tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12427663955730366992024-03-13T01:18:43.099+01:00Highly EntropicMixed bunch of computer, Linux, programming, photography, wine making, food, recumbent biking, general DIY hacking and other random stuff.roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1242766395573036699.post-54348882598341421242011-09-04T14:44:00.000+02:002011-11-18T22:18:54.197+01:00Taking apart a disposable cameraFor a future DIY photography project, I need to disassemble a couple of disposable cameras. Such single use cameras contain some interesting electronics! Most notably a small high voltage generator (330V), a rather large flash capacitor (330V, 120μF) and a xenon flash tube.<p/>
You can probably get used ones for free at your local photography shop. If they sell disposable cameras, chances are that most of the used ones they receive will be the same model (this is good!). In my case, this happened to be a 'Fujifilm Quicksnap Fashion'.<p/>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipegcF-OFjCSpxYY-X8MNbZHKSVGfImBo7IhKsKgX0AOfLpuT50pB-lLOdzRikWH19gbkyQfaCswKhbxW3q57AMFo-TofAJDN4dXMXvsOlgFniu3zxSfgNz3a1cUtnVwoFmK57ospVcl8/s1600/IMG_7278.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="266" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipegcF-OFjCSpxYY-X8MNbZHKSVGfImBo7IhKsKgX0AOfLpuT50pB-lLOdzRikWH19gbkyQfaCswKhbxW3q57AMFo-TofAJDN4dXMXvsOlgFniu3zxSfgNz3a1cUtnVwoFmK57ospVcl8/s400/IMG_7278.jpg" /></a></div>
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Detailed instructions on how to take these babies apart after the jump. But first, I'd like to thank my local photography shop, <a href="http://www.fovico.be/">Fovico</a>, for supplying me with a bag full of used disposable cameras!
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<div style="color: red;">
<b>WARNING</b>: These cameras contain high voltage capacitors that hold <b>lethal</b> amounts of energy!
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For comparison, a police taser holds an energy of about 1 joule. A fully charged flash capacitor packs 13 joules of energy! This is within the range where ventricular fibrillation starts in a normal heart (10 to 50 joules)!
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(Small (comforting?) sidenote: devices like tasers/defibrilators/etc usually use higher voltages. 330V is "only" 'about 0.003 to 0.5 times enough' to actually get a lethal current flowing, according to <a href='http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(330+volts+%2F+(resistance+of+a+human+body))+%2F+(lethal+direct+current)'>Wolfram Alpha</a>.)
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Even so, under <i>no</i> circumstances should you <i>ever</i> touch part of the circuitry if there is <i>any</i> chance that the capacitor still holds a charge!
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<b>DISCLAIMER</b>: You have been warned, and you will be doing this on your own risk. I'm not responsible in case you <i>should</i> get zapped.
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Ok, now that I've nearly scared off most of you, let's first note that the detailed instructions below are for my specific model of disposable camera. However, I've noticed that a lot of the different brands and models have a very similar construction, so they should still be of some significance for those with other types of cameras.
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Now, the cameras you receive will probably have taken quite a bit of abuse. In order to obtain the roll of film, the bottom left of the camera will have been broken open. The camera also contains a 1.5V AAA battery that the photography shop must take out and recycle. It's behind the little door on the bottom.
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Make sure that the battery is removed, for your own safety! (Remember that nice, red warning above? Keep that in mind!)
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The plastic casing is held together by a few clips. First, strip of all the stickers so you can see the bare plastic. The positions of the clips are shown in the two pictures below. The photos were taken after the two halves were already separated, so you can see the little plastic hooks. (Note that the lid that covers the compartment for the film was ripped off by the photography shop on this camera.)
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3jazr99AkVUyoh36SDH1zUP5tfz1uZKG9fdim1CF8cIh9ogmbU0pz6PtVTIcRruo3gnL8V7UnDYSn3FdRC_0sUi098hB4oBdn3CTQbGS2sS8Vl4x_7iQ3ZaxWEuNNZmt_CQey7srAQ2E/s1600/IMG_7102-kra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="266" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3jazr99AkVUyoh36SDH1zUP5tfz1uZKG9fdim1CF8cIh9ogmbU0pz6PtVTIcRruo3gnL8V7UnDYSn3FdRC_0sUi098hB4oBdn3CTQbGS2sS8Vl4x_7iQ3ZaxWEuNNZmt_CQey7srAQ2E/s400/IMG_7102-kra.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqcm7mqa3UgJdOi1JLZbhoONgMFxulu1MDsSjM_SI3mzGi9rznSaf7x3qpTeLQ2Kli2-VGNP89FXVurZbSB2hLYJG9EWKAoU_AfIzK9ZO29DXYABg9LXzdww_lm9PBHC6yU551vgLs27s/s1600/IMG_7104-kra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="266" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqcm7mqa3UgJdOi1JLZbhoONgMFxulu1MDsSjM_SI3mzGi9rznSaf7x3qpTeLQ2Kli2-VGNP89FXVurZbSB2hLYJG9EWKAoU_AfIzK9ZO29DXYABg9LXzdww_lm9PBHC6yU551vgLs27s/s400/IMG_7104-kra.jpg" /></a></div>
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As you can see, there are clips all around the side, as well as two in the front. You can just put a screwdriver in those holes in the front, and push the plastic hooks to the center of the camera. They should let quite go easily.
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You can now open up the halves. This will expose the flash and the flash capacitor underneath it, as well as part of the circuitry. Don't touch it! (This is the part where you start being careful.)
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizrIEsH9NdjXjOQVuMRKJ60mc1y-wFK23jwGwP_Wp9o0jJrWiQ-qsuoY8JmOxEqCRiUSbPTtJVvnrt5Syh_DfFH6NkM3aFjecCwmfNFNWph-4uUeItaLoE8gsiaq7e92vhlIqv3CT16Is/s1600/IMG_7108.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="266" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizrIEsH9NdjXjOQVuMRKJ60mc1y-wFK23jwGwP_Wp9o0jJrWiQ-qsuoY8JmOxEqCRiUSbPTtJVvnrt5Syh_DfFH6NkM3aFjecCwmfNFNWph-4uUeItaLoE8gsiaq7e92vhlIqv3CT16Is/s400/IMG_7108.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Zoltbcx9V1677KVYWhwnombMK2YosaHxoZqeDZ9aM1pcLw-N5tSNuq6J7SyxL9b_mrWvwZslNru1y_lOJHIOJi7yxstfa5cEimeb7sRKmFSGtZ9D0sJ-5EZzlRikDrIJ1t67ioBuhXI/s1600/IMG_7109.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="266" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Zoltbcx9V1677KVYWhwnombMK2YosaHxoZqeDZ9aM1pcLw-N5tSNuq6J7SyxL9b_mrWvwZslNru1y_lOJHIOJi7yxstfa5cEimeb7sRKmFSGtZ9D0sJ-5EZzlRikDrIJ1t67ioBuhXI/s400/IMG_7109.jpg" /></a></div>
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Those plastic sliding things (the switch to activate the flash) should fall right off if you tip the camera over. This fully exposes the flash circuit.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVnL96ikMRL5JfdiMwFy7uuuHZdQDEDeZvNyIYMrBCXIli6C2rL_ZPCf2zGnj4hj26oNflSRePsjRkVGtjMfTttmaE1HiAn4dYs2gnBhpQRJdQnAvOlx1sMGBz_eX2xW-iwvSZ2vR676E/s1600/IMG_7112-kra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="266" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVnL96ikMRL5JfdiMwFy7uuuHZdQDEDeZvNyIYMrBCXIli6C2rL_ZPCf2zGnj4hj26oNflSRePsjRkVGtjMfTttmaE1HiAn4dYs2gnBhpQRJdQnAvOlx1sMGBz_eX2xW-iwvSZ2vR676E/s400/IMG_7112-kra.jpg" /></a></div>
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The circuit board is held in place by a single plastic hook, as shown in the picture above. You can easily take it off, but remember what I said about not touching it until you are absolutely sure that the capacitor has no charge left?
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Well, as long as you just grab the long piece of copper from the battery holder (the positive terminal), and don't touch anything else, you should be fine. In fact, it makes a pretty good handle and you can keep your fingers a safe distance away from the high voltage side.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC0y4IfOPYwSBUd3iLYLroRrZomER3-jQfu_tIswI-6luSyDwgGn9Z91wUVdKL6NfUvf9ZtyAPKz8GA1LdyCZovNdSlsqo_V9_k53Pu-ptRvYFORNlTMm9hEYOfTuMwt88GVjDH06PiRw/s1600/IMG_7122-kra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="266" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC0y4IfOPYwSBUd3iLYLroRrZomER3-jQfu_tIswI-6luSyDwgGn9Z91wUVdKL6NfUvf9ZtyAPKz8GA1LdyCZovNdSlsqo_V9_k53Pu-ptRvYFORNlTMm9hEYOfTuMwt88GVjDH06PiRw/s400/IMG_7122-kra.jpg" /></a></div>
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Now, the <i>first</i> thing you should do is make sure the capacitor is fully discharged. You can do this safely by holding a resistor of the order of 1kΩ over the leads of the capacitor for a couple of seconds. (You may see a tiny bit of arcing if the capacitor was fully charged. This can be reduced by using a larger resistor, but you'd have to hold it against the capacitor longer to make sure all the charge has properly bled off.)
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Make sure you don't touch the leads of the capacitor <i>or</i> the resistor when doing this! You can use a (insulated!) plier to hold the resistor, or wrap it in something non conducting, like a couple of layers of electrical tape, to get a handle.
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If you don't have such a resistor laying around somewhere, it would be (1) time to start questioning if you are really up for this job, and (2) still possible to discharge the capacitor in a less safe manner.<br/>
You can just short out the leads of the capacitor with an old screwdriver. This will create a huge spark and pieces of metal can evaporate from both the screwdriver and the capacitor leads, messing up both. This is nasty, dangerous and overall not advised.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLaJ8t4DO3q1QDo7tqXFVDpGR_qzW5i7rZLqtyvfu0tJXZbZcqYZ_3TTZF4A_RO9D6YGMY0qnT0s4UBsfPV04D-1UEOUPl-yaIrKQvo3vvcPF5td_bICW2boB295fNMnahDD3nFDSjkRo/s1600/IMG_7123-kra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="266" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLaJ8t4DO3q1QDo7tqXFVDpGR_qzW5i7rZLqtyvfu0tJXZbZcqYZ_3TTZF4A_RO9D6YGMY0qnT0s4UBsfPV04D-1UEOUPl-yaIrKQvo3vvcPF5td_bICW2boB295fNMnahDD3nFDSjkRo/s400/IMG_7123-kra.jpg" /></a></div>
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Note that you should <i>always</i> discharge the capactior, even if you are sure that the camera hasn't been recharged after the last flash went off. This is, because, after a flash discharge, there's still roughly 40V present on the capacitor. (The xenon plasma in the tube stops conducting when the voltage falls below that value.)
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Ok, so now you have the circuit board safely separated from the camera body, like so:
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj372gW5mU1iCq0NZaSFmwgnELZMYomwSaXwADXiWYmw4_crsg69MTuy3dsvSKa4donMU-zZgwoB4rui02EGnI_BZc06p3dPOj4Pek43sVwZC9pP35MBZhbPgoEv5HQENCU5lY0VgWIS9Q/s1600/IMG_7116.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="266" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj372gW5mU1iCq0NZaSFmwgnELZMYomwSaXwADXiWYmw4_crsg69MTuy3dsvSKa4donMU-zZgwoB4rui02EGnI_BZc06p3dPOj4Pek43sVwZC9pP35MBZhbPgoEv5HQENCU5lY0VgWIS9Q/s400/IMG_7116.jpg" /></a></div>
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The next step is taking out the lens assembly. It is attached with two clips and a pin (shown below) and comes off pretty easily.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Bioe6MUUhEAW7k0iPfA0gn_3o0LNqcNLkHb5YqHuN1FKJ17nJxL9wfqo3GSVUcuArtT3iPdzh-4QcEiLhpnaQfFaDNpI87FTJm9jR0qk6LbWuhlbm_lyxvx63fTCEcwQYAnooVq9eBs/s1600/IMG_7125-kra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="266" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Bioe6MUUhEAW7k0iPfA0gn_3o0LNqcNLkHb5YqHuN1FKJ17nJxL9wfqo3GSVUcuArtT3iPdzh-4QcEiLhpnaQfFaDNpI87FTJm9jR0qk6LbWuhlbm_lyxvx63fTCEcwQYAnooVq9eBs/s400/IMG_7125-kra.jpg" /></a></div>
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The lens unit can be taken apart further, exposing the lens and the shutter leaf. It's just a small and obvious plastic clip. I don't show how to do this here, because I don't need it for my next project.
