Detailing: How To
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"E mi venne in mente che non esiste
nessun manuale che parli del problema essenziale (...): tenere a quello che si fa. Questo è considerato di
scarsa importanza, o viene dato per scontato.
(...)
vedere se questa strana separazione tra quello che l’uomo fa e quello che l’uomo è
potrebbe aiutarci a capire che cosa diavolo è andato storto in questo ventesimo secolo..."
Questo brano è tratto dal romanzo di R. Pirsig "Lo Zen e l’arte della
manutenzione della motocicletta" (ed.: Adelphi).
Fill the blender about 2/3 full of water. Be kind to yourself and let the water temperature be between tepid and bathwater warm, no need to go plunging your hands into cold water.
aubergine seasoned with chilli powder flavoured with balsamic vinegar, next to spiced beef, dal curry, peas, onion and servings of plum butter
boiled spiced beef served cold flic.kr/p/2kRsTTd
plum butter flic.kr/p/2kNwSa4
ghee flic.kr/p/2kGBxt9
aubergine nutrition facts www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/ingredient-focus-aubergines
third attempt cooking aubergine
to decrease aubergine oil absorption soaked the aubergine in oat milk overnight, no salt
www.thekitchn.com/4-ways-to-prevent-eggplant-from-absorbi...
... Soak the eggplant in milk. Soaking slices or cubes off eggplant in milk for one to two hours fills the porous structure studded with air pockets with milk, leaving no room for oil to be absorbed ...
ps i'm not recommending any of these cookery adventures. they suit my personal taste. photographing to encourage myself to eat more healthily ...
i've created a new group www.flickr.com/groups/cooking_is_my_hobby/ to gather ideas and encourage myself to continue with healthy eating by learning from others if you're interested in cooking, sometimes or a lot, or enjoy the cooking of others, you're always welcome ...
close up of how the seps look. You can see that the colors overlap. The line art is there to trap the colors and keep them from going off register. I also overprinted some of the colors to create new colors. A handy trick to use when you are using a limited palette. So instead of this being a 4-color poster I was able to add 2 more colors from the overprinting to make it a 6-color print. Helps keep the cost down too. Pretty sneaky between the cheeky.
I posted some notes to show you what I'm talking about.
Edit: I have an update here!
Some people have asked me how I take photos of my pots, so the notes in this picture should cover everything I know! The light setup and backdrop cost me less than $100. I shoot with a Nikon D80 using either a Nikon 50mm 1.8 lens or the Tamron 90mm 2.8 macro, but you could shoot with anything that you can mount to a tripod. I keep the F/stop at F/13 to get the biggest field of depth without worrying about sensor size diffraction.
Getting a decent backdrop is pretty critical. Pots don't look right unless they're against a gradient backdrop. If a pot is on a flat color then it looks like it's floating in the air. A gradient grounds the pot. I shoot against a "thunder gray" Flotone backdrop from B&H. The smaller backdrop will barely accommodate my larger platters. The Flotone backdrop is beautiful, but it scratches easily. I figure I can get away with taking photos of thirty or forty pots before I need to replace the backdrop.
I intentionally use harsh lighting-- you may want to soften yours. An easy (but flammable) way is to tape sheets of white copy paper over the lamp shells. I've done this for brief stints, but I wouldn't do this for extended periods of time. I use harsh lighting because my pots are often very shiny in areas and very matte others. I like to bring this out by emphasizing the light reflection on the shiny parts. I used to shoot in a light tent and I found the resulting photos rather boring.
The final result is: www.flickr.com/photos/searleb/2133181112/. My setup is always changing as I need to photograph new and different pots!
Good luck, and if you try this technique, let me know!
-Brian
Some of you asked me about the lockers which I built for the Star Wars Crew Room: flic.kr/p/2gShdgj
It isn't that complicated, I used SNOT brackets. The technic bricks are necessary to attach the lockers to the wall.
This shot is one in a series about engraving stones and tiles using a sandblaster.
