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This is a shop-made "Beauty Dish" light modifier. To build it, I bought a $6.00 20" woven-bamboo salad bowl at Resco, a restaurant supply house in Reno, Nevada.
I cut a rectangular hole for the Speedlight's nose to poke through. I drilled two holes to attach an L-bracket to the back of the dish, below the rectangular hole. A plastic rail from a cheap light stand umbrella adapter is screwed down to the L-bracket, allowing the Nikon SB600 Speedlight to sit at just the right height to poke through the center hole.
The baffle in the center of the dish is a plastic ceiling box cover, obtained for free from the Reno Habitat For Humanity store. The baffle stands off of the dish about 4 inches, held there by two #6 machine screws. The stand-off distance is adjustable, and I found that all the way out from the dish worked best.
I painted the baffle and the inside of the dish with flat white spray paint, purchased from Walmart for $.96US per can (cheap!). I will probably paint the outside flat black at some point, but that is strictly a cosmetic measure. You can see the woven bamboo pattern under the paint, but it doesn't significantly affect the reflected light pattern.
I made a handle from an aluminum bicycle seatpost, which is attached to the L-bracket with the same screw that retains the plastic hotshoe mounting rail. This allows the rig to be easily hand-held for macro and other no-assistant-needed shots. I use Nikon's CLS system to allow full TTL exposure with no wires required. Works very well!
I'll post additional photos of the details in a day or two.
I found that the most even coverage of the dish was obtained when the flip-down "14mm" diffuser over the flash reflector was deployed.
The SB600 was set to 1/64 power here, and f/16 at ISO100 on the camera.
This large and ancient metal lathe is located in Lookout, California, in Lassen County, Big Valley.
This is in the boonies of Northern CA.
The label reads:
The Hendey Machine Co. Torrington Conn. U.S.A.
The size is as follows:
Swing over bed: 18"
Swing over carriage: unknown
Chuck diameter: unknown
Bed length: 10 feet
It may have been built in the 1905-1920 era, from what I've learned so far.
It has a full feed/threading gearbox.
It is equipped with at least parts of a taper attachment.
The original drive, which may have been a lineshaft or an electric motor is long gone. In its place, a modern 1HP motor with an unknown number of poles drives the conehead through a three-speed automotive transmission and a flat belt to the spindle cone. The owner says the motor will start the spindle in anything but highest gear.
It is owned by a fine older gentleman named Willie. He owns a LARGE property full of old tractors, cars, trucks, bulldozers and vehicles of varied and sundry description.
This lathe was still in occasional use. I expect that it could be restored to its former glory by a man willing and able to put a LOT of time and/or money into it. I plan to buy it some day, assuming Willie gets tired of it at some point.
More info on Hendey lathes:
March, 2006, and the still-defunct Clausing was reduced to life as a junk accumulator. It now "rests in pieces", hopefully due for a resurrection by Easter, 2012...
Highly processed single-exposure pseudo-HDR image.
Taken with my new cheapo Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens, mounted on my Nikon D600. This is the earlier non-CPU version of the lens (model FE8M-N), but my D600 handles this well, giving full metering when the camera is set to know the parameters of the mounted lens.
As you can see, the lens is intended to cover the much smaller DX "crop sensor". The lens hood obstructs much of the image circle when projected onto the FX (36x24mm) sensor.
The hood is permanently attached, so it will require some brutal measures to free it. Once removed, the circle cast on my sensor will reside within the rainbow ring here. MUCH more usable area. You can see the inside of the lens hood (circular grooves around the image).
Grotesquely post-processed by Photomatix, this weirdness is not a product of this particular lens.
Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens, intended for use on crop sensor DSLR cameras.
I shaved off the original built-in lens hood to allow this wider field of view.
The camera was a Nikon D600, placed on top of a 4' tall tree stump, facing straight up at zenith.
Exposure time was 30 seconds at f/5.6 and ISO400
The Mean Green Machine spends its last day with me.
Seven-exposure HDR. Natural light from windows- no artificial light on subject.