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The final step consists of separating the backside of the body from the 'inner' side. This step is rather messy.
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There are four clips around the edge of the camera that need to be released. There's also one right next to the viewfinder on the inside. The pieces are aligned with two pins, one next to that clip near the viewfinder and one on the side, next to the 'compartment' for the capacitor.
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That was the easy part. On both sides of the viewfinder, there are small plastic tabs that seem to be joined (melted?) to the rear panel. You can see them if you look at the back of the camera
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBNc_MRldfO0lJ5ng37dtebY-EUbcA-6QtyWSRJE5c5teTexTidDyZGL2N-gCTl84D79PI68kBjzyFVSKGCJ6iyAvQopP5b-3smd2pBqVh7gds_dylBda51jcjQpg3wJgeJUNLcfLQUKQ/s1600/IMG_7343-kra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="266" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBNc_MRldfO0lJ5ng37dtebY-EUbcA-6QtyWSRJE5c5teTexTidDyZGL2N-gCTl84D79PI68kBjzyFVSKGCJ6iyAvQopP5b-3smd2pBqVh7gds_dylBda51jcjQpg3wJgeJUNLcfLQUKQ/s400/IMG_7343-kra.jpg" /></a></div>
<p/>
You'll have to break these apart. I find it easiest to just cut the tabs off.
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Once those are free, you'll find that the bottom is still connected. As far as I can tell, the rear side and the 'inner' side just seem to be one whole piece of plastic, 'folded' at the bottom. I just insert a screwdriver between the pieces at the top and wedge them open till the bottom breaks apart.
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You then end up with these two pieces (broken tabs are marked with an X, the broken off bottom part with a squiggly line):
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Here are some more images of the rear panel and the rear and inner piece:
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<p/>
So, there you have it. You can now start messing with these fun little cameras yourself, but remember to keep it safe!roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1242766395573036699.post-53539832992864501812011-07-13T14:41:00.002+02:002011-09-09T00:13:05.278+02:00Linux driver for old serial Wacom tablets (Intuos and Intuos2)So I bought an old Intuos1 tablet from eBay. I knew that USB tablets were
perfectly supported, and that there was some difficulty getting serial
tablets to work. Sadly, I misread the description (it said "connects via
USB adapter"), interpreting it as an USB tablet, while it actually was a
serial tablet with a serial-to-USB adapter included. (<i>note to self:
Properly read eBay descriptions next time!</i>).
<p/>
Now, support for old serial Wacom tablets was dropped from xf86-input-wacom
quite some time ago due to a large refactoring and the lack of developer
resources to keep this part of the code maintained.
<p/>
However, literally only a couple of days ago, an initial driver was
released by Julian (tokenrove) that supports old serial protocol IV
tablets. Right now it has tested support for Digitizer II tablets, and it
should also (untested as of yet) support Cintiq, Cintiq2, Penpartner and
Graphire serial tablets. The initial announcement and code can be found
<a
href="http://cipht.net/2011/07/02/wacom_serial-initial-release.html">here</a>.
<p/>
I created a fork of this driver to implement support for my (protocol V)
Intuos tablet. Currently, all features are implemented and working (pen and
eraser movement, pressure, tilt; mouse movement and buttons). The driver is
still a work-in-progress at the time of writing, but it should already be
sufficiently stable and functional for every day use with an Intuos tablet.
<p/>
I still need testers with an Intuos2 tablet to test that part of the code
and/or testers with an Intuos tablet with extra tools (eg airbrush, ...).
<p/>
<b>The code</b> can be found at my github repository
<a href="https://github.com/RoaldFre/wacom_serial5">wacom_serial5</a>.
Development discussions can be followed in
<a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1780154">this
thread</a> on the ubuntu forums and the linuxwacom-devel mailing list.
<p/>roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1242766395573036699.post-81862499851602464012011-07-04T22:31:00.002+02:002011-07-05T10:45:38.794+02:00DIY reverse ring for macro photographyThis is my take on making a reversing ring for high quality macro photography on the cheap. It is based on an old UV filter and a small M42 extension tube segment.<p/>
I'm using an extension tube instead of the more custom method of using an old body cap because<br/>
<ol>
<li> I did not have an M42 body cap and</li>
<li> the extension tube is made of metal, whereas pretty much all body caps are plastic -- this is a plus!</li>
</ol>
<p/>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvzrFnZh1HJijPLzxOPotf6i767bSdKbTrHU_zzTeV46Bo_r-fOXkBFf0X9CXEaZYj2OXtxe4Jj1w-LkIejbCuL9F3YOG_8bt-5ADSdMBRGZsADTui6abKZsreVtxcE33iVl3HR7tWBvY/s1600/IMG_5850.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em"><img border="0" height="158" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvzrFnZh1HJijPLzxOPotf6i767bSdKbTrHU_zzTeV46Bo_r-fOXkBFf0X9CXEaZYj2OXtxe4Jj1w-LkIejbCuL9F3YOG_8bt-5ADSdMBRGZsADTui6abKZsreVtxcE33iVl3HR7tWBvY/s320/IMG_5850.jpg" /></a></div>
<p/>
Full details and a tad of theory after the jump.
<a name='more'></a>
<p/>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>
Why use a reversing ring?
</b></span>
<br/>
If you know the 'theory' behind a reverse ring, or just want to see how you can make one, then you can skip to the section below. If you are interested in why you might need a reversal ring, then read on :-).<p/>
Lenses are designed to operate in a specific 'focus regime'. Usually from the order of a meter up to infinity. Within this regime, the lens reaches its optimal sharpness and minimizes its distortions and aberrations.<p/>
Extension tubes, macro bellows or any other means of placing the lens further away from the body, allow one to focus on objects much closer to the lens. This results in magnifications that are far greater than could be achieved otherwise. However, this means that the light follows an optical path that the lens was <i>not</i> designed for! The results are often a loss of sharpness and an exaggeration of optical distortions and aberrations of the lens.<p/>
We need to keep the light path 'within specifications' of the lens to reach optimum performance. An easy trick to achieve this while still maintaining the possibility to focus on objects close to the lens, is simply to reverse the lens!<p/>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioVAJSileKfUoPJ2_ckuPBTro8-X_VmJnlXNNclw6IQ1JKgsVMWAnQMpglJ3t93Ow3TSXsmkl_k8HwNy9gc6xddHoKg9Nh3tFYsmdCKOWEGpMUbmLTh-0OTTkmvip8S2cxd0Kr5gKWtew/s1600/theory.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="187" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioVAJSileKfUoPJ2_ckuPBTro8-X_VmJnlXNNclw6IQ1JKgsVMWAnQMpglJ3t93Ow3TSXsmkl_k8HwNy9gc6xddHoKg9Nh3tFYsmdCKOWEGpMUbmLTh-0OTTkmvip8S2cxd0Kr5gKWtew/s320/theory.png" /></a></div>
<p/>
As you can see from the above drawing, reversing the lens means that, when photographing something small (eg a bee), the light rays pass through the lens in the same way as they would when the lens is used in the normal way (eg when taking a picture of a tree). Sure, they travel through the lens in the <i>opposite</i> direction, but -- thankfully -- physics could not care less.<p/>
Note that, following the above argument, one finds that the <i>more</i> extension tubes you stack between the body and the lens (and thus the higher the magnification), the more you approach the optimal, normal light path (in reverse). Indeed, if you take a picture of a tree that is a couple of meters away from the lens, you would need a couple of meters(!) of extension tubes to mimic that situation.<p/>
In order to just be 'in spec' with the lens, you would need a minimum extension equal to the minimum (normal) focus distance of your lens. The lens-to-subject distance will then be approximately equal to the flange distance between the back of your lens and the film/sensor, when used in the normal way.<p/>
Now, this amount of extension often leads to <i>very</i> high magnifications that are rather impractical to use. Besides, at those magnifications, you begin to bump into the wave like nature of light. Diffraction usually goes through the roof, and sharpness down the drain. So, most of the time, you will still be using the lens in a regime that is still just a tad out of its specifications (unless it was a close-focus macro lens to begin with).<br/>
Nevertheless, it's still worth it to see if reversing your lens won't improve the optical quality!<p/>
<b>In general, if you want to achieve a magnification greater then 1:1, you want to reverse your lens.</b>
<p/>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>
OK! Just build the damn thing already!
</b></span>
<br/>
As I said in the introduction, I used an old 49mm UV filter and a small M42 extension tube. Of course, if you want to build this yourself, you need to pick a filter size that will fit on the lens you want to reverse mount. I will be using an old M42 Helios 44-2 58mm f/2 lens. It will be mounted in reverse on a set of M42 extension tubes which attach to my Canon 500D through an EOS to M42 adapter.<p/>
Below is a picture of the filter and extension tube that will get 'sacrificed'.<p/>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4Nsa8GB4fg1gBF81LeQc80qip13_PErtXj_bjLfAwGE7tasf2Bj7tCKbvj-zCRzuUkDYdASwLY4BHzjBeyN_Ej-CLfJKYO1smijr5dMlP6nf4OXNVfgb7PklW1I5479zTlhTDMwo-_6w/s1600/IMG_5586.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em"><img border="0" height="120" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4Nsa8GB4fg1gBF81LeQc80qip13_PErtXj_bjLfAwGE7tasf2Bj7tCKbvj-zCRzuUkDYdASwLY4BHzjBeyN_Ej-CLfJKYO1smijr5dMlP6nf4OXNVfgb7PklW1I5479zTlhTDMwo-_6w/s320/IMG_5586.jpg" /></a></div>
<p/>
The first step is removing the glass from the UV filter. You can probably use a hammer, or you can just unscrew the retaining (plastic) ring that holds the glass in place. It has two diametrical slots that fit a lens wrench. Not having a lens wrench, I used a caliper (<i>note</i> this may ruin the accuracy of your caliper, you should not do this with a good caliper!).
<p/>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYP2SzzFIQNkOLdqgwbZ2qsqE6aZSsbMjbmc2akPEXqoMngWmeAm-zC0tGRAqqvOIPNH8mTwdiH2LvG_vQxatAu9FIH8E84V35TykzcDRmtvoK2odaRdKP9nkCTBujfpunJzr94ofa524/s1600/IMG_5588.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em"><img border="0" height="138" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYP2SzzFIQNkOLdqgwbZ2qsqE6aZSsbMjbmc2akPEXqoMngWmeAm-zC0tGRAqqvOIPNH8mTwdiH2LvG_vQxatAu9FIH8E84V35TykzcDRmtvoK2odaRdKP9nkCTBujfpunJzr94ofa524/s320/IMG_5588.jpg" /></a></div>
<p/>
I noticed that the extension tube would <i>almost</i> fit in the outer ring of the filter. Here you can see them on top of each other:
<p/>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_GR5fDEBVqKgOZ6Ww3cwl4cUA578cmdxI8mEp7gt4E9geEar_w9hExeC0rLQeueHL7BohxItugjaf2MblZrmSWio4Q9EYoI1aA57cl_TaLPr3PG_733e0rDlLFhpmULXVWfQsWKXuBFI/s1600/IMG_5590.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em"><img border="0" height="189" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_GR5fDEBVqKgOZ6Ww3cwl4cUA578cmdxI8mEp7gt4E9geEar_w9hExeC0rLQeueHL7BohxItugjaf2MblZrmSWio4Q9EYoI1aA57cl_TaLPr3PG_733e0rDlLFhpmULXVWfQsWKXuBFI/s320/IMG_5590.jpg" /></a></div>
<p/>
The next step is, of course, to <i>make</i> them fit together! Bring out the file and start working that thing! Both rings seemed to be made out of aluminium, so it wasn't too hard to work it. The result:
<p/>
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<p/>
Perfect fit:
<p/>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVqlo6PN9pbpGlaA1XAFgkhTgc_8NAs8xr3lQRlnXfrMiQngdI8CCSZ8-HmNzyNlEQ4QRMoUtPVH56SKL-BO56YfKRODcjDNQVjHN3sgk75yrdph0XGOpsQ7b8KaYciPIg8noBoJFLWGU/s1600/IMG_5593.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em"><img border="0" height="187" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVqlo6PN9pbpGlaA1XAFgkhTgc_8NAs8xr3lQRlnXfrMiQngdI8CCSZ8-HmNzyNlEQ4QRMoUtPVH56SKL-BO56YfKRODcjDNQVjHN3sgk75yrdph0XGOpsQ7b8KaYciPIg8noBoJFLWGU/s320/IMG_5593.jpg" /></a></div>
<p/>
The final step is making this fit final. I used super glue. You can also use epoxy (probably even better) or any other <i>strong</i> glue. Remember that your lens will be dangling from this piece! Better be safe!<p/>
Make sure you glue it completely flush, so the focal plane won't be slanted. After the glue sets, this is what I got:
<p/>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvzrFnZh1HJijPLzxOPotf6i767bSdKbTrHU_zzTeV46Bo_r-fOXkBFf0X9CXEaZYj2OXtxe4Jj1w-LkIejbCuL9F3YOG_8bt-5ADSdMBRGZsADTui6abKZsreVtxcE33iVl3HR7tWBvY/s1600/IMG_5850.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em"><img border="0" height="158" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvzrFnZh1HJijPLzxOPotf6i767bSdKbTrHU_zzTeV46Bo_r-fOXkBFf0X9CXEaZYj2OXtxe4Jj1w-LkIejbCuL9F3YOG_8bt-5ADSdMBRGZsADTui6abKZsreVtxcE33iVl3HR7tWBvY/s320/IMG_5850.jpg" /></a></div>
<p/>
On the top of the above photo, you can see the male M42 mount. This will screw into the extension tubes on the body. The 49mm filter thread is laying down. In the picture below, you can see it in more detail on the right.
