who I had just met back then, thought I was a nutter for spending so much on a bike, but she supported my decision. I think she thought any young bloke who wants a bicycle instead of a car is either really nuts, or really has put some thought into it.

I'd like to think I am the latter :)

The pic was a rush pic. I have to do some searching through old pics today to give a portfolio to a friend of a friend for a possible job... lots of work to do!!

Ciao 'til tomoz.

Star light, star bright..

Day 16

What a day! It's 11:15pm. I have just sat down, after all but giving up on today's pic. The young fella has has been calling me into his room non-stop since he went to bed... an hour late. At 10:45 he did me the favor of falling asleep. I had been trying to get some self portraits with the dog, but she was not co-operating and I was distracted trying to listen out for the young fella. His mum has gone out to gallivant meet up with some old school mates for dinner, and he was not happy about that at all. Whenever he disobeyed and I raised my voice, he'd then mope and start saying his mantra "I want my mummy"..

I had almost given up, when I walked out for a breath of fresh air, looked up and saw (what I assume is) Betelgeuse and the belt of Orion. Hmm. I have never photographed the stars before... or the moon for that matter!

So I set my camera on a tripod, with remote shutter release (an old YN602 with shutter cable), opened my 35mm f/2 to f/2, and iso at 200. I set shutter speed to 20s. And here you have it! JPEG with minimal levels adjustment in PS. I was impressed :) at 30s the star trails were remarkable but the sky was too messy/hazy. Even at 20s the trails are still visible. Awesome. Makes me keen to try out those image stacker software.. but apart from the one or two times I might try this sort of thing, I can't see it being of much use. Besides, I sold my fisheye lens :)

So that's today for ya.

Time to watch a DVD and hit the sack.

Everyone needs a HERO

Day 15

And I reckon everyone could do with one of these little beauties too. I'm not one to give praise a lot, but these dudes rock :)

Today was an exhausting day at work - just a lot of emotional and mental drainage. Coming home I was wondering how I was going to summon the strength to do my photo today on top of everything else. Luckily today was "left overs" day. Left over food, left over plonk. Yum :) I felt a million times better after that.

Todays pic is of a GoPro Hero2. This item found its way into my gadget bag after I sold a Rokinon 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens to finance it in December last year. I wasn't overly impressed with the Rokinon/Samyang/Bowers/Pro-Optics/insert-distributor-label-here 8mm lens. I had it for maybe 2 months. It was ok. But I actually think the daylight images from the GoPro Hero2 give that lens a big run for it's money.

The Hero2 has it's limitations. Available light only, no manual settings, no LCD screen. But I find if it is used with these limitations in mind, they don't become limitations, rather just "traits" of the camera. Used properly one can easily judge roughly what will be picked up by the lens... a LOT!!

Anyway, today this photo was shot using my EF 85mm f/1.8, set at f/10, with 2 YN460IIs. The flash above the Hero2 was set at minimum power, and was in a beer holder snoot with a small cheap grid shoved in the end. The flash on the wall behind was gelled with red gel, through a small grid, at about 1/32 power. The set up shot is below.

To get the circle around the Hero2 to be small, I had to bring the grid in real close. It was only just out of frame. It also meant I had to have as little power as possible, and decrease the aperture a bit.

The resulting image was essentially straight out of camera (SOOC). I adjusted the levels to show the red a bit, that's about it.

I know it is sort of similar to yesterdays pic, but it is really a whole different shoot all together :)

I took the GoPro Hero2 on our trip overseas, with the Wrist Housing. It was great fun in the pool and in the surf taking photos and video of the family. I was hoping to use it through India and Hong Kong too, however I gave the wrist housing to my brother in law, as he fell in love with the Hero2 and we bought him one for his Birthday. The store we ordered it from did not have (and could not reliably get) the wrist housing into Singapore in time for his snorkeling trip, so I left mine with him. I did not really want to risk dropping/scratching my Hero2 without the housing, so it spent the next 3 weeks in bubbles wrap! I had intended to get a new one in Hong Kong on the way through, but we ran amazingly short of time. Needless to say I grabbed a new wrist housing pronto when I returned to Sydney... which has of course, sat in it's box ever since :)

and, in the red corner...

