November 18th, 2009
Taking impromptu photos of indoor still life can be accomplished with the help of makeshift mounts or stabilization. Wide angle lenses or adapters can offer more framing options as well. In this first example, I used the Opteka .45x wide angle adapter (on an Olympus C-8080) and pressed the face of it up against the glass of the display case. This allowed me to get enough depth of field to get good results (by making shutter speed less of a concern). The tricky part of this is getting the correct angle to compose the image when the angle is restricted by the plane you’re anchored against.
Maritime Museum Display
Another Museum Display
Here’s one where I just set the camera on the table – exposure time over 3 seconds! Helps to shoot in RAW mode as well (yes, I’m one of them).
Table Centerpiece
Star Wars display at the Science Museum of Minnesota, Canon Rebel XTi/Sigma 18-50 f2.8. The Sigma 10-20mm would have been nice for this one.
Millenium Falcon Model - 20mm, f8 1/10 sec
R2D2 - 31mm, f10 1/8 sec
Star Destroyer Model - 18mm, f22 1/2 sec
TIE Fighter Model - 18mm, f22 1.3 secs
TIE Fighter Wing Detail - 18mm, f8 1.3 secs
Remote Model - 18mm, f8 1/8 sec
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November 17th, 2009
When your choices for a fisheye lens are cost-prohibitive (this lens would be nice), re-purposing a point-and-shoot becomes an attractive option. The Opteka .45x wide-angle adapter saves the day.
Below, Sigma 10mm fisheye for Canon SLR $699, Opteka .45x wide-angle adapter $29 (for Olympus C-8080, search for your particular camera model – there are numerous models supported) and a couple sample images taken with the Olympus/Opteka combo. On the cropped Canon body the Sigma comes out to 16mm actual focal length, the Olympus with 28mm x .45 comes to 12.6 (call it 13) mm. Also, don’t overlook the macro capability, this adapter allows some VERY close focusing. See below images for the caveat.
Sigma 10mm Fisheye
Opteka .45x Wide-angle Adapter (For Olympus C-8080)
Duluth Lift Bridge
Duluth Lift Bridge
Duluth Harbor From Enger Tower Park
One limitation of this adapter, at least on my C-8080, is that when using it at full wide angle (which is where you want to use it 99.9999% of the time), the image sensor sees the edges of the adapter, making cropping or extreme vignetting necessary. Do note though that the above image is cropped to 3:2 aspect, whereas the following images are the native 4:3.
Uncropped Wide Angle Image
Using vignetting to hide the adapter edges
Centerpiece Close-Up
The Daaaawwwwg
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November 17th, 2009
The Kodak Zi8 video recorder makes short work of capture-to-web workflows. I’m doing some post-processing with QuickTime Pro and Bias Peak, but I wouldn’t have to. External mic jack is the selling point for me, and the use of SD media. Check out this review as well.
Kodak Zi8
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November 14th, 2009
Maybe I’ll have time to post more, but so far I’m finding the Zoom H2 to be insanely flexible, now ships with a 1GB SD card, a mini tripod that attaches to the standard tripod thread socket and a plastic handle that screws in there as well so you can hold it like a traditional hand-held mic.
Zoom H2
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November 12th, 2009
Opinions vary on how wise this program was, but one thing’s for sure, it generated some interesting happenings across the U.S.
"Clunker"
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November 12th, 2009
MSP Skyline
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August 28th, 2008
Ran across some interesting news yesterday. Alesis is touting a soon-to-be-released product called the ProTrack, which makes an iPod into a portable field recorder. Supports 5G and Classic iPods and 2G/3G Nanos. Sounds exciting, key is $$$ ?
Here’s a good thread on Macintouch on the subject as well.
Alesis also has the IMM8USB 8 channel mixer with integrated iPod Dock, using the iPod as the final destination for the mixer.
Here’s another, taking a very unique approach to the matter – integrating it into a hand held mic. Way too rich for my blood though.
The HHB DRM85.
And I’ve enjoyed the Belkin TuneTalk Stereo as well.
Using this mic for direct speech recording, the AT ATR35S.
I concur with IHR’s analysis that the flash-based Nano’s provide much better results in regards to disk fragmentation (as it causes ’skipping’) with hard disk based iPods. I experienced the same with my 5G Video iPod. Also, for sound effects recording, or recording ambiance, you can hear the hard drive spin-up, so the Nano rules. And the processor feels faster on the (3G) Nano, more quickly going in and out of the dialogs for the voice recording screens.
Here are some recordings of thunder and ambiance using the TuneTalk Stereo on a 3G Nano. One, two, three, four.
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August 27th, 2008
I saw an image on the web today that gave me the idea to use this very short tripod I have, try about 3 inches tall, to place my camera places I can’t get, or capture unusual angles.
Rocks
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August 20th, 2008
Bill Fitzmaurice is the maestro when it comes to DIY horn-loaded speaker systems. He’s got designs large and small, wedge, sub and tall. I’m seriously considering one of his designs for our new church location (I’m entertaining a single copy of the dual 12 version.)
My last DIY project served us well, but I’m looking for something with a little more projection and defined dispersion. The high SPL of all his designs are an added bonus. I’ll probably recycle my existing sub, after that I think a couple of these loaded with dual 12’s would do nicely.
Our previous PA “tops” (times 4). Those are dual Vifa 8’s (same as used in one of the older Mackie self-powered studio monitors), Audax Pro (PR series) 6 inch mid (used by EAW for eons), and Audax PR series tweet.
Vifa/Audax Cabinets
The sub, those are the venerable Swan 305 woofer from Madisound, now “out of print.”
Swan 305 X 4 Cabinet
Bear in mind, this is all in a 40 X 40 room with 10 foot ceilings.
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August 18th, 2008
Lightroom made a believer out of me. There are a couple factors in its favor that don’t entirely have to do with its feature set, one is the $99 educational buy I qualify for as a homeschooler, the other is it’s performance on less-than-bleeding-edge hardware. For right now my MDD 1.25 dually has to do the job, and Lightroom officially runs on it and can get the job done. Beyond that the loupe is the only thing from Aperture that I’m jealous of, but at least the RGB values are displayed and dynamically follow the cursor in Lightroom. The main selling point beyond that is that it seems to be a more transparent and less demanding front-end to Photoshop, it’s just easier to relegate it to being a “pro” RAW converter to replace the Camera RAW plug-in, and skip all the library features. “Fill light” rules!
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