<p/>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXMQULlP1C7d3nIqe4SY3WGfYgBJWJv0Qf3dP5V81DhLrKvaUj_S-oUV8VdobLa_Zc_Jpul14f79h-7O2Rg4brGZOMqpU2cz5Xx9z8cUAT_gsr1SGqM-ZZp-OG0xTwy8p6mBf9-QoPAUQ/s1600/IMG_5852.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXMQULlP1C7d3nIqe4SY3WGfYgBJWJv0Qf3dP5V81DhLrKvaUj_S-oUV8VdobLa_Zc_Jpul14f79h-7O2Rg4brGZOMqpU2cz5Xx9z8cUAT_gsr1SGqM-ZZp-OG0xTwy8p6mBf9-QoPAUQ/s320/IMG_5852.jpg" /></a></div>
<p/>
That's it! Now to try it out!
<p/>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>
Preliminary results
</b></span>
<br/>
I attached the reversing ring to my Helios 44-2 58mm f/2 and mounted it on a modest set of extension tubes (total extension of 40mm), as can be seen below:
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiindY0MX4U1DXpAYjdxz6u9irOE88i2puOh-SShecF3U-1GO90HgM31RtZWvdV5wNe8QX_pvJuuStdipCpWlkKCfpDqYy-loktqUVjCgRmIXPYpv5fIi5PAPb17qccduTp56P5zwvcVI8/s1600/IMG_5848.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em"><img border="0" height="219" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiindY0MX4U1DXpAYjdxz6u9irOE88i2puOh-SShecF3U-1GO90HgM31RtZWvdV5wNe8QX_pvJuuStdipCpWlkKCfpDqYy-loktqUVjCgRmIXPYpv5fIi5PAPb17qccduTp56P5zwvcVI8/s320/IMG_5848.jpg" /></a></div>
I went hunting around for bugs and could get a shot of this bumble bee: (click for full resolution version and shot details, hosted on deviantART)
<p/>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://roaldfre.deviantart.com/art/Bumble-Bee-216639010" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6rxpN-BP-I1hsuB6oGwMctMrIyn73NYg5IZhQuRHXfjreY2V7lCkhC34lypP1vmtKAqmONLBIPwKFudX34xNzeTFGtoeRS38BtV2VN6yHPUm_5kPXmxnorxsCtXbt87O6kONaGWfHdN4/s320/IMG_5769-gimp.jpg" /></a></div>
<p/>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>
Epilogue
</b></span>
<p/>
Some very quick tests of reversed versus normal orientation of the lens at modest magnification have not really shown major changes in sharpness yet. I'm planning to do some <i>proper</i> in-depth tests on the effect of reversing the lens at various magnifications soon. I expect the reversed lens to score better, especially at higher magnifications.roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1242766395573036699.post-41533564726621727082011-02-19T20:19:00.003+01:002011-03-28T20:09:52.831+02:00Recovering photos with extundelete and PhotoRec using a Puppy Linux live USB stickI recently <a href="http://roaldfre.blogspot.com/2011/01/when-rsyncs-go-wrong.html">screwed up an rsync</a> and accidentally deleted a lot of my photos. I finally got round to recovering them, and here's how I did it.
<p>
<a name='more'></a>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>
Puppy Linux live CD/USB stick
</b></span>
<br>
<b>EDIT:</b> <i>With the new versions op Puppy (the ones based on the Ubuntu repository), you can probably grab the appropriate packages from the repository instead of having to compile them yourself.</i>
<p>
First, I made a <a href="http://puppylinux.org">Puppy Linux</a> live USB
stick. I absolutely <i>love</i> Puppy Linux! Setting up the latest Puppy
Linux live CD/USB stick is explained on their website. Be sure to grab the
appropriate devx_xxx.sfs too so we can build extundelete and PhotoRec.
<p>
Next boot up into Puppy Linux and download the sources for <a href="http://extundelete.sourceforge.net/">extundelete</a> and alternatively for <a href="http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec">PhotoRec</a> too, if you have reason to believe that extundelete will not be able to recover all files (eg when there has been some disk activity after deleting the lost files). Normally, Puppy will automatically configure your network, but if this isn't the case (and you can't get it to work), you can always download the sources and put them on the live CD/stick before booting into Puppy.
<p>
I had an extra complication in the sense that the partition from which I wanted to restore the files was on a software RAID. Puppy will normally have all the kernel modules you need to get RAID going. You'll need to get the <a href=http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/raid/mdadm/">mdadm</a> utility and build it from sources (I found a .pet file for the Puppy version I used, so that made life easier for me). You can now easily assemble your RAID array, but don't mount it!
<p>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>
Extundelete
</b></span>
Now it's time to build <a href="http://extundelete.sourceforge.net/">extundelete</a> if you haven't done so already. Once you are finished, mount a partition with enough free space to store all your recovered files. This should <i>not</i> be the partition with the deleted files themselves, we will <i>never</i> mount that!<br>
Extundelete will by default dump the restored files in the current working directory, so <span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">cd</span> to the mounted filesystem where you want to store those files.
<p>
Now, you can ask extundelete to do the best it can to retrieve your deleted files. In my case, I told it to restore the directory
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">/home/roald/canon/2010</span>:
<p>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
extundelete --restore-file /home/roald/canon/2010
</span>
<p>
A snippet of the output I got was:
<p>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
1054 recoverable inodes found.<br>
[...]<br>
997 recoverable inodes still lost
</span>
<p>
Hopefully for you, that last number will be less big than what I got. The reason extdelete couldn't restore all those files is because there was still a lot of disk activity after deleting those files. (I'm an idiot, should have unmounted immediately.)
<p>
Now, if you are happy with the files extundelete could retrieve, there is no need to take the next step. If you want to recover more, continue reading.
<p>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>
PhotoRec
</b></span>
<a href="http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec">PhotoRec</a> has a more brute force aproach than extundelete. It basically scans the entile filesystem looking for data that matches a given pattern (eg, a JPEG or RAW file header).
<p>
I was mostly looking to restore my Canon RAW files (.CR2). The interface of PhotoRec is pretty self explanotory. In order to restore .CR2 files, you'll need to check the mark next to TIFF, as those RAW files are in fact special TIFF files. Note that this will restore <i>all</i> TIFF and RAW files on that partition. You cannot specify to only restore files that for example only belong to a certain directory.
<p>
Now, just tell it to dump the files to your seperately mounted partition and let it do its thing. Make sure that it has enough free space! At the time of writing, the lastest stable version is 6.11.3, but I really recommend the 6.12-WIP version. That last one will warn you when the disk space on the receiving partition gets too low and pause. The other seemed to try to continue going, not saving the new files any more if there isn't room for them.
<p>
Note that because of the brute force method, running PhoteRec will take a <i>long</i> time. (It took about 4 hours on my 1TB partition.)
<p>
The order in which PhotoRec finds the files is related to where they are on the disk. If you have a rather "fresh" partition, they will be found in roughly chronological time of creation. After some time, the first recovered files will start popping up.
<p>
In order to view the progress, I also downloaded <a href="http://geeqie.sourceforge.net/">geeqie</a>, an excellent (RAW) image viewer. You can compile from sources or search for a .pet file for Puppy (I found one for the version op Puppy I was using at the time).
<p>
Now that you can view the recovered files, you can delete them if you don't need them (eg, if you are certain that they are still on the disk, and not deleted). You can also get a few false positives. I, for instance, got a couple files of several GB: chunks of data that were falsely recognised as image files. They could of course not be read by geeqie. The biggest one was 90GB. It caused the partition where I was dumping the files to run out of space, so I just deleted it while PhotoRec was scanning the rest of the filesystem.
<p>
After finishing, you'll be left with a lot of files, spread over a lot of directories (each holding 10GB of files).
<p>
Geeqie should be able to read the files and also their creation date (embedded in the RAW files themselves), so you can sort on that to find the files you lost more easily.
<p>
An important remark: I found that all files have a size that is a multiple of 8MB. I have lots of files of 8MB and 16MB. Note that an average RAW for my camera will have a size of about 20MB, so something looks fishy there. Indeed, the actual RAW data in those files seems to be corrupted (cut off). I don't know if this is a bug that can easily be fixed (eg, misinterpreting the .CR2 format), or a symptom of the file system (the partition I used was ext4). Either way, I was still able to get the embedded JPEG out of the .CR2 files using <a href="http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/">dcraw</a>, so the images are not completely lost. The images I deleted weren't that stellar any way, so just having the JPEGs is good enough for me.roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1242766395573036699.post-44561821741622666862011-01-07T21:55:00.000+01:002011-01-07T21:55:57.354+01:00Extreme contrast and skin detail using unsharp maskThe exams are approaching and it's time to study. Sometimes that makes me feel a bit desperate. Hence this self portrait: <br />
Note: this one only really works in full resolution. Click for the full res image (hosted on deviantArt).
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.deviantart.com/download/191229400/exam_time_by_roaldfre-d35upjs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqVcwPEbMt1bywFJDwfDy-pKqFdH_GGEWhIF4gTXQJvbP80QvqjTg2Em-wqr0xB6KuJtki2l4wuXjYIPp9zzwcv-VsWhqVIybh9gkHVqZbSduKT56aECJPSnoCmsGI4ErQoABTgvN2z9E/s320/_MG_9714-take2.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<p />
This was shot with self timer on a tripod with my <a href="http://roaldfre.blogspot.com/2010/09/dont-throw-away-that-old-flash-yet.html">old modified strobe</a> in my right hand.
I found the harsh lighting, desaturation and steep, dark contrast very fitting. A more in-depth view of how I got such contrast and skin-details (with the regular kit lens) after the jump!
<p />
<a name='more'></a>
I'll show you how I used the unsharp mask to get that high level of contrast and skin detail. A crop from the photo straight from the camera looks like this:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUYOolUxBbOXD09tOFeW3xP7nX2Lp4xDV3IBFkqg3pSIVRgNhzVyvhPr71sefymbOcPbZTMj6GweFZaQ45QBmLGX8ZyVa5F0hQpk8pWeITNRbnClkb7X1oeChq2nrMkog4YZ-yGgD-E-4/s1600/exams-unedited.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUYOolUxBbOXD09tOFeW3xP7nX2Lp4xDV3IBFkqg3pSIVRgNhzVyvhPr71sefymbOcPbZTMj6GweFZaQ45QBmLGX8ZyVa5F0hQpk8pWeITNRbnClkb7X1oeChq2nrMkog4YZ-yGgD-E-4/s320/exams-unedited.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<p />
Editing the curves in <a href="http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/">ufraw</a> to an aggressive S shape gave me some more harsh contrast to suit the mood:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFlPdCfvdnq2geJPDW9I5qN_zerfnOm6CC_knUZKmHSTQ-x2MuO74INFY4UU9ilZIzYiIGom8qJL6AFaVGcnr1Zaz_ZWI8yibF_5f2A-8emNFKngAshZtAnu-zZZ1PAw4bnY7lrrh3DuM/s1600/exams-curves.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFlPdCfvdnq2geJPDW9I5qN_zerfnOm6CC_knUZKmHSTQ-x2MuO74INFY4UU9ilZIzYiIGom8qJL6AFaVGcnr1Zaz_ZWI8yibF_5f2A-8emNFKngAshZtAnu-zZZ1PAw4bnY7lrrh3DuM/s320/exams-curves.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<p />
The next thing I did was apply some <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsharp_masking">unsharp mask</a>. What an unsharp mask does is basically amplify the high frequency components, increasing the acutance or apparent sharpness. It does this by first blurring a copy of the picture (hence <i>un</i>sharp mask) and then subtracting some of this blurred image from the original. You usually need to provide three parameters: the radius of blurring, the strength of the filter (how much of the blurred image will get subtracted) and the threshold (if the difference between blurred and original is lower than this threshold, the filter will not be applied at that pixel).
