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I used a single PowerGenix PGX-4AAZiNc 1.6v Nickel Zinc Rechargeable AA cell in each of two AA to C adapters, inside a vertical handle Argus C-3 flashgun. These cells are rated at 1.6V, but measure well over 1.8V when fully charged. They have very low internal resistance, and can dump more power into a strobe or flashbulb than any other AA cell. The NiZn AA cells are WAY more powerful than the Carbon C-cells that this flashgun was designed for. I don't know if this materially affects the brightness curve of the bulb "pop".
The flashbulb was blue coated, which I believe means it was designed to match the sensitivity curve of daylight-balanced color film.
Nikon D600 with a Tokina 100mm macro lens.
Camera on tripod, exposure equal on both shots:
5 seconds
f/2.8
ISO100
To fire the flashgun, I merely triggered the 5-second exposure, and used a screwdriver to short the two pins protruding from the handle of the flashgun. I was hand-holding the flashgun a few feet from the camera, casually pointing it in about the same direction as the lens. I think the flashgun's reflector has a much wider angle than most strobes.
Earlier today, I noticed that the trees are producing a bumper crop of walnuts!
They may have done so in previous years, and we never noticed.
We'll put them out in the sun to dry them out, then enjoy the tasty bounty within.
This is a crop from one frame of the previous stacked image. It appears to be a meteor streak, caught during the exposures made for the composite star trail image.
The Draconids meteor shower occured today, but we missed the best of it here in northern New York State, USA, as the peak was at about 4PM EST. The nearly full moon reduced visibility, as well.
Lit by a CFL bulb on the porch and Luna
This photo was made with my old Nikkor-S 50mm f/1.4 lens. It was made in 1972 or 1973. It is quite scratched, dusty and maybe even has a little fungus growing, along with damaged coatings.
Nonetheless, it is fun to play with. I performed a crude AI-modification to the aperture ring (I used a file). The lens now works perfectly with my Nikon D600 (full metering and focus confirmation).
This photo was made with my old Nikkor-S 50mm f/1.4 lens. It was made in 1972 or 1973. It is quite scratched, dusty and maybe even has a little fungus growing, along with damaged coatings.
Nonetheless, it is fun to play with. I performed a crude AI-modification to the aperture ring (I used a file). The lens now works perfectly with my Nikon D600 (full metering and focus confirmation).
All set for the high desert Summer Sun
Ugly pseudo HDR conversion with Photomatix.
Shot by my girlfriend Zoe.
Much better! Not exactly an architectual masterpiece, of course, just a quick example to show how much better you can make your point and shoot photos with just a little bit of extra effort.
The off-camera flash is a $10 eBay find. It's an older Vivitar 2500 auto thyristor flash. Not super powerful (GN80 at ISO100), but WAY better than the Samsung D53's built-in flash. Not to mention the often more pleasing image that results from the use of an off-camera flash.
Now here comes the cool part. Like most small point and shoot digital cameras, the Samsung does not have a hotshoe for flash mounting, nor does it have a PC sync terminal. So triggering the off-camera flash requires a neat little gadget called an optical slave.
It's a wee thing attaches to your off-camera flash. The slave has a light sensor that "sees" the pulse of light from the camera's built-in flash, and triggers the off-camera flash. Optical slaves are cheap, sometimes less than $10.
One more wrinkle. Most point and shoot digital cameras fire a low power "pre-flash" before making the exposure to set the correct flash power for the actual exposure. This pre-flash will be seen by the optical slave, and it will obediently trigger the off-camera flash the slave is attached to. This means your carefully set up off-camera flash has now shot it's wad before the camera's shutter has even opened. To get around this problem, some optical slaves have an adjustable delay mode. When set correctly, the slave will see the pre-flash pulse from the camera, wait a very brief moment, then trigger the off-camera flash to sync properly with the camera's exposure. Yay! problem solved.
You can get even fancier, as I did with this setup. If you look closely at the large version of this photo, you'll see a little gizmo sitting on top of the white display cabinet. It's the second from the left object on top of the cabinet. It's my optical slave with delay, but it's not attached to the off-camera flash, which is to camera left.
Instead, it's attached to the transmitter of a radio flash trigger. The sequence works like this:
1) The camera's built-in flash fires a low power pulse to meter for proper flash power.
2) The optical slave sees the pulse from the camera, and waits for a moment.
