GSQD

I’m nearing the end of the Northern 45 6 track EP.

This thing is gonna rock and rock hard. Everyone needs a copy of this CD – including my mum!

Is there anybody there?

Waits for echo!!!!

I should be back in writing, picture, music and life mode again soon.

So this is the start of yet another thread/category on the GSQD blog.
This stream of deviations will be known as “Shorts” – plain and simple.

It’ll be a series of small (not short!) stories, poems, observations and narrations on just about anything!
Some may carry supporting illustration and/or media, others may have no support whatsoever and yet others could offer supporting roles to those who have gone before.

I make no apology or advance retraction of what is to come.

Read, think, decide and add commentary as you see fit.

Cheers.
GM

Kassie’s photo suggestion/idea was “Spiral”

So I got to thinking about spirals.  The Oxford English Dictionary summarises it thus:

“winding in a continuous curve around a central point or axis”

So I started to look for spiral type things that might be interesting. I wasn’t looking for a spiral in specific terms but something that could suggest one possible take on that definition.

I found and shot this.

**Click pic for a bigger version**

Does anyone know what it is?

OK, I’m off to work on another blog.

Don’t forget to drop suggestions in the box.

Cheers,

GM

The trials and tribulations of built-in camera flash.

The problems:

Direct.
Harsh.
Often overpowering.
Cold, often inaccurate color results indoors.

I’ll post some bad examples when I can find some but I imagine most people reading this are very aware of these issues.

There are basically four ways to overcome this set of issues with differing levels of success:

1. Don’t use flash. In which case you need high ISO setting in low light conditions which often leads to increased digital noise.
2. Get the flash off the camera and away from the lens. If the flash is integral this is impossible.
3. Buy an external flash unit and bracket and use it instead of the built in flash. Expensive and cumbersome for a compact camera user.
4. Find a way to diffuse/soften the light from the built in flash and work with its own flash exposure compensation – if you have it.

So in the case of someone using almost any modern P&S/compact style camera you’re really trapped into 1 or 4 above.

If your camera has very good high ISO performance, or you’re also a wizz with post processing noise away, number 1 will work in many situations and give you very natural (as you remember it) results.
However, often light levels are way too dim even for low noise models with fast lenses and we’re often forced to pop-up or turn on the flash.

I got to really thinking about this when I got my Panasonic LX-3 recently and found it’s built in flash to have almost all the negatives of built in flash. I tried my Canon flash guns on it (as it has a full hot shoe) but even the smallest (430) was bigger than the camera and looked/felt ridiculous. I think you’ll agree:

***click all pics for larger views***

This brings us to number four.

So I started working on ideas to use the built in flash with a little more creativity.

This is what I came up with:

Here’s a shot of the diffuser on it’s own:

It took me about 15 minutes to make and here’s what it does to the little built in flash result. Left is no diffusion and right is with the diffuser:

Note the softening and general lack of impact in the shadows. I think that’s a huge change for a throw away piece of plastic!

Here’s what a similar thing looks like on my wife’s Canon SD800is. This is the left over piece from the LX3 diffuser. As you can see a smaller diameter plastic top would work better and I’m going to find another fixing method for this camera – stay tuned.

It may look a bit daft but here’s the results on the SD800is. Again, the non diffuse shot is on the left – as if I needed to tell you!

I think you’ll agree that in the case of both cameras the shadows are less harsh because they’re less dense and softer edged. It lends the shots a much more natural and pleasing look. This would be an ideal solution for any indoor situation where you don’t want to wind the ISO right up into the “noise zone” but you want to get some keeper shots for the album while avoiding the “rabbit in car headlamps” look . It would also work very well for anyone shooting lots of stuff for Ebay/online auction use where you want to work in the evening indoors. Normally if you can do your shots in shaded daylight you’ll almost always get the best results but when you can’t this might just help a little.

Another example from the LX3+diffuser:

Note the shadow cast by the Epson paper box is so much softer in the diffused shot on the right. Also note that there is no loss of contrast or color saturation. I’ve used expensive diffusers by well known companies that don’t work this well at short distances. I have many more examples if anyone would like to see them.

So how was it made?

This particular one was custom made for my LX-3 which has a pop-up flash and can take a wrap around diffuser. It’s made from a translucent deodorant spray top – or something similar. The things to look for are:

1. Must be diffuse enough to not be able to see detail through while allowing most light through.
2. No visible color cast to the material itself.
3. Must be sized to ONLY cover the flash unit. Avoid interfering with the lens operation or optical viewfinder usage.
4. Must be easily carried and attached/removed or it’s useless as you won’t take it with you!
5. Should be cheap and easy to make – as chances are it won’t last forever.

For anyone with an LX-3 – and I know who you are!! – here’s the dimensions you’ll need.

34mm to cover the flash unit from edge to edge.
12mm gap cut from open end to solid end/top to enable it to be slid onto the flash.
40mm diameter (approx) to allow for plenty of diffusion and to ‘bounce’ light off in all directions for a more natural look.

The other (for the SD800is) diffuser is made from the discarded remains of the LX-3 project. It just happens to fit nicely over the SD800 flash but is not ideal. Ideally what is needed is a top with a smaller diameter – maybe around 25mm – which could then be made to slide onto the left side of the SD800 and fit more like the LX-3 version.

Well I hope someone found this useful if not “enlightening” (groan!) in some way.