Full description of the sandblasting process here: buildmakecraftbake.com/2009/03/how-to-tuesday-sandblastin...
Just realized this is possible and wanted to keep it for future reference, as I have no direct need for it now. Hope others find it useful too. This should allow for reasonably decent angled stripes too because you could continue to go diagonal with multiple 2x2s, 3x3s or 4x4s in a row.
There are slight gaps, but not large enough to fill with ½ plate elements. Those gaps can be used as subtle greebling, so it's not that bad if you can make it work for you.
Note I did not have a 3x3 plate at hand but it's not required: the solution shown here is one plate higher than a single 3x3 plate would be. If you want to cover things with tiles, the extra plate height is unavoidable for 3x3 and 4x4 anyway.
You can do this with larger wedge plates too, obviously.
Howto:
1) Wait for a cloudlness, moonless night. Or do it after moonset or before moonrise. The moon is really really bright and it washes out the stars.
2) Set camera to continuous shooting mode. This is the mode where if you hold down the shutter release, it will just take picture after picture after picture... Set the shutter speed as long as it will go without BULB -- This is probably 30 seconds. You can experiment with different ISO and F/numbers, but generally you're going to want low F/number and high ISO. These were F/3.5 and ISO 1600.
3) put it on a tripod.
4) Focus. I've found that racking the focus all the way toward infinity doesn't quite work -- it focuses PAST infinity. So I have to focus it all the way out and then bring it back just a smidge.
5) use something to hold the shutter release button down. I used a wire wrapped around the camera with a piece of paper wadded up over the shutter release button. That keeps the button down so the camera takes picture after picture after picture...
(I'd recommend using RAW mode if you know how to process raw images. That way, you don't have to worry about white balance, and you can stretch the images appropriately without causing too much degradation.)
6) Wait a few hours. Now you've got 200 photos where the stars are slightly offset and the foreground stays relatively stationary.
(If you've used RAW images, then you now load em into your RAW processing program, set the white balance so the sky is not red, adjust for noise, etc, etc... You can process them all simultaneously with Adobe Camera RAW, and other programs probably have that same functionality...)
7) Get www.startrails.de/html/software.html and load up those images. Now it'll do two things. First it will combine all the images to smooth out the unchanging parts, getting rid of noise. Use a large number of frames to smooth it out more. Then it will essentially do a brighten command with each frame, painting the stars over the smoothed background.
Voila!
I forget exactly how many images are combined here but I think it's a bit over 200.
Other things:
Stars move fastest around the celestial equator and slowest near the celestial poles. The North Star is at the North celestial pole. If you took 200 pictures of it, it'd hardly move at all. If the camera is pointed west or east, the stars will trail faster.
Stars circle around the celestial poles, so towards the celestial equator, the trails will be fairly straight, but near the North star, they will make more pronounced circles. This image is wide angle and looking east, so the North Star is towards the top left. The effect is quite noticable.
Higher focal lengths (more zoomed in) will make stars trail faster, but I think wide angle shots usually work better. This one is at 18mm on a 1.6x crop camera.
Those weird straight lines are airplanes. There are two in this image. You may also catch sattelites and shooting stars.
Liquid Drop Art /// Facebook Page///Water Drop Ebook
Update - March 15, 2013: These set-ups are very out-dated. I have just finished an Ebook - The Ultimate Guide to Water Drop Photography. The link to purchase is on my Facebook Page or on my Website
I highly recommend the new MKJZZ Water Drop Kit which is now my water drop system of choice.
I accidentally erased my original explanation on this, but I will replace it with one that's even better.
I started out doing drops using this method for about a year and have had much success with it. It is not easy getting the timing down, but with experience, it gets easier. Success rate is about one in ten for a two drop collision.
With this camera, a Canon 450D, I used a remote shutter cable and used the timer for the shots. I would get to know the sound of the beeping on the camera when to release the drops just before the shutter would open. The timing is critical and it takes quite a while to get it right.
