jurie

Steven,

<p>Mmmm, clear laquer on flame maple... As advertising in the local bargain finder, any of them would work. That's a beautiful axe, you've done it justice with the camera and the lighting is, in my inexperienced opinion, perfect.

<p>A couple of pointers for you: I love short depth of field when photographing guitars, especially the neck/strings and controls around the pickguard. Unfortunately, the shallow depth of field doesn't work at the headstock; I would like to be able to read the label that's all blurred out. You might also want to dust it...

<p>As well, I think that the face-on shot could have included a bit more of the body. As it is now, it looks cramped and cut down.

<p>I also would have levelled the fine-tuning screws at the bridge, but that's just a minor quibble.

<p>Good luck selling that thing, if it plays as good as it looks, you shouldn't have any trouble at all.

<br><br>

Jordan R. Urie<br>

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Rachelle,

For the cheap side of things, you could get yourself a seagull. It's the Holga of TLRs, but it might be fun to play with if you can get it dirt-cheap.

Jordan R. Urie

Frederick,

This is just a guess, but perhaps it has to do with the number/quality of coatings applied.

Jordan R. Urie

BTW, I've also seen the Wein units re-packaged in Olympus blisters. Still says Wein on the unit, EXACTLY the same as the ones on the shelf next to it.

Jordan R. Urie

Josh,

You could probably use a Wein SafeSync to protect the camera against excessive trigger voltages. Mine has a PC socket as well as hotshoe, so it should work just fine for taking a 285 off camera with a PC cord or on-camera with the hotshoe.

Have fun!

Jordan R. Urie

Tycho,

<p>Oil lamps.

<p>Seriously though, I would say that with digital, because you can tweak the white balance however you want, I would look more to what modifiers (grids, softboxes, 'brollies, etc) are available for the system instead of what the light source is. As long as it covers a relatively wide spectrum, you should be able to simply tweak the white balance to acommodate for the temperature of the lights. I've seen some compact flourescent (speeling??) lights that work excellently as far as light output goes, but the ones that I've seen have shite-all for modifiers, so I probably wouldn't pick them up myself.

<p>As long as the lighting system offers the accessories you need, it should work fine. Long live the digital revolution!

<p>S'cuse me, I've got a roll of HP5+ to soup now ;-)

<br><br>Jordan R. Urie

Brooks,

Thanks for the awsome theme. I'm gonna give this one a shot sometime this week; I just love playing with specular hilights, and thanks to your theme I've got a few ideas rattling around in the ol' noggin.

Here's hoping I get something successful enough to upload ;-)

Jordan R. Urie

Bryn,

There shouldn't be any problem using an optical trigger to fire the 420EX; if the flash isn't communicating with a camera, I don't expect that it would do any E-TTL preflashes, as they'd be useless.

You also shouldn't need to tape over the connecters, as the optical trigger should only have the centerpin that fires the flash.

Getting the right amount of power from the 420 might be a bit tricky, but it should be doable.

Good luck!

Jordan R. Urie

Rod,

<p>Check out the article on Luminous Landscape <a href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-histograms.shtml">here</a>.

<p>Basically, the histogram lets you check and see what the exposure range of your photograph is. If the histogram is skewed too far to the right, you overexposed, and if it is skewed too far to the left, you underexposed. All it is is a graph of what percentage of your image is at what luminosity level. Some more advanced (AKA expensive) cameras give you 3 seperate histograms that let you see how much red, green, and blue you have in your photo, so you can see which channels are blown out.

<br><br>

Regards,<br><br>

Jordan R. Urie

Isn't Liverpool infested with thug wannabees at the moment? Just mug one of 'em and demand his gun.

Jordan R. Urie

John,

You do, however, get the depth of field that you would expect from a 50mm lens, even though the perspective etc. appears to be what you would get from a 75mm lens.

Jordan R. Urie

I use ACDSee to batch rename my scans when they get home from the lab all the time. I don't use any EXIF data, I just give it a template of 2004-12-19-01-## and have it count up from 01 to whatever in the ## slot automatically.

Select all the files you want to batch rename, hit the Activities menu, Manage submenu, and chose Batch Rename.

I have "Use Template for Renaming Files" checked, and "Use numbers to replace #'s" as well. You might be able to use the "Insert EXIF Metadata" button to insert the date and time that the file was taken, if it's digital. Not sure if you can set the format of it though.

Good luck!

Jordan R. Urie

Edie,

<p>The only time I've seen a flashing Av-- is when I had mounted a screw mount lens on the camera with the screw mount to K mount adapter. I doubt this is what you've done, however, it might be that the camera can't communicate with the lens for some reason. Remove and replace the lens, see if that fixes the problem. If not, try a different lens.

<p>I would also suggest pulling the batteries from the camera and leaving it switched on for a few minutes. That should drain any residual power stored in the camera. If the problem is caused by messed up chips, depriving them of all power sometimes helps.

