Its bigger on the inside!

Last post I was experimenting with macro, taking close up shots of very small parts of large things. This time I thought I would take a photo of something small.

Regular readers, (thanks to both of you.) will know I have been looking for a project. I was watching a video on Digital Rev on how to shoot little OO Gauge figures when indoors with nothing to shoot.

With the macro revers adapter I thought now would be a good idea to try that out. I had a look online but could not find anything suitable. Until I found an OO Gauge police box. Yup, I thought, that will do me. The first thing I did was to stick it in an egg!

As the BBC’s Doctor Who flies around in a Police Box, I thought it would be a good idea to take it with me when ever I go out on a shoot and build up a travel log of my own ‘Tardis’.

Now I will try to find a real Police Box and take a shot of mine against that one!

LITF

So small!

When I first got my Panasonic Lumix FZ45 I spent a few days trawling though Amazon.co.uk looking for this for my new hobby. A polarizing lens, yes one of those thanks. A 6 point star filter, oh go on then!

A four piece macro set? Yes I will purchase that… hang on why is this crap?

OK so when I got into photography, one of the first things I wanted to do was macros. I had seen a macro lens in action and was amazed at the quality.. but not the price tag. So a fiver for four macro screw on lenses sounded fantastic.

Oh dear… yeah ok you get what you pay for don’t you? Not only where they crap, they had a tendency to produce streaks of blue light everywhere.

Fast forward to now. I bought from Amazon a macro reverse adapter ring, strapped it to the front of my Canon 550d, screwed in the 50-250 and played around with it for a bit. The first thing I noticed was that the depth of field was very very narrow.

As you can see from the photo above the DOF is a small band running diagonally from top left to bottom right.

I will be experimenting with the my other two lenses, 18-55mm and the 50mm to see how they perform but for now you can see the set on Flickr here.

Sunny does not mean warm.

Made a promise to myself the other month that I would return to the University of East London and take photos of planes taking off and landing at the London City Airport which sits opposite.

It was a bright sunny morning as I packed my gear and headed out. Sunny does not mean warm… No matter I thought, transferring at Bank to the Docklands Light Railway, it will be warmer as the sun heads towards noon.

No it didn’t. I got off at Cyprus and walked up towards the edge of the embankment. I had not time to get the camera out before a plane took off from the runway just as I arrived. Ah well, plenty more where that came from.

Yeah.. in about another 20 minutes of so. Hmm this would not turn out to be a productive day then. So I busied my self with taking panoramic shots of the UEL buildings and surrounding area. This is one I made earlier..

This was a 10 shot panoramic taken while leaning against the metal barrier you can see in front. This would have had two other shots on the left hand side except I had noticed there were now two of what I think were either police or airport security checking me out. As I had kept both eyes open while taking those shot I decided to leave them out of the Panoramic in case they didn’t like their photo taken.

I don’t think security services are into cheesy smiles. I went on taking shots of the local area, a few pigeons, a rusty lock and a plume of black smoke which I found out later was coming from a fire outside of Canning Town.

The photographically challenged security cars decided to leave, either because they thought I was no threat to anything other than the pigeons or maybe because a plane would be coming in. One did land soon after so I waited for another taxiing plane to take off.

This seemed like an important plane as the wind sock decided to bow as the plane took off. Maybe it was pressured into doing so.. or the lack of air pressure.. I decided to call it a day at this point there was no pressure for me to stay..

LITF

I am still here.

Evening,

I am still here. It is that time of year when it is not warm enough to go out and take photos of things and in house projects are a bit thin on the ground at the moment.

I need inspiration. I have noticed the skyline of London is changing and new buildings are going up all the time. There is one that looks like a Chinese take away carton..

It is also the London marathon this weekend so I might take a stroll up there and take photos of the runners.

LITF

Future Projects

Evening, I hope you had a good Easter and you dont feel too sick from eating all that chocolate. April is on us already and I am thinking of setting a few goals to achieve in the coming months.

1, I have mentioned I want to revisit the area around the University of East London and shoot a few planes. Let me rephrase that before the metropolitan police force kick my door down and stand on my neck. I will revisit the UEL and take photos of planes taking off.

2, I also want to do a proper portrait photo shoot. Nothing arty, just plan out a few shots I want to achieve then shoot and see how close I get to it. This will also teach me to make the best out of a live shot, not make the best out of the shots I have. Try to get the best I can in camera before tidy up in Lightroom.

3, Get some photo books done. In Lightroom I can sort all my photos by year so I want to do a book of best shots for each year I have been taking photos. Lightroom also has a book feature which can help with the setting up and production of the book so I might give that a go.

4, Get some big ass prints done of my best photos. You know, something to hang on the wall.

5, Get a portfolio going. Nothing massive, portraits, landscapes etc and leave the Flickr location for shots of everything else as a record of my work.

6, Make a bloody decision about which lens I want to get, either the 18-250 for out and about shots or a 50-150 quality lens.. grr…

7, Send my point and click camera up on a small helicopter while taking video. No way am I sending up the Canon!

LITF

Oh God Noooooo!!

Yup it happened. Switched on my computer, the bios scanned the hardware and reported that one of my 2tb drives had failed it S.M.A.R.T checks. What? Was it missing a shirt and tie? I need details!!!

It was the alpha dive, one of two 2tb drives I have on my computer. Both carry the same files using SyncToy to mirror the contents every time I have finished a body of work. Beta drive was fine.

I ran a check on the drive and found that it had a bad sector, so I made sure that all my files were matched on the second 2tb drive and did a complete format of Alpha. I then ran a complete check disk and told it to fix anything it found. This took a few hours on a 2tb drive so I was reluctant to do anything on the Beta drive until Alpha was OK.

With Alpha returned to health I then copied all files back from Beta, ran check disk commands on both and made sure all was OK with my Lightroom catalog. Phew!

It was a bit of a shock to see Alpha screw up, both Alpha and Beta were bought at the same time and they are identical Samsung drives, but it can happen at any time. I am now thinking about second tier storage in case this happens again.

LITF

Splashy Splashy!

Easter break… what shall I do? Look in the cupboards.

I find peppercorns and a roasting tray. Hmm OK. Lets put some water in it and drop a few peppercorns in it.

I set up with my Canon and the flash off to the left and high up pointing down towards the tray, the 50mm set at f4.0 for a longer depth of field at close up range.

I put a peppercorn against the the cupboard door above the roasting tin, dropped it and focused on the center of the splash with the tip of a pencil. Then I switched off the auto focus as every other shot will have the peppercorn dropped in the same place.

First shot, flash didn’t fire.. ahh OK yeah I need the battery in the remote connector. With the flash working I started to drop peppercorns and fire the camera with the remote shutter cable.

Its all about timing. Most of the shots were just ripples but after a while I could guess the time properly and got a good number of splashy shots. Quick tip… clear your camera and equipment away before sloshing a roasting tray around the kitchen!

I set all the shots to black and white as I felt they were better than in colour, added sharpness where needed, cloned a few splashes out and added clarity.

Click here to see the shots but below is the one I think is the winner.

LITF

Splashy!