Day 14, 15th January 2012

These shiny, new looking weights are far from new. I have had them for about 7 years, and they have traveled to and from Hong Kong at least 3 times.. ie from HK to Sydney, then back to HK and back to Sydney. It all sounds silly, but I have moved back and forth on at least 3 occasions, and I have a feeling another bout is to come in the next 2yrs. As my family was still in Sydney for 2 of those moves, I made a trip back to Sydney to see them at least every 8 weeks. This meant I could carry odds and sods to and fro... like 20kg of weights :)

These little fellas helped me thru rehab of a dislocated shoulder I got after being knocked off my motorbike by one of HK's infamous minibuses. I was going to need surgery but decided I would try rehab and physio first, and touch wood, it seems to be ok. But now, 5 years on, I have lost all tone and it is really time to get back into things. So I decided firstly to unbox them, then photograph them in a dramatic light. The idea was sort of like a spotlight in a boxing ring etc. Sort of "meet thine enemy".

Taken with 35mm f/2 at f/8, iso200, 1/250s. One YN 460II in a beer holder snoot with an el-cheapo grid in the end to focus the light. A puff of fog from my little fog machine, then some levels adjustment and silly stuff in PS to make it look a little gritty. Nothing fancy. I made a few silly errors here, eg overlapping the boards on the floor as you can see behind the weights. Not pretty. I could pretend I did it to look like the edge of the boxing ring, but that would only be kidding myself. Another boo-boo is a reflection off the weights on the board down low in the middle. Not sure how I could have avoided that, maybe a better angle or polarizing filter? I do like the star-like specular reflection on the top of the weights on the left though :) No PS there, just blind dumb luck!

neighborly chef - Day 13

This is Sarva. He's a good mate and a neighbor. Today we had the pleasure of his company, along with the company of his family.  Our boys get on real well, so having these guys over is a treat for us all. Sarva is an awesome guest, and he loves to cook. And boy he can cook some nice tucker. This photo I managed to get some OCF gear into the kitchen, take about 4 pics, then bail out. Sarva cooks without recipes, and purely by his nose. Some of his dishes are heavenly. The rest are damn wonderful.

Softbox 10:00, softbox 4:00, bare flash bounced off roof at 2:00. This was taken after 3 glasses of wine, so image-stabiliser was working overtime :)

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS at f/8 I think. Some PS to bring up light in background and sharpen details a bit. Tried a bit of a comical "super-real" effect here. Like it :)

Day 12 - What a smartie

Or rather, an "m".. not sure why they are called M&M's when they're either just an "m", or lots of m's...

either way, here they are. Today I was just messin with an EF35mm f/2 lens, and stuck 31mm extension tube behind it too see how close I could get. The lens is basically resting on the plate here. No idea what the effective aperture of this set up is, though this is shot at f/8 on the lens. I think it is close to f/16 as far as light transmission goes. The extension tubes have no glass in them, just a tube, but they add a lot of length to the lens. Their purpose is to drastically reduce the minimum focal distance of the lens.

From memory the theory goes the longer the lens, the less effect extension tubes will have. I think there is a ratio going on, ie ratio of lens focal length to lens plus extension tube length. I think 31mm on a 35mm lens is a lot, but the same tube on a 135mm lens may make only a small difference in minimum focal distance. I will try it out one day, because really, 35mm is too close for macro - the lens is almost touching the subject here.

This was shot at iso160, f/8, 1/250s with a 60x90cm softbox held over camera. The shadow yo can see in the refeletion of the softbox on the orange m&m in pic is the camera :)

Just playin' today.

Day 11

 

 

Today has been another long day! After work I dashed home to see the boy before he went to bed, then I had to pick up my mates family from the airport. I was hoping to take some "crowd" pics at the airport, but felt a little self conscious and was worried the AFP would want to see my SD card :)

This is yet another self portrait. Toying with rim lighting and also toying with making a room look darker than it is. Shot 1/250s f/8 iso100 with 1 softboxes at 10 and 2 as rim. some levels adjustment in PS.