<p>Beyond that, I can't think of anything else that might be causing your problem off the top of my head.

<p>Good luck!

<p>Jordan R. Urie

You'll get negatives, with (usually) the normal orange mask. I've only cross-processed one roll of E-6 intentionally, a roll of EPY (Kodak tungsten balanced E-6). I've seen other rolls come out with a green cast to the negatives in my lab days though. I'm not sure if it was E-6 or something weird like Seattle Film Works. SFW is EVIL stuff, btw. It was repackaged movie film, and had a shelf life of about a year after processing before the negatives started to fade.

Have fun!

Jordan R. Urie

Brad,

<p>Admit it. That's not a picture of a dog and owner. It's a butshot of the girl on the right. Nice use of depth of field; kept your mum from seeing what the picture was <b>really</b> about, right?

<p>;-)

<p>Jordan R. Urie

Roger,

<p>Based on your reply, I've done a bit more fooling around with the setup, and here's what I've discovered: Yes, there is a significant amount of vignetting when I stop the primary lens down. At f45 my image circle is dime-sized, however, when I stop the secondary lens down, the vignetting doesn't increase significantly (~6cm diameter), but my DOF increases roughly on par with what I get from stopping the primary lens down.

<p>My refrence point is watching the size of the COC from light reflected off of a bump on a coin, as the reflection is essentially a point source. I set the aperture size on the lens to f32, and bring the DOF preview down to size. As I slide the DOF preview, I can see the COC from the slightly out of focus point shrink, and it appears to shrink to the same size when I set the aperture from both the primary and secondary lenses.

<p>You mentioned a couple of posts back that stopping down the reversed lens shouldn't affect f-stop, but that's what I'm seeing happen. Is the DOF and amount of light provided by f22 on the 90mm the same DOF and amount of light that I would expect to get from the 180mm at f22? Or am I missing some key point here? My limited understanding of lens construction leads me to believe that the narrowest hole in a series of lenses that the light must pass through is the aperture, and that the f-stop is determined by the ratio of the size of that hole to the focal length of the series of lenses. Correct? Partially correct? Totally wrong?

<p>Can you recommend any websites or books that could teach me the basics of what's happening here? I have a basic understanding of how one lens works, but I'm not quite sure why reversing the smaller lens allows for such close focus.

<br><br>

Jordan R. Urie

Kishan,

Cross-processing E-6 in C-41 chemicals can't hurt the machine. If they do a large volume of E-6, it might upset their chemicals a slight bit, but not enough that it would damage other customers' film. Modern film processors slowly replace used chemicals with new chemicals as film is processed in it, and unless their chemicals are screwed up to begin with, a few rolls of E-6 shouldn't make a blip in the morning densitometer graphs (assuming that they actually measure and graph on a daily basis. Any serious professional photo lab should, but I've seen some...)

The only time I've ever heard someone talking about E-6 damaging the equipment/chemicals is when training newbies and trying to instill the fear of the wrath of the lab manager in them. Personally I think it is more effective just to tell them that they would ruin the customer's slides and that they would get to explain what happened to the customer.

Jordan R. Urie

Kishan,

The negatives will be so funky that the machine will produce bad prints if it's left on automatic. If they correct each picture manually, you should be alright. Scanning is an option, it would definately give you more control over what the final print looks like.

As for exposure, I would suggest giving one or two stops of over-exposure. It varies from film to film, and supposedly varies based on whose chemicals it gets processed in (kodak vs. fuji) but I haven't played around enough with cross-processing to give you a definate solution. Go ahead and experiment, you can get some damn funky results.

Jordan R. Urie

James,

Odds are 50/50 that he won't even notice it is slide film. I've worked that kind of lab before, and with those kind of places staff varies bigtime from location to location. Some places are stocked with employees who care about their job, others by kiddies who just want the paycheque. Either way, if you write straight on the envelope that you want it processed in C-41, they should do it for you. Unless perhaps their manager tried to get them to pay attention by telling them that it would permanently damage the machine and anyone who processes slide film in the C-41 is fired on the spot. Seen that one happen, too.

Regards,

Jordan R. Urie

Miles,

Thanks for the suggestion, but I was looking to keep the price of the poject low. Starving student and all that. :-) I can't justify the cost of an extension tube, especially if I can get similar or better magnification for less money.

What would the benefits to using a tube over reverse-mounting a lens be?

Thanks,

Jordan R. Urie

One more thing:

How on earth would I meter with this setup? Is there some formula I could use based on focal the length of each lens and the aperture I set on the lens mounted on the camera body to determine the effective aperture of the coupled lenses? The RB has no internal meter, so I usually use the spot meter on my Pentax MZ-5n instead.