I used a regular medicine dropper. The size you see in the picture is good for drops. I didn't like the smaller ones, because the drops are then smaller as well. You need to gently squeeze out two drops very close together (perhaps about 1/4 inch apart to get the two drop collision. Too close together and your drop will be very short, and too far apart and the second drop will not have had time to connect with the first one coming up out of the water.
If you squeeze too many drops out of the dropper, it will just be a mess, however, you will get some unique creations this way as well.
The density of the liquid you use is a great factor in producing good shapes. Water straight out of the tap is not dense enough. Very cold water is best. To thicken the liquid, use a bit of glycerine to the drop liquid. Now I use xanthan gum or guar gum which are excellent thickeners to slow down the reaction of the liquids. Mix a tiny bit with water, mix well with a blender and strain with a coffee filter. If it takes too long to strain, simply dilute with more water.
The water in the catch container has a lot of surface tension and to get higher jets for the drops, you need to use a surfactant to reduce this surface tension. One way is to use two or three drops of rinse added to the water in the container below. You can also try dish detergent, but only certain kinds will work. Using rinse aid or detergent will cause bubbles on the surface of the water, but just simply blow these away to get a clean water surface.
One of the best liquids in starting out is milk. Anything from skim milk to whole milk will do. It has the right consistency for drops. The density is perfect for good collisions.
For colouring, I use regular food dye which is available in most grocery stores. It mixes well with milk or water.
For lighting, you can use just your pop-up camera flash if necessary, but external flashes will give better results. I have the flash quite close to the drop in the picture, but if you have lighter backgrounds, you can have it back a bit farther. Try to get some of the flash directed toward the drop and the background as well. Lighter backgrounds are much better. The light bounces off the background to light up the splash as well.
You can also use coloured gels on the flashes. I used coloured pieces of plastic used for binder separators in school supply departments. This will give some cool effects on milk or water as well.
A bit about Flash Exposure Compensation. It is the low power of the flash which freezes the motion, not the exposure of your shutter. You will need to check your camera and find the flash exposure compensation setting and bring it down quite a bit. If it is too high, you will get a lot of motion blur on the drop. If you bring it down, you will get less light, but the speed of the flash is so quick, it will capture the drop without any blur.
Camera settings: With this type of set-up, I would set my camera exposure to sync with the flash, which would be 200 or 250. You can set is as low as you want, but it won't make any difference except to let more ambient light in, which is not desirable. The low power of the flash is about 20,000th of a second, so you see it is the flash which freezes the drop, not the shutter speed. I like my aperture around 14 to 18 if possible to get as much of the drop in focus if possible. This cuts out a lot of light, however, with a lot of cameras now, noise isn't as much of a problem with higher ISO settings as it used to be. I would use an ISO of 200 or more to give you more light.
Distance between dropper and water tray can be anywhere from 30 to 50cm.
For focusing, place something on the spot where the drop will land and focus on that. A socket wrench extender, ruler, serrated bread knife, anything you have handy will do. Try to put your focus on the front half of the splash. You won't get everything in focus, but the best area is the front where your eye goes.
Another manual method you can use is the steady drip method which I explain in my book. I used a flexible plastic tube with an air regulator from a fish supply store. The air regulator controls the rate of flow. You need to have the drops about 1/4 inch apart and hold a cup underneath. Remove the cup and the first two drops make the collision. Use a shutter release cable to activate the shutter at the right moment the drops hit the water. Again, this is trial and error (mostly error) to get the timing right, but it's a good way to try drops before spending a lot of money if you're not sure you want to get into this genre of photography.
I explain much more in my book. I use a lot of pictures for reference. It contains a ton of information and well worth the purchase.
Comprehensive Water Drop Photography Guide on DIYPhotography .
A rather basic How-To on how I hacked a Mamiya RB67 to take a 35mm film canister:
1) Get the barrel of a Biro. Confirm that it fits in to the holes at either end of a 35mm film canister.
2) Cut two short lengths off the barrel. You'll have to eye-ball the lengths. You may want to specifically cut lengths that will put the 35mm film right at the top or bottom of the plate. Mine is a little way down from the top, to make sure the full height of the film was exposed, but also lead to some of my framing not coming out as expected.
