The Photos I Take

Yum!

2012-01-22T09:59:00.000-04:00

Park at Night

2012-01-02T11:15:00.000-04:00

It's Another Boy!

2011-05-23T13:34:00.000-03:00

Reuben has a new little brother, meet Jude Daniel MacKenzie! Reuben's first pictures can be found here.

Specs:

Sex:    Male
Born:   Friday, May 20, 2011, 11:26pm
Weight: 3770 grams (8lbs 5.5oz)
Length: 53cm (21 inches)
Eyes:   Sleepy

Came home from the hospital yesterday. Mama and Baby are doing great!

1/60 sec, f/1.8, ISO 400, 50mm

1/320 sec, f/1.8, ISO: 400, 50mm

Orange Splash

2011-04-04T22:55:00.001-03:00

1/160 sec, f/8.0, ISO 100, 100mm (162mm eqv.), tripod, flash View Original

Fairly simple setup here. Alain recently got a new flash, a Yongnuo YN-560. That's it on the right @ ~1/16. My Sunpak 622 on the left @ 1/128 power. Both covered to protect from the splashing. We made quite a mess. That's foam flooring underlay on the sides of the fish tank to defuse the light.

It Snowed A LOT this Year!

2011-03-12T21:06:00.001-04:00

Here's a picture out my front window. I should have put a black shirt on, instead of my white one, before taking this to cut back on the reflections.

1/320 sec, f/5.6, ISO ~100, hand-held, polarized filter, taken Feb 26, 2011. This is a composite of five photos stitched together with Hugin.

Smashing Bottles

2011-02-13T17:54:00.005-04:00

My friend Alain had the great idea to try to get photos of smashing bottles. He supplied the room, bottles, lens, and just about everything else. I brought my flash and rigged up a way to trigger it when the hammer was in just the right spot. Here's the results:

All photos were taken in bulb mode at f/7.1 and ISO 100.

Not all bottles are as easy to break with a hammer as you'd think. There was one kind that seemed to be much thicker glass than the rest and would just bounce off the hammer and put dents in the wall. We finally figured out that taping a screw to the hammer would concentrate the force better. The first photo above is the result of this.

At first we were thinking that we would trigger the shutter to release as soon as the bottle breaks, but then realized that we'd have to compensate for the split second it takes for the mirror to flip up. We wanted to be able to trigger both cameras at the same time and it's likely that they don't have the same shutter delay. Also, we didn't have a connector for Alain's camera. So we changed our plan and decided we'd trigger the flash instead. This worked much better. We'd get set up and turn out the lights, then open the shutter on each camera, then release the hammer. As soon as the hammer hit the bottle and moved part way through it, the flash would fire and expose the frame. I believe the flash duration at 1/64 is 1/15,000 of a second so there's no problem freezing the motion.

Our makeshift trigger system worked much more easily than I thought it would. It actually worked the very first try! We were able to make very fine adjustments so we could control exactly how far through the bottle the hammer would be before the flash fired. To trigger a flash all you need is to touch two wires together. I had a PC cord that was plugged into my wireless flash trigger. I soldered two wires to the other end of the PC cord and then soldered a thick twist-tie to each wire. We used thumb tacks to fasten the twist-ties to the hammer support (seen below) at the pivot, one on each side, so when the hammer swung, the two would touch. As soon as the flash fired we'd close the shutters again so that when the hammer swang back again, we wouldn't get a double exposure when the flash fired again.

Snow

2011-01-07T23:27:00.005-04:00

1/320sec, f/5.6, ISO: 800, 18mm

1/800 sec, f/5.6, ISO: 800, 18mm

More Fall Colours

2010-10-25T21:15:00.004-03:00

1/50 sec, f/4.6, ISO 400, 18mm, hand-held

1/20 sec, f/5.7, ISO 400, 55mm, hand-held

1/25 sec, f/5.7, ISO 400, 55mm, hand-held

Fall Colours

2010-10-21T22:15:00.004-03:00

It's been a while.