The current owner Willie Shepherd, who is well into his eighties, originally traded two sacks of potatoes for this sweet (at the time) ride.
Easy deployment and added safety for transport and storage. Allows storage in Condition 1 with confidence. Homemade Raven Vanguard clone.
Here's one in action: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNji5GNnan4
Oh, and remember, if guns are made illegal then only criminals will have guns.
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 is my Kearney & Trecker horizontal milling machine. It was made during World War II, and was presumably used to produce parts for the war effort.
It has been sitting in my yard for quite a few years, and is missing some parts, some of which were sold to bring new life to other old K&T mills.
It will soon be scrapped, but hopefully not until I have a chance to remove and save some of the smaller parts from this aging derelict.
It weighs about 4,000 pounds, and is considered a baby of its type.
Five-exposure HDR.
Nikon 35mm f/1.8 DX lens on Nikon D50
126 seconds at ISO200
I adjusted the levels and curves for this image, otherwise it is as-shot.
The lower part of this psychedelic mushroom cloud image is Route 299 between Bieber and Adin, California.
Truly a bastard yet temporary child. An Olympic Arms lower, a Delton upper, and a Rock River Arms rear sight. Building a lower based on a Delton receiver for it. Then the Olympic Arms lower goes back to its original A2 upper and the RRA sight gets replaced by some sort of optic.
This is with a 1970s-vintage (maybe early 1980s) orange-colored f/11 Celestron C90 (90mm objective), with a focal length of 1000mm. The newer ones are quite different, and have longer focal lengths.
This image was made through a piece of BAADER AstroSolarâ„¢ Safety Film (optical density 5.0). It worked fabulously when I shot the Venus transit a year or two ago, using a carefully made filter holder for my lens, and shooting images of the Sun at 1/500th of a second.
But for this shoot, I intended to use it as an ultra-dense "ND" filter for very long exposures. So I cut the filter down to a size that would fit in my Chinese knock-off of the Cokin P square filter holder. I found a piece of thin card stock that would fit well in the filter slots, then carefully taped the Baader film to the card stock, within the limits of my shaky hands. Last time, my surgeon girlfriend helped me get it all taut and straight.
Unfortunately, there was enough of a gap between the card stock and the filter holder that a lot of light could leak through, so I intended to tape it all up with black vinyl electrical tape.
And of course, I left the tape in the car, so this is my result after a 30-second exposure. Color shift was not as bad as I expected, despite this certainly not being a "Neutral Density" filter. So I'll try again, and be sure to seal up all the light gaps.
An optical density of 5.0 translates to 16-2/3 stops! That's a ND100000 filter.
My, my...
This is a shop-made "Beauty Dish" light modifier. To build it, I bought a $6.00 20" woven-bamboo salad bowl at Resco, a restaurant supply house in Reno, Nevada.
I cut a rectangular hole for the Speedlight's nose to poke through. I drilled two holes to attach an L-bracket to the back of the dish, below the rectangular hole. A plastic rail from a cheap light stand umbrella adapter is screwed down to the L-bracket, allowing the Nikon SB600 Speedlight to sit at just the right height to poke through the center hole.
The baffle in the center of the dish is a plastic ceiling box cover, obtained for free from the Reno Habitat For Humanity store. The baffle stands off of the dish about 4 inches, held there by two #6 machine screws. The stand-off distance is adjustable, and I found that all the way out from the dish worked best.
I painted the baffle and the inside of the dish with flat white spray paint, purchased from Walmart for $.96US per can (cheap!). I will probably paint the outside flat black at some point, but that is strictly a cosmetic measure.
I made a handle from an aluminum bicycle seatpost, which is attached to the L-bracket with the same screw that retains the plastic hotshoe mounting rail. This allows the rig to be easily hand-held for macro and other no-assistant-needed shots. I use Nikon's CLS system to allow full TTL exposure with no wires required. Works very well!
I'll post additional photos of the details in a day or two.
I found that the most even coverage of the dish was obtained when the flip-down "14mm" diffuser over the flash reflector was deployed.
The SB600 was set to 1/4 or 1/2 power here, and f/8 at ISO100 on the camera.