3) The optical slave triggers the radio transmitter it's attached to.
4) The radio transmitter sends a coded radio pulse.
5) The radio receiver attached to the off-camera flash receives the coded radio pulse.
6) The radio receiver triggers the off-camera flash it's attached to, syncing perfectly with the camera, which is now making the exposure.
All this happens VERY rapidly and reliably.
This is my Clausing model 5912 engine lathe.
I bought it used from a seller in SE New Hampshire in 2003. I brought it back here to Northern New York.
12.25-inch swing, 36-inches between centers.
It was originally equipped with a 1HP three-phase motor and a hydraulically-controlled variable-speed spindle drive. I am replacing the original drive and motor with a new three-phase 7.5HP direct-drive motor and a 480V VFD (Variable Frequency Drive).
Highly processed single-exposure pseudo-HDR image.
Take out a Lincoln penny, and have a look at the "LIBERTY" mark to the left of Lincoln's bust. What you see here are the first three letters of that word, photographed in macro. I used a 10X microscope lens mounted to my old Nikon D50 DSLR via a series of adapters.
This is the full frame as shot, not a cropped portion of the image.
As you'll notice, depth of field at 10X is VERY shallow. This is an unavoidable law of physics, so better equipment can't do much. I calculated the DOF with my setup to be around 16.8 micrometers. A micrometer is 1/1,000 of a millimeter, so that's only .0168 millimeters, or 0.00066 inches! (less than a thousandth of an inch).
There is a process called "focus stacking" that can combine images taken at several subject distances into one seamless image with much greater depth of field. That will have to come later for me, as stacking at 10X requires a VERY demanding studio setup and close attention to detail. For example, I would need a way to accurately and consistently move my subject less than a thousandth of an inch for each exposure, and do this perhaps dozens or even HUNDREDS of times for ONE final photograph.
This photo was made with my old Nikkor-S 50mm f/1.4 lens. It was made in 1972 or 1973. It is quite scratched, dusty and maybe even has a little fungus growing, along with damaged coatings.
Nonetheless, it is fun to play with. I performed a crude AI-modification to the aperture ring (I used a file). The lens now works perfectly with my Nikon D600 (full metering and focus confirmation).
Taken at the October 24th, 2012 campaign event of Governor Mitt Romney at Reno, Nevada.
It was very challenging to get decent shots of the event. A dark arena, long distance to subject requiring a long (shaky) slow lens and then a heavy crop, plus crazy mixed white balance lighting conspired to keep me on my toes.
It was amusing to watch the iPhone/Android crowd attempt to grab pics and video of their guy. Most of their shots were VERY blurry and had disturbing colors, like an impressionist painting of a bad LSD trip (oh, wait, I just remembered where we were...)
I decided to try my hand at "free range" bird photography. I used my Samyang 500mm F/8 "preset" lens, on my Nikon D50 DSLR.
I've done very little bird photography, with the exception of one afternoon in Little Valley, California last year. That day was a comparitive dawdle, because although I was using a lens with "only" 300mm of focal length, it did have autofocus, auto exposure, auto diaphragm and a maximum aperture a full stop faster than the Samyang.
Couple the inferior Samyang lens with a shaky photographer requiring high ISO (noisy), and my results were mediocre, at best. Despite the Samyang's 750mm equiv. focal length, I had to heavily crop all of the following bird photos. That, and lots of other processing to make them presentable.
I'll do better next time. Though I may not resort to the "cheat" of shooting near a bird feeder.
I have a new found admiration for expert birders who have the skill, patience and equipment to do justice to this very challenging endeavor. Some of their gear, though, is rather pricy.
This is the side of the PCB with the flash memory chip, which is part number FBNL63A59K3PG
The datasheets for this part indicate an actual capacity of 4GB, just as the H2testw program reported.
I've had no luck yet reprogramming this drive back to 4GB, as I can't find software that has this flash memory chip listed in it's database.
There are two more photos in this set.
Please click on the following link to go to an alert page on SOSFakeFlash.com about fraudulent eBay seller garysin2008:
sosfakeflash.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/garysin2008-urgent-...
UPDATE (02/03/10):
I actually managed to fix it a few days ago, using UD Tools 1.2.0.8.
It's now a functional 4GB drive, albeit with a few bad blocks mapped out during the low-level formatting. The bad blocks are no doubt due to the low-grade flash chip used.