<p />
You can use an unsharp mask in two ways. The first is increasing <i>edge contrast</i>, using a low blurring radius (1 to 10 pixels), a moderate strength (20 to 60 percent) and maybe a slight threshold (often somewhere between 0 to 10 percent). The small radius will only sharpen "steep" transitions (edges) and the threshold will make sure that even (non-edge) areas don't get sharpened (which could lead to exaggerated ISO noise).
<p />
The second way you can use an unsharp mask is to increase <i>local contrast</i>. One then chooses a large blurring radius (in the order of 100 pixels, larger than any small detailed features), a low strength (5 to 20 percent) and usually no threshold, or a very small one (say, 0 to 2 percent). This will bump up the "medium frequency" components of the image, and thereby increase the contrast on a larger scale. Note, though, that the bigger the blurring radius you choose, the longer the processing will take, as a greater area needs to be examined to blur each individual pixel.
<p />
For my photo, I chose to increase the local contrast first. I used the <a href="http://www.gimp.org/">gimp</a> to apply an unsharp mask with a 120 pixel radius and a strength of 15%. The threshold was set to 0. The result looks like:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA2kRWT2ct5afot2cwANlB-Q7SmEUiu22q1O3ViXoWEDHDdnwn2jGO25czFhFwxPpp6G1cTTEi-jWbg3NtrW79uKRCZ4IeR8zRyQlTEwuBUcyc2EVOHQ085c3P8gKV6-Dk0Ue13NHGLak/s1600/exams-usm120-15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA2kRWT2ct5afot2cwANlB-Q7SmEUiu22q1O3ViXoWEDHDdnwn2jGO25czFhFwxPpp6G1cTTEi-jWbg3NtrW79uKRCZ4IeR8zRyQlTEwuBUcyc2EVOHQ085c3P8gKV6-Dk0Ue13NHGLak/s320/exams-usm120-15.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<p />
As can be seen, there is more (local) contrast when compared to the photo above, giving it a sharper appearance. The fine details, however, are still a bit soft. Since I'm going for a very extreme result, I applied another unsharp mask. This time I used a radius of 5 pixels, a 50% strength and no threshold. That gives us:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjLLLuSnk6ren3gugo-HEYXllYpopmqlqu5JpyCmWPMlE2mgq9DalpUSJctO6Gw3LFR0X4M3CPLUCQ5NmOVzCuBUiP1Fo08Jw1kqJ4nDz9qA7BoVwdMqCAXBs6tqXFlb4dxxX7a2cobG4/s1600/exams-usm120-15%252B4-50.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjLLLuSnk6ren3gugo-HEYXllYpopmqlqu5JpyCmWPMlE2mgq9DalpUSJctO6Gw3LFR0X4M3CPLUCQ5NmOVzCuBUiP1Fo08Jw1kqJ4nDz9qA7BoVwdMqCAXBs6tqXFlb4dxxX7a2cobG4/s320/exams-usm120-15%252B4-50.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<p />
Note that the hairs of my eyebrow are much more pronounced, and there is a lot more skin detail. As a last step, I applied another unsharp mask with a radius of 0.5 pixel, 50% in strength, no threshold. This brings out the very fine skin detail even more, as can be seen when inspecting the previous image with this last one:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig7EOGGla31URqDVYXGW5zvNy8P3bT_V0x5k8uuIov0VXF62MTPU0AlcHEX9cxFRr0KHon-sTuyGbZtmcg4eYPibveRHPdTdZ9mdCneiVGLKFwFGeIX-UlN2WoEWmAze-rBzM-OrObUM4/s1600/exams-usm120-15%252B4-50%252B0.5-50.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig7EOGGla31URqDVYXGW5zvNy8P3bT_V0x5k8uuIov0VXF62MTPU0AlcHEX9cxFRr0KHon-sTuyGbZtmcg4eYPibveRHPdTdZ9mdCneiVGLKFwFGeIX-UlN2WoEWmAze-rBzM-OrObUM4/s320/exams-usm120-15%252B4-50%252B0.5-50.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<p />
Comparing this last image to the image we started with shows the amount of contrast and detail you can "recover" with a strong S curve and with using an unsharp mask. My final image was made with even less saturation to fit the bleak mood.roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1242766395573036699.post-80496264921933656012011-01-04T22:13:00.008+01:002011-02-19T20:23:41.420+01:00When rsyncs go wrongOk, so a few days ago I wanted to sync some photos between by laptop and my desktop. My desktop has my entire photo collection and I have a subset of that on my laptop. I frequently sync directories between the two using rsync. The desktop doubles as a backup, the files are on a RAID1 array for redundancy -- of course that isn't enough to be safe, and yes, I found out.<br />
<br />
The directory structure is very simple, I've set it up as<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">yyyy/mm/dd-short-description-of-shoot</span><br />
<br />
with <span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">yyyy</span> the year, mm the month and dd the day of the month.<br />
<br />
After having done some editing in the current month on my laptop, I wanted to sync it to my desktop.<br />
<br />
I have a small script that uses rsync to synchronize the current working directory from my laptop to my desktop. I had deleted some bad photo's and obviously wanted them removed from the desktop as well. So I gave the script the --delete flag, which it handed over to rsync.<br />
<br />
I ran the script and was greeted by screenfulls of lines saying deleted xxx or yyy. Hmm, I didn't delete <i>that</i> much pictures. I glance at the files that are being deleted, hmm, wait a minute, those aren't the right ... AAAAAH!<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C^C</span><br />
<br />
FUUUUUCK! I'm bashing CTRL-C for my life here! Finally it kills itself and gives me a shell prompt. I look at the current working directory:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">2010/</span><br />
<br />
That should of course have been<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">2010/12/</span><br />
<br />
And as I said, I don't have a full mirror of all the photos on my laptop (not enough hard disk space there), so it started pruning all the older ones from my desktop. Ouch.<br />
<br />
I've shut down the desktop asap and haven't booted it since. I'm probably going to try my luck with <span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">extundelete</span> after the exams. <i>Fingers crossed. </i><br />
<br />
<b>TL;DR</b> Be careful with the --delete flag in rsync. It will fuck you up sooner or later!
<p>
<a href="http://roaldfre.blogspot.com/2011/02/recovering-photos-with-extundelete-and.html"><b>Update</b></a>roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1242766395573036699.post-43926004332223555082010-12-24T23:39:00.005+01:002010-12-27T15:36:02.927+01:00Vaporizing some aluminum, taking some picturesPart of our bachelor project was working with a small scale single turn
coil apparatus for creating high magnetic fields. This allowed for some
nice plasma pictures!
<p>
The principle of single turn coils in a nutshell: you dump a whole lot of
energy from a capacitor bank in a (single turn) coil. Once you get a few
kiloAmperes flowing, you get a pretty high magnetic field, but the coil
also endures intense magnetic stresses and a lot of Joule heating.
Ultimatly the coil snaps after the peak field is reached and the vaporized
metal turns into a nice plasma. The remains of the coil fly off outwards,
keeping the sample intact.
<p>
I photographed the plasma and pieces flying off with a long exposure in a
dark room. I was slightly worried about frying the sensor, as there is a
lot of high energy UV light coming from the plasma. I actually stacked on
two UV filters just for some peace of mind. I was still constantly checking
the sensor during the first few images.
<p>
This is the best picture, it's an aluminium foil completely flying to
pieces on our little testing apparatus (Click for deviantArt page where you can see the full resolution version)
<p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://roaldfre.deviantart.com/art/Two-Tesla-Plasma-190790673" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMVpu2HfZF3SL5dyF2e2S1ou9VXI7UHq_pzGBhV1W9t1o6fS_ZdZ2_0Mw0NNcIFZi-KcZIZjZeG_xDrd3bgLIJQeqypcOZP39xEN9ouvzw1YwEWtOLRJztp4QpLsbFC-HVImtwOhz1Np0/s320/_MG_8993USM.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<p>
This was done as a long exposure in a dark room with a 250mm lens stopped
down to f/11 on ISO 100. It was one of the first photos I shot, I did some
f/32 shots at first (to protect sensor), but those coil shots were less
bright, so I opened up the aperture. Then this one blew up much brighter
then before and kind of took me by surprise. The sensor is still OK though!
<p>
These pulses can reach about 2T, hence the catchy title 'Two Tesla Plasma' (go ahead, say that out loud. It has a nice ring to it, right?)
<p>
I also tried to get a 3D image by using a second camera from a friend of
mine. Click the image below to see the effect (WARNING: I can NOT be held
responsible for possible epilectic seizures)
<p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN4gIcy_V8si-QpAmiqnL-yxFAhVHzFp1nIYhyTpgC3r5lpELhALtd36xEZ2GmGNJQwCLTj7unW73rLJ6zaL65MVV-pXlTj9rwxFjeohYboo62xKC-trNqLx4wgnV9GQacZYvXQC95xMA/s1600/anim3D.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcQBTor2MGri0QX7JWSdX-dISPkNAyD-jc-pLDPOJmmx_VQz2ps5GIoA-w0LXMCp7wOvVSY5YOoTupo6coV-I7ZvUI0FgkRtCAw1cPt0Mq3hk9nNX_OgfoivkFgjP0m0Ar373qRP1kcBs/s320/3D-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<p>
The parallax looks a bit odd because both images were shot at 250mm on a
cropped sensor. Using a focal lengtch that matches the human eye more
closely would probably have made the effect much better, but I'm not too
fond of getting the cameras that close to the glowing metal pieces flying
everywhere.
<p>
So, everyone go and study physics: where you can blow stuff up and get
pretty pictures -- for science!
<p>
[Edit] For those interested in more info, you can skim through the <a href="https://github.com/RoaldFre/SingleTurn/raw/master/latex/singleturn.pdf">paper</a> hosted at github (Don't mind the bleek results, we had some problems and serious time constraints).
