View allAll Photos Tagged LEGOTron
Black posts are used to hold the balls in flight. While viewed through the slits, the eye gets much less light than normal, so high contrast is essential and everything black pretty much disappears. The hardest part of building a legotrope is finding eight (or more) exact copies of whatever you want to animate!
Check out a video of the legotrope in action:
Geared up to help you turn at a steady speed. The Legotrope puts a lot of force on that center axle, so it is supported at the top and bottom of the gear box (without this you can get a "shudder" while turning).
Check out a video of the legotrope in action:
Inspired by the amazing efforts of one Cary Norton, who constructed a working large-format camera out of legos and snapped one incredible picture of some woman named Ashley. I attempted to replicate the effect I loved so much in his picture with my own equipment.
The fine fellows in the medium format forum at Photo.net clued me in tremendously on how to get started, and here's (sort of) where I've ended up so far.
They generously shared so much new information and new ideas that I just had to do some tinkering, so yesterday morning I attempted to incorporate some of what they said into a test shoot with my favorite subject -- my endlessly patient wife.
Since one fellow clued me in further to the magic of diffuse sidelight, and because on this rainy North Carolina morning we had just about the right kind of effect, it seemed, I decided to take full advantage of "garage door light" in a literal sense. Our garage faces more or less east, and we do indeed get some great morning/early-afternoon light through the frosted panels toward the top of both doors.
So after moving aside some bikes and strollers and the like, I took another guy up on the suggestion of the 180mm, and numerous others' urging to use slow film and a tripod. As for a subject "lit well," I wasn't quite able to accomplish that, as I'm still acclimating to my flash and relied here on just the natural light and a white foamcore panel leaning up against a kayak at camera right. (Couldn't find my reflector disc.)
Looking at the results, though, I think it's apparent that they all gave great advice on lighting and composition (the dark background was supplied by a deflated blow-up mattress thrown over some stacks of storage bins, by the way).
Still, at least looking at this Polaroid test shot, I'm thinking I agree with one John A, who said camera characteristics were awfully meaningful in the shot I loved from the the Legotron. The light leaks just aren't there, though I may be able to try faking them digitally I suppose.
One chap astutely opined that what I was liking (perhaps) about the Ashley shot was that it had that fine-grained look of big-negative imagery, but combined with an imperfectness that's quite appealing. I think this shot, even on Polaroid, is still coming off comparatively "perfect and technical-looking." Maybe some of the other suggestions I got -- vaseline, condensation, camera shake, filters, etc -- will help in future experiments.
Oh, one funny thing: One fellow joked about Large Format's benefits -- mainly camera movements like tilt and shift -- being offset by the fact of those photographs taking longer to set up. In my case, what Lope and I pulled off in the garage may have been a *little* quicker than futzing around under a dark cloth, but with my amateur antics and tentative technique, not much! I already felt I was taxing my subject by asking her to hold still for a full second… (Opening the garage doors brought it down to only a 1/4-sec. exposure, which isn't such a challenge.)
As to the "long tonal range film" suggestion I heard, what you're seeing here doesn't quite qualify -- it's just the Fuji FP100B I had loaded in the Polaroid back for the RB. But this was just the test shot, and I followed it up with a (7x6, rather than square) exposure on real film afterward (Provia 100, actually). Looking forward to seeing how it comes out.
The whole process has been educational and fun so far, definitely. I wish I'd undertaken this process of trying to replicate an inspiring shot a long time ago.
[Nota: NO soy el autor de las fotos ni de los montajes. Fueron expuestos en el evento HISPABRICK en Diciembre 2007 organizado por la gente de Hispalug. Autor de esta foto: Legotron Publicado originalmente en: www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=290201]
[Nota: NO soy el autor de las fotos ni de los montajes. Fueron expuestos en el evento HISPABRICK en Diciembre 2007 organizado por la gente de Hispalug. Autor de esta foto: Legotron Publicado originalmente en: www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=290201]
[Nota: NO soy el autor de las fotos ni de los montajes. Fueron expuestos en el evento HISPABRICK en Diciembre 2007 organizado por la gente de Hispalug. Autor de esta foto: Legotron Publicado originalmente en: www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=290201]
[Nota: NO soy el autor de las fotos ni de los montajes. Fueron expuestos en el evento HISPABRICK en Diciembre 2007 organizado por la gente de Hispalug. Autor de esta foto: Legotron Publicado originalmente en: www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=290201]
[Nota: NO soy el autor de las fotos ni de los montajes. Fueron expuestos en el evento HISPABRICK en Diciembre 2007 organizado por la gente de Hispalug. Autor de esta foto: Legotron Publicado originalmente en: www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=290201]
[Nota: NO soy el autor de las fotos ni de los montajes. Fueron expuestos en el evento HISPABRICK en Diciembre 2007 organizado por la gente de Hispalug. Autor de esta foto: Legotron Publicado originalmente en: www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=290201]
[Nota: NO soy el autor de las fotos ni de los montajes. Fueron expuestos en el evento HISPABRICK en Diciembre 2007 organizado por la gente de Hispalug. Autor de esta foto: Legotron Publicado originalmente en: www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=290201]
[Nota: NO soy el autor de las fotos ni de los montajes. Fueron expuestos en el evento HISPABRICK en Diciembre 2007 organizado por la gente de Hispalug. Autor de esta foto: Legotron Publicado originalmente en: www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=290201]
[Nota: NO soy el autor de las fotos ni de los montajes. Fueron expuestos en el evento HISPABRICK en Diciembre 2007 organizado por la gente de Hispalug. Autor de esta foto: Legotron Publicado originalmente en: www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=290201]