3) File slots in to both ends of both of your peices of barrel. The slots mean that you can push the barrel further in to the 35mm canister, meaning it is held in place more firmly. The slots at the other ends should be wide/deep enough to sit on the lugs where the 120 film roll usually goes.
4) Put it all together, and pull the film over the plate, and around the take-up spindle, just like a normal 120 film.
5) Make a mental note of where on the back plate the film is sitting. When taking photos, remember that the image is top-bottom reversed in the camera, so if the film is sitting along the bottom of the plate, it will expose the top of the image you see in the view-finder.
6) As you wind the film on, you may find that the frame-counter does not advance. This means you have to flick the mechanical lever that is usually used to allow you to perform multiple exposures, just to make the camera let you expose a frame. This does then mean you don't have that lock-out protection, so you have to be quite systematic to avoid accidental double-exposures. Other people have reported that the frame-counter still works fine, meaning you don't have to fiddle with the mutli-exposure lever.
7) When the film is finished (I got about 16 exposures on a 36-exposure 35mm film) you need to unload it IN THE DARK, either in a dark room, or with the cartidge in a dark bag. Simply pop the 35mm cannister and the take-up spool off the lugs and manually wind the film back in to the cannister. You might want to practice this bit with a duff film in the light, so that you know what you're doing in the dark.
Hope someone finds this helpful!
Hacía tiempo que no subía nada a Flickr. Aprovecho para subir la foto que ilustra el artículo sobre cómo hacer fotos de gotas de agua de dZoom.
Es muy sencillo. ¡ Animaros !
Well, this is how I do it anyway... there are programs that will do it for you as well but I don't have any of those. Do give it a try, it's quite addictive.
[STEP 1]
Take an empty 120 spool (I'm sure you have a few lying around; you know, from the B&W film you developed on your own, or when you respooled a 120 onto a 620 spool?), and mod as seen here.
First, saw off the part in red. Then, carefully carve out the parts in blue so that you get something like what you see on the left. I did all of this with an Exacto knife set I bought at an art supply store. The saw worked for the red portion, and one of the carving knives worked well for the blue portions.
Note that the width of the two "forks" has to be much narrower than it originally is. See where I've carved it down where the two arrows are.
The length of the forks do not have to be exact. The longer one here is 9mm and the shorter one is 6mm. It don't matter too much because it's actually the wider round stubs that puts a limit on where the film canister goes. And praise almighty, the combined leghts are just perfect.
Peeking into our soft winter Kusudama Garden...
Here is a classic beauty, kusudama 'Pendant' folded from all natural Japanese paper Dai Chiri.
Its diagrams along with many others are in 'Origami Charming Kusudama' book - Paperback or eBook (PDF)
Happy folding!
This is what the interior of the shuttle and its engines look like.
On the top of the thrusters there are two modulex tiles connected to clip plates.
Check out my latest how-to post: Build Yourself a LEGO Wall. These are all exterior wall ideas, interiors coming sometime soon!
Here's an update on my previous photo rig. I'll only annotate things that have changed, so take a look at the old one for more detail.
Reader Flickablogga gave me a great critique on the previous photo and pointed out that I had huge double reflections by using both lights at full power. This is something I hadn't noticed before, but you can see it throughout most of my previous work. Based on his critique, I've moved using only one main light and one for fill with a cheap white umbrella. In the past I've used wax paper or copy paper to tone down the harsh lights, but $20 umbrella gives a much larger source and does a much better job without muting the light too much.
One of the problems with my pots is that the stop range between the whites and blacks is huge using the shooting strategy above. At the same time, my pots have very saturated colors and if I compress the exposure so that the highlights are properly exposed, I have trouble hanging onto the correct color. The reasoning is that our eyes can see a dynamic range of 10-14 stops while our cameras can take photos of only about 8 or 9. If you compress the range so that you can hang onto lights and darks properly, you lose something in the middle.