<!--
vim: fo+=at:ft=html
-->roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1242766395573036699.post-24377146050552237372010-11-28T23:22:00.006+01:002011-01-27T17:36:18.908+01:00Highly EntropicIn case you were wondering why this blog is titled "Highly Entropic", this is the deal:<br />
<br />
Entropy is a physical (thermodynamical) property. It's one of those things that can be pretty hard to understand. Roughly speaking, one can say that it is a measure of the "disorder" of a physical system. If something is "Highly Entropic", it is said to have a lot of "disorder".<br />
<br />
The reason this blog is titled "Highly Entropic" is partly because I intend to blog on various (unrelated) things (for the moment it's mostly (DIY) photography, but I also plan on doing computer/Linux related posts, maybe somethings food-related, wine making, etc...).<br />
<br />
A second reason is that I am quite "entropic" myself. Since a picture says more than a thousand words, I'll just leave you with this panoramic view of our garage (click for the deviantart link, click "Download" there for the full resolution photo)<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href=" http://roaldfre.deviantart.com/art/Entropy-explained-in-100MP-187808960 " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="108" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpTn6RO5w41UQz8nlfW4Df51-3gcwR0wwrXv6-Yt8n8TJ-J0TooFGrq2N6w-sACIpP5iP1L8wg_f82GrHqx6Wy9WoszQ7DoM1Hd9u9p3uqG31QPKgxFqt12OZQJ9cDnmsSpSs_5LmiB4M/s320/entropyThumb.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Some things worth mentioning: This shot was made with the <a href="http://roaldfre.blogspot.com/2010/11/on-panoramic-mounts-and-entropy.html">parnoramic mount</a> I blogged earlier. On the bottom left, you can see some pieces of my <a href="http://roaldfre.blogspot.com/2010/10/yet-another-diy-ringflash.html">ring flash</a>. On the right side, you can see the rear of a wooden recumbent bike I built several years ago (there may be a blogpost about this in the (far) future).<br />
<br />
The original picture is 250 megapixels large and was stiched together from 42 images using <a href="http://hugin.sourceforge.net/">hugin</a>. Doing so required around 9GB of memory at its peak -- one of the very few times I actually needed to setup a swap file (I only have 6GB of RAM). The resulting (8bit) compressed tiff file is 560MB.roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1242766395573036699.post-68916615261928248052010-11-28T23:22:00.002+01:002010-11-28T23:23:22.901+01:00On panoramic mounts and entropyStill going strong in the DIY photography category (even though there has been some delay). This time it's a panoramic tripod mount!<br />
<br />
With current software it's extremely easy to make a panoramic picture out of a set of overlapping photo's. (I use the excellent free and open source tool <a href="http://hugin.sourceforge.net/">hugin</a>.) There are, however, some things you should be aware of. Of course, the pictures should be taken from the same spot. The logical thing to do is to use a tripod. This gives good results for distant landscapes, but if you include near objects in the scene, you will encounter some problems stitching togenther the panorama. This is due to parallax and can be resolved by using (building!) a panoramic tripod mount like this:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi12xoSNyZkwBuU0l93UZbvyoXBS16uzsLYWmY_hiNC5-ysNjaCaATkK3zfbBXgz7Z6wLJjhOFVyY0omSUAX7caMPIMbC3eDRXUYrvEpL5rPpelniZlYEh3p_9x_A_imGwWUf0c9FWjKEs/s1600/_MG_7913.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi12xoSNyZkwBuU0l93UZbvyoXBS16uzsLYWmY_hiNC5-ysNjaCaATkK3zfbBXgz7Z6wLJjhOFVyY0omSUAX7caMPIMbC3eDRXUYrvEpL5rPpelniZlYEh3p_9x_A_imGwWUf0c9FWjKEs/s320/_MG_7913.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br />
(If you find the shadow on the above photo a bit weird, it's because I shot it with my <a href="http://roaldfre.blogspot.com/2010/10/yet-another-diy-ringflash.html">ringflash</a>, no particular reason)<br />
<br />
Instructions and lots more after the jump!<br />
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Below is a crop of an atypical panorama shot (indoors, close proximity) that shows the effects of parallax at the bottom. The distant wall is stitched nicely, but the trays at the bottom are crooked. Note that the overlap between subsequent pictures was very high (around 2/3rd of the width), nonetheless there still is a lot of misalignment.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii4UCi7VEehX9aeME1UQ398kF25Obr0UQO-qoRQcgBNuNgeG2RTrCVr4w4vlGaM4WagOimReXpUfUkFJAPCLFgpfK3nOscju3dfWR0HpAqt-PxsrUMQ_oSlj921fKMOvBsHbaXpDDQmyo/s1600/crooked.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii4UCi7VEehX9aeME1UQ398kF25Obr0UQO-qoRQcgBNuNgeG2RTrCVr4w4vlGaM4WagOimReXpUfUkFJAPCLFgpfK3nOscju3dfWR0HpAqt-PxsrUMQ_oSlj921fKMOvBsHbaXpDDQmyo/s320/crooked.jpg" width="157" /></a></div><br />
(and yes, that plastic container is part of my ringflash from the previous post)<br />
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The solution is to make sure you pivot the camera around the <i>no-parallax point</i> or <i>nodal point</i>. This where your lens's <i>entrance pupil</i> is, a sort of virtual aperture. It is situated somewhere 'inside' your lens and can easily be found experimentally as sketched below:<br />
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You basically look at a near and distant object through the viewfinder while you rotate the camera. If you rotate around the nodal point, you will notice a complete lack of parallax (this is good!). On my kitlens, the pivot is about 1cm from the end of the lens when it is at a focal length of 18mm (the nodal point is focal length dependant).<br />
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Now that we've found the no-parallax point, let's make a tripod mount that enables us to easily pivot around it!<br />
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The strobe I talked about in my previous posts came with a 'bar' to mount it on the camera. This will do perfectly for the panoramic mount:<br />
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That bar will hold the camera, which gets screwed on with the left screw in the picture. The bar will get rotated so the side that now holds the strobe sticks out in front, underneath the lens. The screw on the right to mount the strobe to the bar will get connected to a bracket that mounts to the tripod's quick release plate. This screw controls the up/down tilt of the camera.<br />
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All the pieces, with the 'bar' from the strobe and the bracket connected to the quick release plate:<br />
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I have to mount my camera pretty far back, so there is quite a bit of torsion. Therefore I added some rubber to the bracket to give the arm some extra traction. <br />
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The bar mounted on the bracket, acting as an arm to mount the camera on:<br />
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The camera is mounted with the lens facing left, so the nodal point of the lens is right above the pivot of the arm. The length of the bottom piece of the bracket is such that the lens is centered above the tripod. When the panoramic head is mounted vertically on the tripod (see first picture of blogpost), the regular left/right panning of the orgiginal tripod head underneath pivots the camera nicely around its no-parallax point.<br />
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I haven't found a nice landscape to try this mount on, but I did find another subject. It's related to this blog's title ('Highly Entropic') and I decided it could use a <a href="http://roaldfre.blogspot.com/2010/11/highly-entropic.html">seperate post</a>.<br />
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The panoramic shot you see there was made with this mount. It shows that the mount does exactly what it should do, even in a pathological environment for a panoramic shot (lots of objects that are very near: a nightmare for parallax).<br />
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Some afterthoughts: I had already feared it, and it turned out to be true; the aluminium bracket I made is a bit floppy (I did not have thicker aluminium laying around). This means I had to shoot with the self-timer and mirror lock-up. Luckily I built a <a href="http://roaldfre.blogspot.com/2010/09/remote-shutter-trigger-for-round-price.html">self release cable</a> to avoid having to physically touch the camera. These measures proved to be adequate to minimize motion blur. It does mean that making the shots takes quite a bit of time.roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1242766395573036699.post-66309640891559046162010-11-26T21:46:00.001+01:002010-11-26T21:47:57.912+01:00On using the mandoline when really really hungryDON'T DO IT! <br />
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I did, however. Picture below sums it up. <br />
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Warning: slightly graphic images after the jump (involving a small slice of flesh that once belonged to my thumb)<br />
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So I came back from class yesterday evening, feeling hungry. I started preparing dinner (fried potatoes and jerusalem artichoke -- that stuff is good!) only to find the cooker to be dead (electricity down on that circuit). Great. Some pondering ensued. The oven still seemed to work, so I sprinkled some oil on the food and shoved it in the oven. I'll deal with the stove later, I thought.<br />
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Five minutes later, boom. The light goes down, the oven dies, no more electricity. Everything dead this itme. Food still raw, awesome.<br />
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Turns out that only our hall was affected. Called the guy responsible, waited half an hour (getting real hungry now) just to see him open up the circuit board and flip some fuses (took 10 seconds, but we cannot access the fuses ourself, neat).<br />
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Ok, so I'm <i>really</i> hungry now, and I remember I still have some cheese left in the frige. That'll be awesome on those oven-roasted potatoes and jerusalem artichokes!<br />
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I reach for the grater and start start grating away. Takes too long. Brilliant idea: use the mandoline! That'll definitly be quicker! Bear in mind that this was a block of old, hard cheese, so I knew I needed to use quite a bit of force. First stroke. Gripping cheese firmly in fist. Cheese somehow skips over knife. Thumb somehow <i>doesn't</i> skip over knife.<br />
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... CRAP ...<br />
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I look at the side of my thumb, it now has a flat piece that used to be round. Blood immediately started flowing through a small bloodvessel that was clearly cut. I look at the mandoline to see what happened there. Instead of a nice slice of cheese, I find a disturbing slice of thumb:<br />
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Here is a close up of the piece. You can clearly see two dots in the center. That's the bloodvessel that was cut, causing the excessive blood leakage.<br />
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Also note that in all pictures, the piece started to curl up a bit. The pictures were taken about an hour or so after the incident happened and the thin edges of the flesh were starting to dry out and contract, making it curl up.<br />
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Lastly, an impression of what I saw after cutting it, with a blood stained towel in the background:<br />
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Maybe I'll post some pictures of the thumb itself later on. I <i>really</i> hope it will heal up nicely...<br />
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Valuable lesson learned: don't use a mandoline on hard cheese when starved. Ever.roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1242766395573036699.post-31028258743641945022010-10-19T00:23:00.005+02:002010-10-19T00:36:09.114+02:00Yet another DIY ringflashSorry for the long delay between posts -- college has been eating my time. In my post about <a href="http://roaldfre.blogspot.com/2010/09/dont-throw-away-that-old-flash-yet.html">re-using an old strobe</a> (which got referenced on lifehacker -- cool!) I told you I was working on a (macro) ring flash. It's been finished for about a week now, but I didn't have much time to try it out in the field. I thought I'd just go ahead and post the build process already.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Self shot in mirror with DIY ringflash</td></tr>
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One of the things about macrophotography is that you either have to shoot wide open (and have a depth of field of about 1 micron or so) or stopped down to get some decent DOF (but have ridiculous shutter speeds making everything a blur). The solution: put a strobe on it! Given that you are so close to your subject, it's hard to properly light it. A ringflash is a good choice and at the tiny distance it is used from the subject, it has the effect of a large softbox creating even lighting.<br />
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Now, I already salvaged an old strobe for free, surely enough this can be transformed into a ringflash! A quick search on the interwebs show lots of DIY ringflash designs. Some use two reflecting bowls, other shoot through a diffuser, and a particulary nice design used a pizza box and some styrofoam. I was going for a diffuser approach because I knew I had just the right thing laying around:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bucket: before and after</td></tr>
