Selling Cameras

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

I sold my old film cameras, other than the pentax ones. Now I miss them and their quirkiness, as the pentax ones are kind of normal. I shall have to keep an eye out for some more. I'd kind of like to try a smaller, quieter sort than the SLRs.

Pentax K-x - 1/160 sec - f/8 - ISO 800 - ~75mm

I can't remember how I lit this one. From the look of it, the key is just to the right of the taking camera, there's another for hightlights up, left and behind the subject camera. There's also a big reflector, which may not even have a flash, to the left of the taking camera.

Used GIMP to crop, adjust levels and resize.

Still Life

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

A photograph of things sitting on my desk.

Pentax K-x - 1/160 sec - f/5.6 - ISO 800 - ~72mm

Illuminated by a flash bounced off the ceiling.

Used GIMP to auto-adjust levels and scale. While uploading this I found my old watermark, so maybe I won't be making a new one for a little while still.

I was quite impressed by how much better this image was than the same taken without the flash (the light was dim, requiring a slower shutter speed, resulting in terrible blur). I was somewhat surprised by how good a single flash off the ceiling looks.

Hair Light

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

Just trying out new (to me) lighting set ups, now that I have the stuff I need for that.

Pentax K-x - 1/180 sec - f/5.6 - ISO 200 - ~60mm

Two flash units pointing at subject, each at an arm's length, one behind subject, camera left and one in front, camera right.

Used GIMP to auto adjust levels. Scaled but didn't watermark it, since I recently made some changes to my file storage and seem to have lost my watermark. This is a good thing, because its about time I came up with a better one.

To be clear, the layout of these posts is: Title, picture, copyright, caption, metadata, lighting, post-processing, technical comments. Pretty much all the information after the caption is for my own benefit, for extracting and recording lessons learned.

Now that I've got several flashguns and things that make them flash I can have light setups like a pro. Unfortunately that doesn't make the photos good. That requires practise. Here, I'm having a go with introducing a hair light or kicker or something. There's an extra light behind me, camera left. The catch is that I'm holding that and the remote with my right hand and I'm holding the main light with my left hand and I have to go check the photos each time on the camera, and still return to the right place (which has to be determined by trial and error). Maybe setting it up in front of a mirror might help.

There was a time period of more than a month between taking the photo and posting it, and in that time I've forgotten some details. When I put the meta data in I noticed that the camera claims that the flash fired. I'm not sure if this is because I was using the flash cord with my achiever for the key (I just tested, and that will cause the camera to record that the flash was fired, though using the radio triggers doesn't) or if I actually had the pop up flash up. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since it clearly didn't contribute much to the exposure. I had noticed a second light in my eyes but had assumed that to be the rear light reflecting in the window (this was shot with a glass window behind the camera). Perhaps I had misplaced my radio triggers and cable? I don't know. I should really do these things faster.

I will be having another go at this.

Product Shot

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

I finally got around to selling the film cameras that I wasn't using any more.

Pentax K-x - 1/180 sec - f/5.6 - ISO 400 - ~82mm

The key light is a flash fired into an ice cream container with a tinfoil-and-paper thing on the front cut out in the shape of a triangle (this is why the reflections in the lens look sort of like fast-forward or play symbols) and the background was lit with a second flash.

Used GIMP to adjust levels, crop and scale. Forgot to watermark this one.

I'm still getting the hang of the blown white background thing.

Helicopter II

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

Having completed my thesis I had a bit of a play with my helicopter.

Canon A720 - 1/100 sec - f/4 - ISO 800 - ~50mm

Overhead fluorescent lights.

Used GIMP to crop and apply selective Gaussian blur (which I learned is a good way of dealing with high ISO noise). Scaled and watermarked.

I forgot to adjust the levels, which probably would have improved the end result a bit.

Rubbish

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

I guess I was pretty busy.

Pentax K-x - 1/8 sec - f/4 - ISO 200 - ~27mm

Overhead fluorescents.

Used GIMP to scale and watermark.

I was inspired by the lack of effort put into the taking of the image to do no actual work in post processing the image. Sorry, but thesis took priority.

Helicopter

This work by Adam M is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.

The basis of my thesis.

Canon A720 - 1/60 sec - f/3.2 - ISO 400 - ~35mm

Overhead fluorescent lights.

Used GIMP to adjust levels, added white background to extend the image for the watermark. Blended the two layers using layer mask and a gradient. Scaled and watermarked.

I sat the helicopter on white paper, which isn't exposed as full white (because then I'd over expose the helicopter). As a result, I couldn't make it look quite right on the white webpage (or on the white pages of my thesis). This can be done with a light under the paper, but this wasn't practical.