View allAll Photos Tagged 2ndamendment
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
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.
This photo was made with a Phoenix MZ-5000 650mm-1300mm f/8-f/16 T-mount lens on a Nikon D600.
The lens was made by Samyang in Korea, and is sold under many brand names, such as:
Bower, Falcon, Opteka, Phoenix, Polar, Pro-Optic, Vivitar, Walimex and Rokinon
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.
The current owner Willie Shepherd, who is well into his eighties, originally traded two sacks of potatoes for this sweet (at the time) ride.
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).
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.
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.
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 AstroSolar™ 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...
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 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.
This photo was made with a Phoenix MZ-5000 650mm-1300mm f/8-f/16 T-mount lens on a Nikon D600.
The lens was made by Samyang in Korea, and is sold under many brand names, such as:
Bower, Falcon, Opteka, Phoenix, Polar, Pro-Optic, Vivitar, Walimex and Rokinon
Processed with Photomatix
We live on a 640-acre ranch in the high desert, in Big Valley, California.
We decided to lay down a new gravel floor in our crude 1930s garage. The gravel is often called "Cinders", and is actually pumice from a long-past volcanic eruption.
All of the "stuff" on the floor/ground needed to be moved out or over to make way. Now that this side is done, back over we'll go with some of the stuff, and out with the rest to prepare for the second half to be graveled.
This image was made with my Rokinon 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens at f/5.6, mounted on my Nikon D600 DSLR. ISO100.
The yellow light in the rafters came from my Nikon SB-600 Speedlite with a knock-off Sto-Fen CTO in place (Not sure if 1/2 or full).
I had the rig on a tripod, and shot 4 or 5 frames at 3-stop intervals, then combined in Photomatix, and tweaked with Nikon Capture NX-D beta.
This is the same setup as the previous shot, but with a steel snoot slid over the flashhead. It is a 4" x 3" HVAC duct reducer, purchased from Home Depot for less than $6.00US. The Home Depot site currently shows a different (shorter) design when the SKU is looked up, so I'll have to post a photo of mine when I get to it.
This works so well, I'll have to go buy the rest of what they had in stock, in case the one shown on the web site is the new standard. The reducer, unmodified, is a nearly perfect slip-fit over the flashhead.
I painted the galvanized steel reducer inside and out with a $.96 can of flat black spray paint from Walmart, then baked the part at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes to fast-cure the paint.
Galvanized surfaces are very difficult to get paint to stick to, so we'll see how well this works.
The flashhead was powered by a 4,000 w/s Norman 40/40 powerpack, turned down to minimum power.
Camera was set to ISO50 at f/22
This photo was made with a Phoenix MZ-5000 650mm-1300mm f/8-f/16 T-mount lens on a Nikon D600.
The lens was made by Samyang in Korea, and is sold under many brand names, such as:
Bower, Falcon, Opteka, Phoenix, Polar, Pro-Optic, Vivitar, Walimex and Rokinon
Here's my first effort at focus stacking with a conventional macro rail. The subject is an old Elgin wristwatch that I have listed on eBay. I thought it important to show the internals on such an old collectible, thus the effort.
The image was made by placing the watch on a simple wooden stand inside my photo tent. I have some Protostar flocked light trap material on the wooden stand, to greatly reduce reflections and provide a nearly black background.
My Nikon D600 camera was on a tripod by the front of the photo tent, with an inexpensive macro rail between the tripod and camera. The front flap on the tent was down, draped over the camera, to fill in the on-axis nooks and crannies.
Lighting was from two off-camera Nikon flashes, one on each side of the tent, triggered by radio remote and optical slave. The tent softens the light from the flashes, giving it more of a wrap-around effect, and reducing hard reflections from highlights on the subject. Flash power (1/8, I think) and camera exposure were manual. Aperture was f/8 for best resolution. Camera ISO was at its base of 100 for maximum image quality.
Once set up and framed, I used the macro rail to step the relative position of the camera and subject, triggering the shutter remotely at each step. This means the plane of perfect focus moved through the shallow subject in 23 steps, each spaced by moving the macro rail knob “a smidgen”.
I used Zerene Stacker (trial version) to combine the 23 images into one sharp, full resolution photo, which was further tweaked with Nikon ViewNX 2.
I have other photos of this watch on Flickr, so check out the images in this set.
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:
An homage to the second amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America. :-) Slide locked back and out of ammo. Glock 19.
©2011 David C. Pearson, M.D.
The Nikon D600 is developing a reputation as being plagued by dust or oil on the sensor, probably from some design defect or quality control issue. The worst of the spots almost always appear in the upper left portion of the frame, leading many to suspect a source of the dust in the camera itself, at that corner of the sensor (upside down, naturally). I have cleaned my sensor a few times with “canned air”, which does improve matters slightly. I have not tried more aggressive sensor cleaning techniques, and will not do so until I have no other recourse.
This image is a 2048x2048 1:1 crop of a full-frame image taken with my D600. The crop is from the upper left corner of the original image. Have a look at the full 2048 pixel image to see detail (right-click on the image and choose “Large 2048”).
The "lens" was a Holga pinhole of 40mm focal length, with a .25mm aperture and a focal ratio of f/160. This lens was selected because it gives the sharpest detail of any sensor dust. I used a 30-second manual exposure at ISO400. I chose this speed rather than the base of ISO100 to keep the exposure time reasonable. The lens was pointed at a completely white screen on my LCD PC monitor. I kept the camera moving during the exposure so as to record no subject detail, leaving only the dust rendered. I chose the exposure to put the hump of the histogram about in the middle. The vignetting is caused by the pinhole lens.
A faster lens aperture will allow a shorter exposure, but much less distinct dust. This is why sensor dust is rarely noticed- a common focal ratio of perhaps f/5.6, and a complicated subject will almost always hide any small dust particles on the sensor.
I may be sending my D600 back to Nikon for service or replacement, if I can be assured that they have developed some sort of permanent solution to this widespread problem.
Mediaite Beck Threatens to Quit NRA if They Re-Elect ‘Secret Muslim’ Grover Norquist to Board
Glenn Lee Beck, aka Glenn Beck, is a talk news host. Wayne LaPierre is CEO and the Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association.
This caricature of Glenn Beck was adapted from a Creative Commons licensed photo from David Shankbone's Flickr photostream.
Grover Glenn Norquist, aka Grover Norquist, is president of Americans for Tax Reform.
The source images for this cartoon of Wayne LaPierre are Creative Commons licensed photos from Gage Skidmore's and cm195902's Flickr photostreams, a U.S. Military - Joint Task Force Guantanamo photo, a U.S. Air Force photo and Creative Commons licensed images from plural's flickr photostream and Mulad's flickr photostreams.
The source image for this Caricature of Grover Norquist is a Creative Commons licensed photo from Gage Skidmore's Flickr photostream.
The image of the black holes was adapted from a photo in the public domainby NASA available via Wikimedia.