To compensate for this, I've also recently tried shooting pots in HDR (high dynamic range) as well. I'm skeptical of this strategy for now, but I think the pros are currently outweighing the cons (there are definitely both). I've been taking 3 to 4 photos in 1.5 stop increments and combining them with software (Photomatix Pro). This gives me the extra 3-4 stops that our eyes can capture but the camera cannot.
HDR removes a lot of the camera work of getting the exposure correct, but it does take more computer work afterward. I have the HDR software tuned to keep the correct color saturation of middle exposure but uses information from the extreme exposures to keep the whites and blacks properly exposed. In the process of converting to jpegs, the whites and blacks get compressed but the middle exposure is left the same (the reverse of shooting normally). For example, here is one pot with HDR and without HDR. Without a doubt, the HDR version has much more accurate color representation in the mid-range of the exposure (the interesting part).
However, I think something is lost in the HDR version-- the colors are almost too well balanced. I think this is primarily because jpegs can only represent 8 stops of data and the extremes are just too compressed. What are your thoughts? Also, if you Strobist guys can think up a way to do this without HDR, I'd love to about hear it.
The effects of different writing implements on handmade post-consumer recycled paper (no size added). For better detail, look at the different sizes.
For an example of how watercolour looks on both sized and unsized paper, and a very basic how to look here.
2/3 of the chocolate has been melted in the microwave for about 30- 45 sec. Stir the melted chocolate and add the rest of the chocolate chopped in small pieces to the bowl. When the desired temperature of 33- 34 degree C (91- 93 F)has been achieved, allow the chocolate to rest for a few minutes. Stir again, then the chocolate will be ready to use.
Cut small pieces of parchment paper (30x 10 cm/ 12x 4 in) and place on the work surface. Dip two fingers into the chocolate and without removing any excess, use a stroking action to paint a shape approximately 6 cm (2 1/2 in) long onto the strip, trailing off the base. Repeat to fill the sheet- about 30 pieces are required for the cake, but make extra to allow for breakages.
As the sheet is filled, take hold of both ends of the strip and gently fold it 90 degrees lengthways. Leave it up against a baking tray or similar edge to hold the right angle while the chocolate sets. When set, gently peel off the decorative pieces and trim the base to neaten.
Gather what you need. Most things are household items, except for the screen and the vat. It goes easier if you work near a water source, and where you can spill water without worries.
For more in depth video on how this works check out this short clip I put together www.youtube.com/watch?v=28j5nAIVtoI
With Captain Jack Matt Smith my sigfig cosplaying as the Doctor, and featuring everyone's favorite time-traveling spaceship that looks like a phonebooth.
The interior is pretty simply built. The walls are two plates thick, and are put on 1x1 bricks with stud on one side. Basically using the fact that a brick is 2.5 plates thick to get that offset.
Over the years I’ve spent as a LEGO builder I’ve built many a tree… some beautiful, some passable, and some – let’s face it – terrible. Learn the easy why what I found out the hard way here!
Lighting the lights: Designer's tabletop lamp product photography tutorial,
More about this photoshot on a blog (including behind-the-scene-video):
www.akelstudio.com/blog/lighting-the-lights-designers-tab...
This shows how to use microfilm, which lacks the sprocket holes.
Get a cheap camera to remodel.
Cut down the sprocket claws with a nail cutter.
Apply synthetic glue on it to get enough friction.
If needed and possible, drill a small hole to the spool (right ) and pour a small amount of glue to enforce the friction. For Canon AE-1 and AV-1, the rotation is on the opposite side to the expectation. So this does not work.
With this cheap improvement, a small film camera can make as good images as the ones 6x9 can make.
I was asked how I did the curves on the Whitefang, so I made up this in LDD to explain. The two rightmost builds are different solution I tried to reinforce the links and keep the S shape. I ended up using the rightmost one, with 3 flex hoses. In the center technic holes I first placed a black string (part 16542) before putting the flex hose, so it stays firmly in place.