1/25 sec, f/5.7, ISO 400, 20mm, hand-held

1/800 sec, f/5.7, ISO 400, 55mm, hand-held

1/30 sec, f/5.7, ISO 400, 35mm, hand-held

Bee

2010-07-22T21:31:00.010-03:00

1/125 sec, f/16, 50mm + extension tubes, tripod, lit w/ Sunpak 622 @ 1/64 power hand-held above through wax paper with reflectors on either side

1/125 sec, f/16, 40mm + extension tubes, tripod, lit w/ Sunpak 622 @ 1/64 power hand-held above through wax paper
View Original

Behind the Scenes

Car

2010-07-05T11:27:00.013-03:00

Alain and I set out to photograph his car. There was a lot of trial and error, but I think they turned out half decent.

1/200 sec, f/9.9, ISO 100, tripod, flash SP622 ~1/4 power hand-held
View Original

30 sec, f/9.1, ISO 100, tripod, flash SP622 ~1/8 power hand-held fired many times from camera left to right
View Original

1/10 sec, f/18.2, ISO 100, hand-held
View Original

Apples

2010-06-25T20:20:00.021-03:00

I'm trying to get back into taking more pictures and updating this blog more often. My wife was out and Reuben was in bed a couple days ago so if I was going to do anything it had to be inside. This is what I ended up with. For more info, check out Behind the Scenes

1/125 sec, f/36.4, ISO 100, 35mm (56mm eqv.), hand-held, SunPak 622 @1/128 power ~12cm above, slight right.
View Original

1/125 sec, f/28.1, ISO 100, 55mm (88mm eqv.), hand-held, SunPak 622 @1/128 power ~12cm above, slight right
View Original

1/125 sec, f/36.4, ISO 100, 55mm (88mm eqv.), hand-held, SunPak 622 @1/128 power ~12cm above, slight right
View Original

Behind the Scenes

Bubbles

2010-06-19T22:59:00.003-03:00

Blowing bubbles inside makes for a slippery floor.

1/125 sec, f/2.5, ISO 100, 50mm, flash bounced off ceiling, hand-held

1/125 sec, f/2.5, ISO 100, 50mm, flash bounced off ceiling, hand-held

1/125 sec, f/2.5, ISO 100, 50mm, flash bounced off ceiling, hand-held

100 Followers!

2010-05-01T06:33:00.000-03:00

Yay! 100 Followers.

Thanks Everyone!!

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

2010-04-25T20:55:00.004-03:00

Look at that, I took and posted a photo all in the same day. Like I said in the previous post, today is Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. So here is my photo taken with the pinhole lens I made for my DSLR. Spring is slowly making its way to my part of the world, so I thought that a photo of new leaves on the trees would be appropriate.

10 sec, f/stop - unknown, ISO 100, pinhole lens, tripod

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

2010-04-25T09:35:00.007-03:00

Today is Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day! So I'm going to try to get out sometime today to and use the pinhole lens I made a while back, this will be the first time since then. I've been going through a dry spell photographically over the last little while, maybe this will get me going again. Hopefully I'll be able to get the photos from today up in a timely manner, my computer has been on the fritz lately. We'll see.

About Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day
Wikipedia Page

Splash!

2010-03-31T20:59:00.007-03:00

1/160 sec
f/19
55mm (35mm eqv. 88mm)
ISO 200
lighting: Sunpak 622 Super Pro @ 1/128 power on camera left, reflecting off a white background

1/160 sec
f/14
55mm (35mm eqv. 88mm)
ISO 200
lighting: Sunpak 622 Super Pro @ 1/128 power on camera left, reflecting off a white background

Behind the Scenes

Splash!

2010-03-09T21:39:00.001-04:00

1/160 sec
f/16
55mm (35mm eqv. 88mm)
ISO 200
lighting: Sunpak 622 Super Pro @ 1/128 power on camera left, reflecting off a white background

Bath Time

2010-03-04T08:00:00.002-04:00

Reuben's graduated to the big tub.

All:
1/160 sec
f/2.8
ISO 200 or 400
50mm (35mm eqv. 81mm)
Sunpak 622 flash reflected off white tub and ceiling

Splash!

2010-03-01T08:00:00.001-04:00

1/160 sec
f/16
55mm (35mm eqv. 88mm)
ISO 200
lighting: Sunpak 622 Super Pro @ 1/128 power on camera left, reflecting off a white background

Splash!