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On the right you see the ring of my ringflash. On the left is an original bucket the ring was made from. It originally contained food (the stuff they smear on sandwiches) and you can probably find similar buckets in you local sandwich shop. A small rant of decadence here: these buckets are really high quality, with a thick and sturdy wall and bottom. It sickens me that they are produced only to be used once to hold (for a small amound of) food and then dumped in the garbage <i>en masse</i>. Seriously, the decadence!<br />
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Anyway, here is an inside view of the actual ring:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inside of buckets</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The inside, covered with shiny aluminium foil.</td></tr>
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As you can see, it contains a tube in which to insert the lens. This tube is made from a Pringles can. It's pretty sturdy and has exactly the right diameter to fit the 18-55mm kitlens and my 55-250mm tele! The side of the ring also contains a "window" for the strobe head. The sides of the bucket and the side of the Pringles can are covered in aluminium foil to reflect as much light as possible. The bottom of the bucket is left untouched, this is where the (diffused) light will come through.<br />
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Test shot with the lid off:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDqMkr0Xw3Wdn33-HdYdZ2Y9HrWXQRlC2UxucFoyR-wfYauSrtud_YcHs55J8RHWdkNw_i1SY9YUlsB49i1dgOvaRGo73PT-r0_dmogfpusI-iWLXH7wdnWV4MqSMejzNXs7jNdybiwHM/s1600/_MG_7996.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDqMkr0Xw3Wdn33-HdYdZ2Y9HrWXQRlC2UxucFoyR-wfYauSrtud_YcHs55J8RHWdkNw_i1SY9YUlsB49i1dgOvaRGo73PT-r0_dmogfpusI-iWLXH7wdnWV4MqSMejzNXs7jNdybiwHM/s320/_MG_7996.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
</a>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reflection of the light. Front of ringflash is laying down, bottom up.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
You can see the lid of the bucket next to it, also covered in aluminium foil. Below you can see the effect of this lid on the distribution and intensity of the light produced by the flash. Both images were made with the same settings (and some epic shutter drag).<br />
<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWehHJl27siYmGbYdONG6TtE3ReNWBUcaK70d0ojply8r1-ODCFFblO9yAVvFj3JFYVcWj_SUCy0T8mlreeOMt0R5KzEoxXcJnr7NqwFzg4wMWgQBdKWXDmfCuEZnDI99IJb18e0fu9Ws/s1600/_MG_7998.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWehHJl27siYmGbYdONG6TtE3ReNWBUcaK70d0ojply8r1-ODCFFblO9yAVvFj3JFYVcWj_SUCy0T8mlreeOMt0R5KzEoxXcJnr7NqwFzg4wMWgQBdKWXDmfCuEZnDI99IJb18e0fu9Ws/s320/_MG_7998.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
</a>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Without lid on the back</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj04sb9qJXcIwXvDNlFNUG5lsumRBrIA4VCa7Ki2FM9NnPWxKeMv8wMksRZd_nx3GLlE4hFripIWw2TshA2T9GnF6TyiJYRB1bCBLsMDY9OETEqgZrbBDipbO1dAH6Ad6Et7oTABlWc3VU/s1600/_MG_8000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj04sb9qJXcIwXvDNlFNUG5lsumRBrIA4VCa7Ki2FM9NnPWxKeMv8wMksRZd_nx3GLlE4hFripIWw2TshA2T9GnF6TyiJYRB1bCBLsMDY9OETEqgZrbBDipbO1dAH6Ad6Et7oTABlWc3VU/s320/_MG_8000.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
</a>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With lid</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
As you can see, the lid really makes a difference. Small note: my flash only has a wide angle setting. If you have a strobe that can be adjusted from wide to tele, you'd probably want to use the wide setting to get as much light as possible "around" the ring.<br />
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Now it was only a matter of mounting the ring to the flash and the camera. A bit of aluminium plating bent into a bracket did the trick.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Fj0tagqP7f3VL2ESO8dpgO_e75hRUZ9MR_mB-AADYkqbTMaQ5sRrp8k7oJPHbVpuDhZpNkmp_O2gRS93N0xiixK7OC3Wr02iw_BQYaqsdr4JXblzDufCfkDKsZFoV5-WzewzwqsvzNc/s1600/_MG_7950.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Fj0tagqP7f3VL2ESO8dpgO_e75hRUZ9MR_mB-AADYkqbTMaQ5sRrp8k7oJPHbVpuDhZpNkmp_O2gRS93N0xiixK7OC3Wr02iw_BQYaqsdr4JXblzDufCfkDKsZFoV5-WzewzwqsvzNc/s320/_MG_7950.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
</a>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Flash mounted on bracket</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
The camera attaches to the end of this bracket, with the lens facing down in the tube of the ringflash. This puts the flashhead directly in side the window.<br />
<br />
In hindsight: I should also have attached the bracket to the lid of the ring itself, instead of simply connecting the camera and strobe and letting the ring "rest" on the lens. It's something I can still do later.<br />
<br />
One last thing worth mentioning when I tried to use a screw to attach the camera to the bracket: I live in Belgium, Europe. In here we have the (sensible) metric system. I only have bolts with a metric speed, and it turns out that a camera tripod mound uses imperial-based bolts. I could, however get a metric bolt in for about three quarters of a turn. It's not the safest thing to do (twist it to hard and you break the wire of the bolt/nut, don't fasten it hard enough and your flash falls off). It works for now, but I should probably find some imperial bolts if I continue using this setup.<br />
<br />
In summary, complete "system":<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE6O-pD0djAhA8oPJxVsy8URRaIBpnYA-P62SJpd6GRbdtrZo2UJR5HX72Lxtpx19_SidnvUxtmuUUcvpWvcpnMMQ_77jM-c6pJOCkTRGaCKEjp4oPLhKWM7JYuwFUezEawnd1Vw9veMg/s1600/_MG_7944.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE6O-pD0djAhA8oPJxVsy8URRaIBpnYA-P62SJpd6GRbdtrZo2UJR5HX72Lxtpx19_SidnvUxtmuUUcvpWvcpnMMQ_77jM-c6pJOCkTRGaCKEjp4oPLhKWM7JYuwFUezEawnd1Vw9veMg/s320/_MG_7944.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
</a>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">All the pieces spread out</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
I haven't found the time to make some decent macro shots with the ringflash. And given that (judging by the weather) it's rapidly turning into winter, I'm afraid I won't have much time left to try and surprise some tiny critters with my ringflash.<br />
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I could, however, test the flash by using it for that other, typical, technique: to shoot a portrait:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm0Mw7L_tckWD_E8ACFlA9KPx0WLuJtdS5a6BIlbBgBVBv83b4zTwo-h2A6FykLqvyXiaM3fzH-cC9LeyBh_NtYpwuKZuwH0_WGLKana4ER-aNekicVQg191_ImV3PDFuaSAJQQtQboDU/s1600/_MG_7980.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm0Mw7L_tckWD_E8ACFlA9KPx0WLuJtdS5a6BIlbBgBVBv83b4zTwo-h2A6FykLqvyXiaM3fzH-cC9LeyBh_NtYpwuKZuwH0_WGLKana4ER-aNekicVQg191_ImV3PDFuaSAJQQtQboDU/s320/_MG_7980.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="213" /></td></tr>
</a>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">First victim I could find: my mom</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
You can clearly see the circular catchlight in her eyes, and the (diffuse!) shadow that follows the contours of her head in the wall behind her.<br />
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Given the small diameter of the ring, I had to get pretty close with a short focal length or else the catchlights would have been too tiny to see (it's a macro ring, after all). This small subject distance also adds to the diffuseness of the shadow on the background.<br />
<br />
To conclude, I've enhanced my $0 strobe to a $0 ringflash. It was fun doing so, and I hope it'll be lots of fun to hunt some bugs with it, and blind the crap out of them!roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1242766395573036699.post-33257705619524952212010-10-04T00:22:00.001+02:002010-10-05T17:58:00.256+02:00Downside of shooting RAW: the thirst for diskspace -- Linux RAID adventuresWith my photo directory easily breaking the 100GB limit after about a month of shooting, I needed some more space. Given that disk space is pretty cheap these days, I went for two 1TB drives in software RAID1 (I don't have the discipline to make decent back-ups, hence the RAID). It turns out to be pretty easy to set up a software RAID on Linux -- if you read the documentation properly (I didn't).<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Long story short (I had to rebuild the array(s) about 4 times): if you want to boot from the array and/or want the kernel to auto-assemble it for you at boot-time, give the --metadata=0.90 flag to mdadm when creating the array.<br />
<br />
Note: I know that automatically assembling the array at boot time isn't the smartest thing to do. The kernel <i>may</i> get confused when adding a drive that was part of another array and try to add that to the existing array, or vice versa. Data will get lost either way. I hope I'll remember this when in such a situation as I am too lazy to use a proper initrd/initramfs to assemble the array at boot.<br />
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The final layout is a 1GB boot RAID1 array on sda1 and sdb1 (first and fastest blocks of the disks) and the rest of the hard disk (900-sometingGB) RAID1 on sda2 and sdb2 as root.<br />
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When I run out of space again, the plan is to get another 1TB disk and (losslessly) convert to RAID5 to double the storage capacity to 2TB.<br />
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The fun part about the current RAID1 is not only that it's redundant against (a single) hard drive failure, but also that the kernel will do some read balancing. When issuing multiple reads, it can distribute them over the two drives.<br />
<br />
I should do some proper benchmarking, but I don't have access to my desktop atm. However, it seems as though the reading speed of a single reading job is somewhat slower than reading speed of a single drive. Issuing multiple jobs seems to help.<br />
I'd also guess that, in case of multiple reads, the access delay should decrease, as the work can be distributed over two disks. Still need to test next week-end.roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1242766395573036699.post-59301551391800118792010-09-24T21:23:00.004+02:002010-10-09T23:22:09.393+02:00End of red wine pulp fermentation and bottling of rhubarb wineTwo days ago, the red wine had been pulp fermenting for a full week. It became time to strain off the liquid from the pulp. At the same time we bottled the rhubarb wine that had been clearing for a few months, now.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjspzLXNs1IuBWSdi5M3lFq8CR9Ei_90D74uGs77Gv6nzxOZWe3ZxsqZGKdAP6RosMGvpKB6riArZ2RQ03fLotvJXwngwmVdCKFiC4DXpcQUy8uzDU8Tc_59_N3Lr3Md1ydEEo7TuG0RO8/s1600/_MG_6639.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjspzLXNs1IuBWSdi5M3lFq8CR9Ei_90D74uGs77Gv6nzxOZWe3ZxsqZGKdAP6RosMGvpKB6riArZ2RQ03fLotvJXwngwmVdCKFiC4DXpcQUy8uzDU8Tc_59_N3Lr3Md1ydEEo7TuG0RO8/s320/_MG_6639.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Red wine after one week of pulp fermentation.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<br />
We'll start off with the red wine. One of the local wine makers brought along this:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoxpou2CtElTZCdL-LDdW-9iKwa8JNd9gFqOHGgwJyq7qllpSn4gjLW3UE7DI-RvK1hbjm028ic38CDZ3qf5i_w_uBHJjPkiirYgheb294PvAAvcQs4ze1PrL2L3rqoKK_UmlBCfDwBRQ/s1600/_MG_6644.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoxpou2CtElTZCdL-LDdW-9iKwa8JNd9gFqOHGgwJyq7qllpSn4gjLW3UE7DI-RvK1hbjm028ic38CDZ3qf5i_w_uBHJjPkiirYgheb294PvAAvcQs4ze1PrL2L3rqoKK_UmlBCfDwBRQ/s320/_MG_6644.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="232" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Weapon of choice -- an old clothesdryer.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
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It's an old clothes dryer! The mixture of pulp and liquid goes in the cloth, one small bucket at a time.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTRWEInOtpTPGciB6zMFrzfmA9F1BNHhFPBAjew2wEh93rb2KAssSx1sBP4NCHzgNNvUOgFVTe4D4oer8Ks_sOehkASgm3FYYAfYEmJo76SPlYt_j7UEECGAz3XNJ71ibdvVNsTLYmAnc/s1600/_MG_6647.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTRWEInOtpTPGciB6zMFrzfmA9F1BNHhFPBAjew2wEh93rb2KAssSx1sBP4NCHzgNNvUOgFVTe4D4oer8Ks_sOehkASgm3FYYAfYEmJo76SPlYt_j7UEECGAz3XNJ71ibdvVNsTLYmAnc/s320/_MG_6647.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Feeding it.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<br />
The lid closes and the pulp gets whizzed dry. The cloth makes it easy to remove the pulp after it has been drained.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEngx8ZipFtxZRsPhEkXtPjHlxW5UUtElKmtirODHNDkqfE-N9r6dnWZWz0NekNGCVb06XvRQ3W2FHUIShv-r_-hyB0y2q7WW85sk1CdfaP5tH_39Xl-TDPbbAzi1vedux2tuviAJOTr8/s1600/_MG_6662.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEngx8ZipFtxZRsPhEkXtPjHlxW5UUtElKmtirODHNDkqfE-N9r6dnWZWz0NekNGCVb06XvRQ3W2FHUIShv-r_-hyB0y2q7WW85sk1CdfaP5tH_39Xl-TDPbbAzi1vedux2tuviAJOTr8/s320/_MG_6662.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Let it flow.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<br />
We got a total of 9 liters of wine from the pulp. Sugar was added to reach the required alcohol level. The juice only had roughly half of the required sugar, with a density of 1055 g/l. The wine has continued fermenting for two days now. I'm really excited about how this first red wine will turn out!<br />
