00292 Strobe on!

Got my Strobist kit through the post yesterday and been mucking about with it ever since. The wireless flash thing is awesome. You can just stick the flash unit in a cupboard in the next room and have the light spill out of it when you hit the shutter. Now all I've got to do is go through the tutorials to find out how to use it more effectively and then I'll have to hack the cheapo wireless remote to get more distance out of it. I can see how the pocket wizard's 1600 foot range is something to desire.

And I couldn't resist trying the minature car photography setup featured on the Strobist blog:

Here's the setup:

Added a bit of diffusion after a few attempts. Not bad for a bit of fun.

00291 Pooh Sticks in the North Sea, Brrrrrrrr

Went to Sarah and Russell's Wedding in Southwold the other day and made a couple of sixty second pooh sticks. Came out ok, sailed very well indeed and the North sea, I was glad to find after wading waist deep, wasn't too parky.

00290 Pinhole results

The pinhole camera has a few teething problems that I'll try to iron out if I have the time and inclination. It still worked out to be an interesting project, mind. I'm pretty sure that the fact that I forgot to blacken the inside of the pinhole made all of the internal reflections which lead to the vertical lines that I had to fiddle with in Photoshop. Really good DOF as expected.

Here's the results:

00289 More stuff I might get round to

So I've done the book (but not completed the finer details) and I've made the pinhole camera, so what's next?

Well I think I'll definitely tackle the USB LED desk lamp - it's got a lot of pointless design possibilities.

Then there's "winkle time-lapse", it's kind of self explanatory, but needs some research (I've done one take of it, but I can see that there's a lot more I need to know about training winkles to do what you want).

A new KAP rig is definitely on the cards, seeing as I can only capture images in portrait format and the rig will only tilt up so much. Don't even get me started about the whole Rig-with-the-microprocessor-and-IR-LED thing, I just don't want to talk about it. Except to say that I blew the last (reasonably expensive) Gentled LED and I'm wondering how much more money I'll throw down that particular plughole.

Puppets - I've got polystyrene balls on the way and I'll be looking into clothes, body structures, joints and molding techniques.

Woodwork courses start again soon, so I'll plough on with the backgammon board (I've got to get closure on some of these projects, otherwise I'll un-motivate myself). I'll be trying to utilise their laser engraver as much as possible (maybe I'll do some cool stenciling) and I'll try to look into uncovering the mystery of the laser cutting possibilities of their equipment by chasing the guy they got it from to see if he has the mystery part which will make the laser super powerful.

I also had a wacky idea for a time-lapse sculpture somewhere. It's be this steel structure thingy with multiple platforms for placing all sorts of different makes of camera. Each platform would be pointing at a place of interest and the idea is that you put your camera on it every once in a while and collect some pictures to be made into a time-lapse. It'd have to work in harmony with a web based application to process the images and display them all online. Hey, it's just an idea. Oh, and the platforms would all be colour coded so that you can remember which one you used. It'd work with mobile phone cameras too. Man, that'd be cool. And it'd probably be in the shape of a camera, or something like that. Or maybe lots of arrows pointing out from a central point.

Strobist kit arrives soon - that'll open up a few possibilities I should wager.

00288 Pinhole-arama

Following the tutorial from the fantastic Matchbox Pinhole site, I've set about making this little pinhole camera from (you guessed it) a matchbox:

It's really weird to take pictures and not be able to see the results immediately, but rather like the KAP, it's kind of a nice feeling of anticipation. The other thing is that you tend to want to pick the subjects really carefully, seeing as you've only got 36 (ish) exposures.

Can't wait to see the results.

0287 My book's arrived

Well it's not bad, really. I've definitely made the images slightly too dark, which is mostly down to my inexperience with print media. All things being perfect, I'd like to re-do the images and order another one. At the very least I'll probably lighten the images and add them to a 7"x7" book, that way I'll have a cheaper way of checking the quality. Should have done that first, of course. Doh!

All in all, though, it's a really lovely book.