00301 Sparebots

So me and Meriel got the electronics stuff out and stuck some of the bits together. Needless to say it all got a bit out of hand:

Truth be told I had this macro rig set up (like I went to alot of trouble to stick two pieces of paper together) and it was just looking for something to put in there. I saw something similar on the Make blog, but after searching for hours for it I gave up and just got the bits out.

No, not those bits.

00300 Little men

Found this great cheap way to make a little macro studio from the Strobist blog - what a fantastic resource.

So I got to nicking some of Cara's toys. Knights in Armour and palm trees are meant for each other:



Here's the getup:



Man, there's no fun like cheap fun.

Or expensive fun if you have the cash to go.

The Lomo effect came from this interesting looking page of Photoshop actions. More goodly freeness.

Oh, and I've reached 300 posts. I'll probably celebrate or something.

00299 Stick boats group

At the risk of repeating myself, I've made a stick boats group on Flickr. There's only four of us so far and with winter creeping in I can see pooh stick output diminishing. Hey ho.

00298 Time lapse dribbles

After doing this thing when Meriel's parents were over, I was determined to try it again. I still haven't got quite the right angle, aperture and scale, but it's getting there. Besides which, it's fun, donchaknow.

00297 Fish for everyone

So the trip we had booked in ages ago came up and irt was a superb day - beautiful sunny weather and a massive (by my standards) haul. I took so many home I could barely carry them. I caught mackerel, pollock, bream and turbot, the latter of which was coveted by the other "rod-heads" (don't know if that's a legit phrase, but it'll do).

Did take me around two odd hours to gut, scale and fillet, mind - I'm like an expert and everything now.

And I smell of fish.

00296 Cider strobe

Took my gear to the Foley's Cider press. Not that I had the time to do anything crazy, but I did get to try replacing the light from a standard bulb with my flash (with 3/4 CTO to adjust for the tungsten). Not awesome pictures, but a good start. Bare flash, too, interesting that it was probably the right choice, given that the place is normally lit by just the one incandescent light source.

00295 Bunker strobe

Really mean to do more of this, but my cactus remote is a little sketchy when around steel & ireon reinforced concrete buildings, so I just can't get the range and reliability. Also the proximity of my head to the camera/remote seems to affect the sync. Too close and it doesn't work. Anyhoo, perseverance gave me at least some for of result:

I'll be trying to extend the range some more and then seeing if I can't be a little more creative.

00294 Virtual slideshow gallery

I've got to suss out a better way to do this one. If I could capture a higher resolution animation of the sketchup walkthroughs, I could upscale the quality of this virtual gallery:



The idea (badly represented here) is to have a small room into which you walk. Inside the room chambers lead off left and right to different sets. A bit like a Tardis. I reckon it's just about possible.

00293 Mod the 'mote

The flash trigger I bough was the cheapo version - the alternative being the £300 version, so it doesn't have the 1600 foot range of the expensive one. But it's better now.

There's loads of tutorials about how to mod them, so I bought myself a nice little 433 MHz helical antenna, glued a 4mm nut to the inside of the remote's transmitter casing after drilling a hole for the antenna's thread. Then I soldered a length of wire to the PCB of the transmitter and the other end to the nut and there you go.

Originally I'd get around 15 feet away before the signal gave out, but with the mod I got around 200 feet and could go further. Stuck the flash on a stand and raised it out of one of teh upstairs Veluxes to test it:

Well neat.

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.

00286 Jersey egg

Went to Jersey for an "overnight holiday". Weather was very overcast and so the light was flat as a pancake. It's strengthened my resolve to get a strobe kit to light things like the eggs when the light is so soft. Eggs need a little hard light to bring them out. Well, that's what I think anyway.

This was taken at Greve de Lec and what amazing sand they've got there, it's coarse, but smooth. Weird, huh?