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Now, on to the rhubarb wine. First some backstory. I started making wine three years ago as part of a school assignment ('do something interesting for the chemistry course') together with a friend (fellow student). Given that we didn't have grapes back then, we used what we could find: rhubarb.<br />
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The wine we made then was pretty awefull. It was made with rhubarb harvested in late September, which had lots of oxalic acid (you should harvest before mid July). Even after diluting it with water it still had a very acidic taste (somehow we also ended up with more acid in the final product then was calculated and measured before -- the hell?).<br />
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When bottled, there was some improvement as the oxalic acid settled down at the bottom. This also made the wine much more clear (we had to rush it for the assignment and didn't have enough time to let it clear on its own). There is, however, a thick 'sediment' of white slimy oxalic acid in the bottom of every bottle now. Real nasty to drink, and it will screw up you kidneys too.<br />
<br />
Anyway, we would not let that same mistake happen again with our second rhubarb wine -- so we thought.<br />
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The wine had been clearing nicely and was much clearer than the previous wine when we bottled it. It also had a better aroma (after literally having smelled like crap after fermentation -- we gave it some air when siphoning and that seemed to have helped).<br />
<br />
First of, and with the help of our local wine maker, we filtered the wine.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL2YJ8LLK3vTKPhu3A2MD8D9mfxrfjjxKEw6TBHUniJ_HezIVtbWgMJdt0Tc57WSH7KaYRX0L6WjuSwZC8TpjftaJXuSKV_4EER4-vzfmIflrVwM5mDhXzGrOTeIuNj8Aiekk2_2S2OUE/s1600/_MG_6604.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL2YJ8LLK3vTKPhu3A2MD8D9mfxrfjjxKEw6TBHUniJ_HezIVtbWgMJdt0Tc57WSH7KaYRX0L6WjuSwZC8TpjftaJXuSKV_4EER4-vzfmIflrVwM5mDhXzGrOTeIuNj8Aiekk2_2S2OUE/s320/_MG_6604.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Right front to left back: the pump and filter, a receiving bucket, the carboy that contained the wine, a kettle for pasteurisation. </td></tr>
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<br />
After filtering it was pasteurized for 20 minutes at 50 degrees C and put in the bottles while still hot.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbXnzDNI35beuzBiFaNqiouVJj6wnWKVqEqEv9XSNgGvkNZ1Qim5_7PIKNesMj4KL0GgvXyBciMOFxKahItnts_PRQ5CMLU89QlWyL81hPROO8uJMMFwu51o-i8tXem2sCAEh4CSBW2h8/s1600/_MG_6746.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbXnzDNI35beuzBiFaNqiouVJj6wnWKVqEqEv9XSNgGvkNZ1Qim5_7PIKNesMj4KL0GgvXyBciMOFxKahItnts_PRQ5CMLU89QlWyL81hPROO8uJMMFwu51o-i8tXem2sCAEh4CSBW2h8/s320/_MG_6746.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="213" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bottle as it is being filled.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
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Corks were put in and the bottles were left standing upright to cool down overnight.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVX4gYIDXqTJ5bVo09QtoaERHx1dhBNZ-_YQE_PXDKJ9gmjPumzZkeQuT752U8UcbvXUmCgMSKiVbZl1Y1z8z2HvYaWakAAiv29huF6ZhdyuBOjp00XGXpjpX2Dez7Ij2n5MURlGoGKYw/s1600/_MG_6726.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVX4gYIDXqTJ5bVo09QtoaERHx1dhBNZ-_YQE_PXDKJ9gmjPumzZkeQuT752U8UcbvXUmCgMSKiVbZl1Y1z8z2HvYaWakAAiv29huF6ZhdyuBOjp00XGXpjpX2Dez7Ij2n5MURlGoGKYw/s320/_MG_6726.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="222" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bottle in foreground, machine to put in the corks in the back (forgot to make an in-focus shot of it -- d'oh)</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<br />
Yesterday, I had a taste of the final left over that couldn't fill an entire bottle anymore. There are some interesting (nasty) conclusions: The acid. It's back >_<.<br />
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The wine wasn't as clear as it was before bottling and tasted worse. I'm hoping this is only because that left over came from the bottom of the kettle (where the oxalic acid accumulates). However, I'm afraid that while moving the carboy around, the settlements at the bottom got stirred around (FUCK!).<br />
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Let's hope the other bottles aren't affected. And should they be, let's hope the acid settles down again and things clear up once more.<br />
Also, let's just hope our vines grow more rapidly so that we don't have to screw around with rhubarb any longer!roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1242766395573036699.post-74645550919277568212010-09-22T23:59:00.011+02:002010-09-23T19:15:57.785+02:00Don't throw away that old flash yet!To continue with the DIY-photography-on-a-budget theme from last post, I present you a way to use that old 2.5mm jack triggered flash you might have laying around!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigfOObfk78KQ1ZJ4HlqtV7e5iH8GgtsmId5vGwlVcMB4qmCXQBmAOFKgrcT6is_kkaBHSPvv-DJdQmovfY4IE8Mb6lcR3Tu0zSVC1w2Bkbd-mGzgoPOp_SEoNB31V2UiirsGPhPmAmRLw/s1600/_MG_6925.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigfOObfk78KQ1ZJ4HlqtV7e5iH8GgtsmId5vGwlVcMB4qmCXQBmAOFKgrcT6is_kkaBHSPvv-DJdQmovfY4IE8Mb6lcR3Tu0zSVC1w2Bkbd-mGzgoPOp_SEoNB31V2UiirsGPhPmAmRLw/s320/_MG_6925.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
I knew my parents had an old (probably cheap) external flash unit they used in combination with an old compact film camera. They triggered the flash by using its optical sensor that detects when the camera's built-in flash goes off.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh58TOkg87d5l-lAKap2fTQo-Mm1nVjda_LMk8-6HHzM1U1hqhyphenhyphenP7moKgzH3LzDWab_-VPZ-E52g6pxPxJ2WoxZd7kPxafFMsF4kAFPqsLPfqPqu08AvPmbir16IsJq7st7sAPwXIRMndc/s1600/_MG_6947.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh58TOkg87d5l-lAKap2fTQo-Mm1nVjda_LMk8-6HHzM1U1hqhyphenhyphenP7moKgzH3LzDWab_-VPZ-E52g6pxPxJ2WoxZd7kPxafFMsF4kAFPqsLPfqPqu08AvPmbir16IsJq7st7sAPwXIRMndc/s320/_MG_6947.jpg" width="232" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The old flash (triggered here via the DIY adapter).</td></tr>
</tbody></table>That ought to work on my Canon EOS 500D too, so I thought. After some pretty dark test shots, I figured something was wrong. I could see the external flash firing, but when I shot into a mirror, only the small pop-up flash was active in the photo.<br />
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Some head-scratching later, I realised that it's because of the fancy TTL flash metering system of today's cameras. Before the actual exposure, the camera pops the flash once to judge the light and then pops the flash a second time for the actual exposure, with the correct power as calculated from the first test shot.<br />
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It was this test shot that made optically triggering the external flash impossible. The second, real, pop came while the external flash was still recharging from when it went off at the test shot.<br />
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I found one work-around to continue using the optical trigger of the flash: set the camera's flash to fire at the end of the exposure (also called 'second curtain'). With a shutter time that's long enough for the external flash to recharge, the flash will be ready to pop once more, this time during the actual exposure.<br />
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This work-around is effective in some cases, but it's pretty ugly and you cannot always afford such a long exposure time for the shot (and thus also delay until the actual flash).<br />
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Luckily enough my flash can also be triggered with a 2.5mm mono jack plug. (Note: just as the with <a href="http://roaldfre.blogspot.com/2010/09/remote-shutter-trigger-for-round-price.html">remote trigger</a>, I'm actually using a 3.5mm mono jack with a 3.5mm to 2.5mm stereo adapter. It's no big deal that the adapter is stereo.) The obvious thing to do was to hook it up to my camera's hotshoe!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3qykgUtZ5RJe2_cYiC4ocPiS8Jfx2wQyqh_LJSPzZhylZ5kSmkLPi7WnyMNh6yOtCXfskOfdk41NQ8G5WjUyqlFasXb2VCQnHCkDQ8huM6v2-_0k1y5O1t56GUJQ7593ypc4YZ2Jms7Q/s1600/PIC_5368.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3qykgUtZ5RJe2_cYiC4ocPiS8Jfx2wQyqh_LJSPzZhylZ5kSmkLPi7WnyMNh6yOtCXfskOfdk41NQ8G5WjUyqlFasXb2VCQnHCkDQ8huM6v2-_0k1y5O1t56GUJQ7593ypc4YZ2Jms7Q/s320/PIC_5368.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The hotshoe of my camera, a Canon EOS 500D.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>A quick test with a multimeter showed that during an exposure, the center pin shorts to ground (the metal bracket). One note, you need to watch out with polarity. The center pin should be positive, the casing negative, otherwise stuff won't work (there's an internal blocking diode from the switching transistor).<br />
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A quick check on Google confirmed my findings. It also mentioned an important property of the Canon hotshoe: it is <b>only rated to switch 6 Volts or less!</b><br />
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Knowing that there is a lot of high-voltage action going on inside strobes, I grabbed my voltmeter to measure the voltage between the connectors of the 2.5mm jack of my flash. It turned out to be about 10V. Not a few hundreds of Volts (which same strobes <i>will</i> put out!), but still almost double than what the Canon hotshoe is rated for.<br />
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Luckily for me, the 10V I get from the strobe is pretty high impedance. In fact, just the output resistance of putting a finger between the contacts was enough to drop the voltage down by a Volt or so.<br />
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The easy solution was to wire a 100kOhm resistor over the contacts. That is high enough to not cause the flash to go off, and low enough to get the voltage down to the 6V range. I'm pretty sure the internal impedance of the camera hotshoe would have been enough by itself, but better safe than sorry.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM4O6rIYg6ZZKG8jQPF8XgbZQhbKlDpg7uMW4deEv6fLcaOx_AFspLhS_641UrLcwjyG2Pk5WhHulv7gUUsi3bUqesTpAjnAhoZ_E23nOEs8lmuxkPZZDrOgS_enM-MmOLM24ZN8eiDZg/s1600/_MG_6938.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM4O6rIYg6ZZKG8jQPF8XgbZQhbKlDpg7uMW4deEv6fLcaOx_AFspLhS_641UrLcwjyG2Pk5WhHulv7gUUsi3bUqesTpAjnAhoZ_E23nOEs8lmuxkPZZDrOgS_enM-MmOLM24ZN8eiDZg/s320/_MG_6938.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">100kOhm resistor inside a 3.5mm mono jack salvaged from an old microphone.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Note: If you find yourself having a high voltage strobe (say, 20V and up), the above trick probably won't work (you'll have to load the input so hard that the flash will think it is being triggered). You could alternatively try hooking it up via an optocoupler system to keep things safe and separated.<br />
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The only problem left for me was making a connection to the hotshoe. Some PVC plate I had laying around came to the rescue! It was just a matter of sawing and filing it down to fit the camera.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL6mlaVaUzYr7O8oI0Ooik_rPmHToDdUrX2EFej_7A8eSsI7flnX3RKEpAyPT9zTLxaQrY0dJKw7uPov6kp4UoXgUKwElfR_GuYL53S8RXASQMcoCiZcWrrJJez9KQ0OSyPfguUjUmxYk/s1600/_MG_6926.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL6mlaVaUzYr7O8oI0Ooik_rPmHToDdUrX2EFej_7A8eSsI7flnX3RKEpAyPT9zTLxaQrY0dJKw7uPov6kp4UoXgUKwElfR_GuYL53S8RXASQMcoCiZcWrrJJez9KQ0OSyPfguUjUmxYk/s320/_MG_6926.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Top view of hotshoe connector. The upper left corner is the front side.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Making the connection to the center pin was tricky. I was thinking about some spring system (possibly salvaged from an old ballpoint pen) that slides over and then makes contact. But I thought screw it (no bad pun intended) and just drilled a hole, jammed in two nuts and use a screw to make the connection to the center pin. The positive connection to the jack connector (in my case the tip) was soldered to the top nut, as can be seen in the photo above.<br />
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To unmount the connector, simply release the screw by hand and slide off. To attach the connector, slide on and fasten screw by hand. It does the job.<br />