2010-02-23T22:45:00.006-04:00

Did some more splash photos. I finally got a flash (I'll talk more about it later), which makes things much easier. No longer do I need to worry about having the fastest shutter speed possible, so I can close down the aperture to get a deeper depth of field.

I think this picture is interesting because it's actually two drops colliding in mid air. The first drop makes a splash and then a drop from the splash moves up and hits the next drop coming down. There's many other, much better, examples of this on the web, but it's the first time I've caught it.

1/160 sec
f/16
55mm (35mm eqv. 88mm)
ISO 200
lighting: Sunpak 622 Super Pro @ 1/128 power on camera left, reflecting off a white background

Where Have I Been?

2010-02-08T08:00:00.007-04:00

It's been a while since my last post. Things have been a little slow around here lately since I pulled a muscle in my back a week ago and was confined to the couch for about four days. I'm mobile now, but not quite back to normal.

In other news, I'm starting a new job today so it's hard to say how much time I'll have for pictures. The first little while may be stressful, but I'll get something new someday.

I had to go back a ways to find a picture for today. I'm a computer programmer by day. I have a friend who has recently started a website (http://maritimes-jug.ca/) for programmers in my area who are using a programming language called Java. He mentioned to me that he'd like some sort of Java related image to put in the header of the site. It didn't take me long to come up with an idea for an image. Java could also mean coffee, which many programmers seem to run on, although I never picked up the habit. I thought mixing the two would be fitting.

Behind the scenes

Here's the original, unedited photo. I should have took a picture of the whole setup too, but I did not.

1.3 sec
f/8.0
ISO 400
18mm (35mm eqv. 28.8)
ambient lighting

I used a polarizing filter to get as much reflection off the coffee as I could. I wanted to have some bubbles and maybe some steam coming off the coffee, but with an exposure of more then a second, that wasn't possible. I tried using a straw to blow some bubbles, but they would pop during the exposure, moving the remaining bubbles and making ripples that would blur the reflection. I would have needed to add more light, which I didn't have.

For the reflection, I wrote a simple program (all it does is print "Maritimes JUG" on the screen). The different colours are done automatically by the text editor to help programmers read it easier and point out potential errors. Then I took a screenshot by pressing the "Print Screen" button on my keyboard and pasted the screenshot into GIMP and flipped it up-side-down so that it would appear right-side-up in the reflection.

I had two pieces of computer paper in front of the mug to reflect more light back up to the mug to light the side a little more.

As far as editing, it's hard to say. It was a while ago and I didn't write anything down. I know that it was cropped :) Other then that, your guess is as good as mine. Looks to me like the white balance was cooled down a bit to get a whiter keyboard, which also made the light part of the reflection in the coffee more blueish. More work to make the keyboard whiter should have been done. Then a curves adjustment to brighten the highlights quite a bit and darken the shadows just a little to bump up the contrast. Then the blur tool to smoothen out the vertical-ish lines above "String args[]" in the reflection. I'm noticing now that I was a little sloppy and blurred the tail of the "g" in "Jug{". I'm such a slob! Looks like the mouse cursor is just below "println", must have cloned that out. Then a little sharpening with the unsharp mask. And lastly a vignetting type thing to darken the left and right sides a bit to bring the viewer's attention to the reflection. I think that's it.

Reuben's Getting Bigger

2010-01-28T08:00:00.001-04:00

I never run out of photo opportunities with Reuben around.

1/100 sec, f/1.8, ISO 1600, 50mm (35mm eqv. 81mm), hand-held, ambient lighting

1/60 sec, f/1.8, ISO 800, 50mm (35mm eqv. 81mm), hand-held, ambient lighting

Urban Spulunking

2010-01-25T08:00:00.003-04:00

Found a cave (a.k.a. storm drain) near my house with lots of huge icicles.

1/15 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400, 55mm, hand-held

1/40 sec, f/5.6, ISO 800, 42mm, hand-held

1/10 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400, 25mm, hand-held

1/60 sec, f/5.6, ISO 800, 55mm, hand-held

Kiwange

2010-01-21T08:00:00.011-04:00

1/50 and 1/80 sec, f/5.7, ISO 400, 55mm (35mm eqv. 88mm), hand-held, halogen lighting and a little on-camera flash for the orange

This is another joint effort with Alain.

Behind the Scenes