Thanks again,

Jordan R. Urie

I recently aquired an RB67 with 90mm and 180mm lenses. Being in the

depths of a Canadian winter, I've been playing around with indoor

still life and such. I have discovered that if I hold one of the

lenses backwards on the camera body, I can get much closer to the

subject, and if I mount the 180mm on the body and hold the 50mm

backwards in front of it, I can make a penny fill half the frame.

Problem: there's no way I can hold that still enough to take a photograph.

So I did a bit of digging, and discovered that there are male-male

coupling rings that would allow me to mount the lens there instead of

handholding it. I could order one of these through work, however I'm

broke (see above RE new convert to medium format). Amongst the bits

and bobs that came along with the camera are three 77mm skylight

filters, two 1B and one 1A. I've never been one to use skylight and

UV filters if I didn't have to, so I wouldn't mind losing one or two

of these. I have seen it suggested before that one simply pop the

glass from two filters and superglue/epoxy the rings together. This

sounds like it would work, in theory. I'm worried, however, about the

weight of the lenses. Would the strain of hanging the 90mm off the

front pull the epoxy off of the filter ring? Would the paint pull off

of the ring? They're just basic Hoya filters, so I assume that they're

just painted aluminum (or do they anodize these things? It doesn't

look like it, but...). If the paint would be a problem, would filing

down the areas where the filters will contact until I see smooth shiny

silver make the bond any stronger?

As an asside, is there much difference between an 1A and and 1B? I

held them on white paper and one was a tinge pinker than the other. I

wouldn't expect them to have much, if any, effect on black and white,

but what sorts of difference would I see on slide film? If there is a

big difference, I could just pop the glass from one 1B and glue the

rings together, leaving the glass in the other for when I need it on

the front of the lens. Or would this give macro shots a serious warm

cast?

Another option for me would be to buy two 77mm - XXmm stepup rings, or

Cokin adapters (pricy as hell!) and bolt them together on the flanges.

Drilling holes for the bolts would be a serious pain, as I don't have

access to a vice or drill bits suitable for metal. Would it be worth

going through the trouble to order in these hard to find adaptors and

then modify them?

Last, does anyone know of a company that makes a real male-male

adapter at 77mm? A quick google search turned up squat.

Thanks for any tips or leads you can give me!

Jordan R. Urie

Edward,

<p>The problem is that within certain limits, filesize <b>does</b> dictate quality. A 2MB JPEG is almost guaranteed to have more detail than a 500KB JPEG. Most people don't consider that images can be stored in differing formats, and with differing types and levels of compression within those formats, and so they generalize that bigger = better.

<p>As well, the file formats that create larger images tend to have less or no compression, and therefore less loss of detail. Again, a larger file will produce a print of higher quality.

<p>It's not all about the size of the boat though. As you say, 2048x1536 saved as a JPEG will likely be of higher quality than a 1024x768 TIFF file.

<p>The way that I explain to people that bigger doesn't always mean better is to first teach them the basics of resolution and compression. Usually I grab a handy print that has a nice gradient to it, such as the sky, and explain "there's a dot here and there's a dot right next to it that are almost, but not quite, the same colour. You can't tell them apart, right? In order to save space on your memory card, the camera saves one 'number' for both dots, instead of two different numbers, and you won't notice it. But the more agressive you get with that the worse the picture is going to look."(point out two similar, but obviously different spots, and explain that they would start to see blocks of solid colour where there should be a gradient) That usually gets the idea of compression across to all but the densest. Resolution can be explained with a similar aproach. Newspaper clipping under a magnifying glass. See the dots? Same as on a digital file. Using less dots would make things look worse, more dots would make it look better.

<p>Once you have those two concepts across, explaining that a compressed 6MP file will look better than an uncompressed 3MP file is a snap.

<p>Or were you just venting?

<br><br>

Jordan R. Urie

Whoops! I read that as you asking about the 300D, AKA Digital Rebel, not a film-based Rebel. For film, none of that histogram bit applies, just the stuff about the meter.

Teaches me to answer forum questions after a night out clubbing...

Jordan R. Urie

Omer,

<p>The viewfinder on any true SLR camera is going to show you an optical view of what the lens sees. On the side or bottom of the frame are displayed both the aperture and the shutter speed, along with a light meter of some form, be it a matchstick that moves up and down to show over and under exposure, or an electronic scale that reads -3 to +3 exposure values. When you shoot in manual mode, the meter tells you whether you are over or under exposing the shot.

<p>You will quickly get used to the way an SLR viewfinder meter works, especially if you check the shots on the LCD screen after you have taken them. I don't recommend looking at the image itself. Instead, look at the histogram that is displayed on top of or beside the image. The histogram tells you where the light values fall, and let you know if you over or under exposed the shot. Again, you will get used to reading the histogram pretty quickly. For an in-depth review of what the histogram will do for you, look <a href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-histograms.shtml">here</a>.

<p>Hopefully I've managed to answer your question.

<br><br>

Jordan R. Urie