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The only thing left is making the connection to ground, the metal bracket. This one was more easy. Simply drill a hole, put the shielding wire of the chord through, make a small 'gutter' in the plastic and glue the wire in place. When the glue has set, sand of the top of the wires to expose the bare copper on the extruding points.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLF077irTGkUCSy_QQlbYGHgKH9LzHtl9NippKVc9efu3KldnA2jPuLc9nq1c_PYup9ZnZCdDjdnsS86KgD3qsCToDnJxzvXzKrpUz4o8t3MqEMnMKOaLRVJczC_tBK_vqR6MG-e1Je1k/s1600/_MG_6932.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLF077irTGkUCSy_QQlbYGHgKH9LzHtl9NippKVc9efu3KldnA2jPuLc9nq1c_PYup9ZnZCdDjdnsS86KgD3qsCToDnJxzvXzKrpUz4o8t3MqEMnMKOaLRVJczC_tBK_vqR6MG-e1Je1k/s320/_MG_6932.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bottom view of hotshoe connector. On top: the wire that makes contact with the metal bracket. In the center: the nut and screw that touch the center pin.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>That's it! Now it's just a matter of sliding it on and trying it out!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6dWvbXOoR2srLTW9DSunWNQmJRls_J1o7ZUfsB2zAci9J7AK3XOBgiCDAl2fHd_wncNSFEe8XV6rng9Mz4ELFWDIFFIqugIncN0EAoJxB-k1xOS7gIcEiminM14tjzNHNtbFiO03f8Vo/s1600/PIC_5370.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6dWvbXOoR2srLTW9DSunWNQmJRls_J1o7ZUfsB2zAci9J7AK3XOBgiCDAl2fHd_wncNSFEe8XV6rng9Mz4ELFWDIFFIqugIncN0EAoJxB-k1xOS7gIcEiminM14tjzNHNtbFiO03f8Vo/s320/PIC_5370.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sliding on the connector.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnT2rR4oke-zYv9a-0-iydche-7Pq_4N0kWXc2pY3nBqXBvoo5SNxfCgm8HThZGSWEe6Nifkq88bwdAfMjXNGbhP8JqshciMKSIG8GCFoWB50NLF6o_tYrswa6YjtW4eXbrT9aiT8suqg/s1600/PIC_5376.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnT2rR4oke-zYv9a-0-iydche-7Pq_4N0kWXc2pY3nBqXBvoo5SNxfCgm8HThZGSWEe6Nifkq88bwdAfMjXNGbhP8JqshciMKSIG8GCFoWB50NLF6o_tYrswa6YjtW4eXbrT9aiT8suqg/s320/PIC_5376.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The connector attached and the screw fastened.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Below is a test shot in a mirror. I rolled up the wire a bit. I might shorten the wire in the future so that it's just right when mounted on my camera. I can still use a good old 3.5mm jack extension chord when I need to cover some distance. <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7KUodaaGFRyrszKILwBNMd6H-LofhqjXNPo4QX6O9NpM0M9s2UNd5swJRVn7LmY0Gb-EuJMkBGIbHWW0tm5BbPj52JUgGk8u9LvFI1XHka_bY9yhO3mkSOkoOVrSa8JpPjn-09qvTfZg/s1600/_MG_6959.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7KUodaaGFRyrszKILwBNMd6H-LofhqjXNPo4QX6O9NpM0M9s2UNd5swJRVn7LmY0Gb-EuJMkBGIbHWW0tm5BbPj52JUgGk8u9LvFI1XHka_bY9yhO3mkSOkoOVrSa8JpPjn-09qvTfZg/s320/_MG_6959.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Test shot in mirror with old flash mounted to camera.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz-2yYnCFuOjFUE9cY3IZMUbRjB-DvOL1yl2Dh_J8UtbFPrSHJxHyJE_JNHH5yBTGbRCjuswtAbwvOFOr-7DzmLhVe0fUl0ONkxn2DVKkn6NeSHwCJdCswidiiOjy7uiBNipyA0GvU4v4/s1600/_MG_6959.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>I've already used the old flash with this adapter a few times and it does the job for me :-). Here are some examples when I was playing around with 'freezing' water drops:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKWuGlubr64Vy-wrhxUIF-j9ZJWzuiBcal0hFGCUNX8FP4KbB8-WJ7ckHj0zNdhzZEKHMrixjw83HwWpp-LmNSjCDnkjEtjf5C3IOvkULAz2EZgqbmre7TGIKTuzQtPK2jzWQ0Cc8rb-c/s320/_MG_3831.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkwBS5LQRcwTZ6EWeC_dqxYB4cVzGpU2I9evlULgb2loEYnUryev7znWjJRhOp79C8yyXSUfr7Fr57wkY72PsLJdjm367zXNSSSx5Knz-7hLQTftQ0gdQvHiyjf7i49LB7a9Jmpm9HgHI/s320/_MG_3837.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKWuGlubr64Vy-wrhxUIF-j9ZJWzuiBcal0hFGCUNX8FP4KbB8-WJ7ckHj0zNdhzZEKHMrixjw83HwWpp-LmNSjCDnkjEtjf5C3IOvkULAz2EZgqbmre7TGIKTuzQtPK2jzWQ0Cc8rb-c/s1600/_MG_3831.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkwBS5LQRcwTZ6EWeC_dqxYB4cVzGpU2I9evlULgb2loEYnUryev7znWjJRhOp79C8yyXSUfr7Fr57wkY72PsLJdjm367zXNSSSx5Knz-7hLQTftQ0gdQvHiyjf7i49LB7a9Jmpm9HgHI/s1600/_MG_3837.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>Full resolution available <a href="http://roaldfre.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d2y2r5y">here</a> and <a href="http://roaldfre.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d2y2r1k">here</a>.<br />
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To conclude: I put an old an unused flash to good use for basically no money at all. There are no fancy automatic TTL goodies and I have no strobe light meter, but who cares when you shoot digital?<br />
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To close I give you a small look-ahead: I'm working on a ring flash for macro work that will use this old strobe and connector. I'll post it here when it's finished.roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1242766395573036699.post-28667631937666098802010-09-20T12:42:00.004+02:002011-01-19T16:53:08.139+01:00Remote shutter trigger for the round price of $0*<span style="font-size: x-small;">*if you have stuff laying around</span><br />
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Whilst searching for remote camera triggers, I came across <a href="http://martybugs.net/photography/remote.cgi">this link</a>. Of course, I had to try this out myself. I salvaged some old parts from junk I had laying around and made my own version. It's not the most aesthetically pleasing, but it does the job and it does it well. It features a (DIY) two-modes focus/shutter button and a shutter toggle button for long bulb exposures.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSuhFpX_one4_nJw4wmkAmJECJYk3Wt_5MMw-hnmPGJhbHdL5kTfgHE-t_ZQNKFFyMwb5bcJNcbJNO0ZSNhmwTcozVJc69jE26ERiX5z59vHGC1nIRQnxUslvUjDGiqfmcHOWcGEVXNDc/s1600/_MG_6552.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSuhFpX_one4_nJw4wmkAmJECJYk3Wt_5MMw-hnmPGJhbHdL5kTfgHE-t_ZQNKFFyMwb5bcJNcbJNO0ZSNhmwTcozVJc69jE26ERiX5z59vHGC1nIRQnxUslvUjDGiqfmcHOWcGEVXNDc/s320/_MG_6552.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The remote trigger</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<a name='more'></a>
Now on to the technical stuff. My camera can be triggered using a standard 2.5mm stereo jack plug. In the photo above you can see that I used a 3.5mm jack (much more common, I did not have a 2.5mm laying around) and a 3.5mm to 2.5mm adapter (which I already had from hacking around with my TI-84+ calculator). Added benefit: I can use a cheap 3.5mm jack extension chord.<br />
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The pin-out for the connector is easy: the tip controls the shutter, the middle sleeve activates the autofocus and the base is ground. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRmI90FUjQy5cJ_LaSGT-aLdvGJ8-1BeVb3STHN0xA6GcV4xvBdFpmeEX-pZ9KuapuEMzp5fRyfBhVNLh-Ost-kjEVIsku-wjgatf2GCHUzs_asifghlhIakrAtNL8P3VsopRW14x4Ceo/s1600/_MG_6557.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRmI90FUjQy5cJ_LaSGT-aLdvGJ8-1BeVb3STHN0xA6GcV4xvBdFpmeEX-pZ9KuapuEMzp5fRyfBhVNLh-Ost-kjEVIsku-wjgatf2GCHUzs_asifghlhIakrAtNL8P3VsopRW14x4Ceo/s320/_MG_6557.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another, closer view. Double action switch on the left. Shutter toggle switch on the right.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The tricky part was making the double action button for focus/shutter. I used two micro switches, one on top of the other. The top one is mounted so it can 'swing' freely. It's the 'handle' of the focus/shutter button, with a piece of plexiglass attached on the side to give it a comfortable width. The bottom switch is glued in position.<br />
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The double action works as follows. The top switch is more 'stiff' than the bottom one. When pivoting the top switch, the bottom one clicks first (=focus) and only when pressing further down does the top one click (=shutter). The picture below should make this clear.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJbzBbsBHdgkbT8-VpF78N_AIRGXb1vF5HR0ALD6Y8EBBkCkeyPlz1ClR7wfsFgDrXKipxSKTVXQ0LrPSVrEpxXMI9LyajTiNx4gJy2vbSYKyo8mYQBFZcyJE6ZfbIDlak8hyphenhypheniHneVz_E/s1600/cat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJbzBbsBHdgkbT8-VpF78N_AIRGXb1vF5HR0ALD6Y8EBBkCkeyPlz1ClR7wfsFgDrXKipxSKTVXQ0LrPSVrEpxXMI9LyajTiNx4gJy2vbSYKyo8mYQBFZcyJE6ZfbIDlak8hyphenhypheniHneVz_E/s320/cat.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Double switch for focus/shutter. Top: unpressed. Middle: focus (lower switch) active. Bottom: (focus and) shutter active (both switches pressed).</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Overall I now have a handy remote trigger which has cost me nothing at all!roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1242766395573036699.post-18709626557197410632010-09-18T12:14:00.000+02:002010-09-18T12:14:25.260+02:00Started first red wineOk, so I'm into amateur winemaking. So far I've made two rhubarb wines (the first of which was <i>aweful</i>, the second one turned out much better and is about ready to be bottled). <br />
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Once I started those rhubarb wines, I also planted a couple of vines to do the real stuff. This year came the first (small) harvest of those plants.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSgu-WZG2CRsTqjBykRa5_uWXVeT2fLAKf-hsMzslhp6nHfheSGBzvzcnyfSazdFq5pK93JyUy55Iwq2Wopxpv20_jYjEz2eIooXyYi8yi4kse383G-k0fWZiLoIVAW2-jriQJFCdFvdw/s1600/IMG_0523.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSgu-WZG2CRsTqjBykRa5_uWXVeT2fLAKf-hsMzslhp6nHfheSGBzvzcnyfSazdFq5pK93JyUy55Iwq2Wopxpv20_jYjEz2eIooXyYi8yi4kse383G-k0fWZiLoIVAW2-jriQJFCdFvdw/s320/IMG_0523.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The grapes about a month ago, not fully ripe yet</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Last Wednesday I harvested the grapes and prepared to crush them. Luckily (or sadly?) enough I didn't need stomp them with my feet, for someone at the local wine making (and tasting) club came to the rescue with this gem:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI_Doq7iCA9oKdiBTXimAqpSzx1iuZh8CEMh_CX_xpw2n8fu1b2xVhwp4Aw7F79shJKXpgWoagr7bv1ayQc-Bd7mYmGrHkYjJI5-BmK4bngb5MANJSm26lSow-NGQVPfVic2rySH1Rs3w/s320/_MG_5883.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">First harvest, ready to be crushed</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Note the many small green grapes. Those are grapes that weren't fertilized (common among local winemakers this year, it started raining at the wrong time). Hopefully they won't affect the end-product too much.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs5gPSYclGS5GTIzhwJsDv_II3PtUKPx9d8LUJ4GvR9NxbzEayBXxRGTIaSa5S80aHAEhjPjHWq9guocvLj2H9BZ-C7u4XDAuQLDitTN1_tx9em4iV0O2ZU-T37oQZ5ccqPeGR5znALXY/s1600/_MG_5888.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs5gPSYclGS5GTIzhwJsDv_II3PtUKPx9d8LUJ4GvR9NxbzEayBXxRGTIaSa5S80aHAEhjPjHWq9guocvLj2H9BZ-C7u4XDAuQLDitTN1_tx9em4iV0O2ZU-T37oQZ5ccqPeGR5znALXY/s320/_MG_5888.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Whizzing the grapes through the machine</td></tr>
</tbody></table>The juice had a nice acidity but only slightly more than half of the required sugar. Corrections will be made after the pulp fermentation. That fermentation has been going on for a few days now (started with a Port yeast).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-xL4lNyk6qZusqMqjJR7xtKg81mx8m0wufxDl5mt9DBaWkUxGU8NhyphenhyphenOi3ei4YxAluPR2XjNu-xVXgXgJRYk83g2n0If0CnMVYvAvK7FTQm2MBOfKEFkkYBdoAMs_DkkRHoyk-C62gfUI/s320/_MG_6082.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pulp fermentation</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-xL4lNyk6qZusqMqjJR7xtKg81mx8m0wufxDl5mt9DBaWkUxGU8NhyphenhyphenOi3ei4YxAluPR2XjNu-xVXgXgJRYk83g2n0If0CnMVYvAvK7FTQm2MBOfKEFkkYBdoAMs_DkkRHoyk-C62gfUI/s1600/_MG_6082.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>I'm exited to see (taste) how my first red wine turns out!roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1242766395573036699.post-34815536734484389652010-09-16T16:17:00.001+02:002010-09-16T16:21:14.682+02:00Size mattersMy adapter to mount my old Helios 44-2 (M42 mount) in reverse in front of my Canon 55-250mm came in the mail today. Perfect opportunity to fill the current voidness of this blog.<br />
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Shipment took 12 days, but heh, the ring was only $4.79 with free worldwide shipping, so I'm not complaining! (got it from <a href="http://dinodirect.com/">dinodirect</a>).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0fNZlgokYgHIrot7_uAMGrTGh862NXXxNEHWCowXeZRgM4ZuD8KRkHXpJekBObaMt0Rr7O4oLreNTzDPWZBfIEYwwKNeKgCibfB6Nf9_jruleHz7olpF49c6xXDlF6ihfAX_ica2xusk/s320/_MG_5933.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the old Helios, the adapter ring and the 55-250mm</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3j6VUIt_RA6KuyArwjkwac941U66O2sbtVh7GfZJwIVud_JqG5tXpJRG3RQM6VUEXeVe_8pT0OJbWCiFQmOket9HJClypq5Nyzp8HwANzZ8zOa9HjJa-JwibWdKHzbjjWw_RHbHZuPOU/s320/_MG_5926.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the entire thing mounted</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3j6VUIt_RA6KuyArwjkwac941U66O2sbtVh7GfZJwIVud_JqG5tXpJRG3RQM6VUEXeVe_8pT0OJbWCiFQmOket9HJClypq5Nyzp8HwANzZ8zOa9HjJa-JwibWdKHzbjjWw_RHbHZuPOU/s1600/_MG_5926.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><br />
Fully extended, it's about 10 inches -- now if <i>that</i> won't impress the ladies, I don't know <i>what</i> will.<br />
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I do worry a bit about the weight of the (all-metal) Helios in front of the (pretty much all-plastic) Canon 55-250mm. It's a relatively cheap telelens, but -- being on a student's budget -- I still don't feel like ruining it.<br />
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As far as pictures go: I haven't had the opportunity to try the setup out 'in the field'. The damn wind won't go down.roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1242766395573036699.post-16489551458299907922010-09-16T13:31:00.000+02:002010-09-16T13:31:09.586+02:00Maiden PostSo yeah, I started a blag...<br />
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It's still pretty empty in here at the moment. Let's make this post to give the google spiders something to parse. Just to give this first post at least <i>some</i> content, I present you:<br />
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<b>The roadmap:</b><br />
I'm planning to blog about some of my interests and hobbies that are hopefully interesting enough for other people to read, or even to motivate them to do something similar. Also I'm just showing off the incredibly awesome and interesting person I truly am <i>*cough*</i>.<br />
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So, let's see how this goes along in the future.roaldfrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06482073511186599981noreply@blogger.com0