Be back with more “stuff” another day.

Cheers all.

GM

PS. Please remember to drop occasional suggestions for the “suggestion” blog.

OK folks.
As always seems to be the way with me, I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.

I thought I’ll get my daily suggestions and then spend an hour or so putting together an idea that it presents to me, doing a quick shot and blogging it.

Not a chance!!!

So I wandered down the list of brilliant ideas from day one.  As this is primarily a blog aimed at photography, imagery and the camera’s “sight line” on the world, I wanted day one to be something I could describe in some technical way or other. So I read, re read and studied the huge range of ideas put forward. I finally settled on “Depth”, a word proposed by Dusty (RustyJack).

So I got to thinking how best to describe depth with a camera. I thought about all things aquatic – nope, camera would drown! I thought about depth of feeling – nope, camera just wouldn’t understand! I thought about depth  if all the chickens in the world were gathered together and asked to make a “chicken” pyramid – nope ain’t got any chickens and no one would lend me any!!

So I stopped trying to be all arty and decided to get all scientific on your arses (yes, that’s how we spell it in the UK).

In essence what we have here is a quick explanation and few images regarding the relationship between aperture ¹  (size of lens iris opening measured in f stop steps) , distance from the front or primary lens element to the subject  ² and focal length ³ The only other variable is point of focus. ⁴

First of all the setup:

Above what we have is basically a white paper bucket, an Oxford English (of course!) dictionary and a graphics task lamp. Pretty simple setup to the eye but it took over 4 hours to get this setup right.
I wanted it to appear that the camera was looking into a white room with hanging ball arrangement suspended down the center – kinda like a cheap ass (US spelling!) modern art thing.
For the balls! I used Bug’s new Newton’s Cradle – cheers Bug. The dictionary was the floor and normal printer paper made up the walls and ceiling. The front element of the camera lens was 12mm (yes 12 millimeters!) from the nearest ball. I could never had done this with my fancy Canon D-SLR cameras. The small sensor and wide angle lens gives the Panasonic LX-3 a  macroscopic view on the world that’s almost unreal.

Now if you just pointed your camera at this setup in auto and pressed the big button you’d get this. This is the camera’s widest aperture (f2 = biggest iris opening) and it allows very little of the subject to be in focus at that extremely short distance.

To get maximum focus depth from the same lens you’d have to “stop down” to a much smaller aperture to allow greater depth of field or front to back focus. On the LX-3 the maximum aperture is f8. Here’s what you’d get if you simply wound the iris down to f8 manually and pressed the big button again.

Better but no Cadbury’s choccy bar.

So we have to employ some trickery using focus shifting, multiple shots and our old friend Photoshop to blend the results.

This shot is made up from 5 different shots. Each ball had it’s own focus point and the camera was set to f4 to allow for at least some focus overlap between the shots. The 5 pics were then blended together in Photoshop CS4 so that only the sharpest parts of each image were used – seamlessly.

I think you’ll agree that this really achieves front to back  DEPTH and is an amazing viewpoint for a camera that’s only 12mm from it’s subject. Also keep in mind that the LX-3  costs less than $500!

So there you have it. A giant lens looking into a artificial room at a set of HUGE  hanging chrome balls.
You can click on each of the images to bring up much bigger versions to study. In all this took about 4 hours to go from idea/concept to finished pics.

If anyone would like more info on how this was done – if you’re not already bored – drop me a line and I’ll explain more.

Also for anyone wanting to know exactly what their own camera can do at different apertures and focal lengths/distances, have a look here: DOFMaster

Go play with macro and learn a little about the foreshortening aspects of lens, aperture and distance – it’s fun . . . .  if you’re geeky enough!

If anyone wants to drop a suggestion for the next “let’s take a whole day of GM’s time” please feel free to do so below.

Cheers all.

GM

Hello everyone,

This is the start of the “suggestive image” blog.

This is how I hope it works:

Everyday I’m going to ask for a word, thought, thing, idea, act or emotion. From the resulting list I’ll pick one and  figure out what it means to me. Then work out what I consider to be a graphical or visual representation of it. I’ll go shoot it and  post the image here along with a description of why it was chosen, what lead me to that particular image  from the suggestion, how the shot was done, what (if any) PP work was carried out and finally ask for another set of suggestions for the next day.

I want this to be fast and furious. I’ve been a pro photographer for 25 years now and I want a challenge that will inspire me to think, design, shoot and describe in a very honest and “dirty” way. I’m going to try to use minimal gear (often just my Panasonic LX-3) and more wits than tricks. I’ll do my best to leave the 1D’s and xxD cameras in the bags – if I can bring myself to!!!

I’ve never really been much for street photography or journalistic themes so it could be an interesting project – at least for me!

So if I sent you a direct link to this article please use the “leave a comment” button below to make your initial suggestions and I’ll get straight on it.

Remember:

Word:Thought:Thing:Idea:Act:Emotion

Oh, and spread the word!

Thanks.

GSQD

OK. Proof once and for all that not all Blogs are created by normal human beans!
This man is a professional. Please don’t try this at home as you don’t have enough arms and your brain will fart until it expires!

“ThatBaldGuy” above is one scary dude indeed. He started with a half ass idea which we had and a fifth of a template. From those humble, medieval beginnings came the wonderment you now see before you.
If ever there was concrete evidence that clever people are really clever this is it!

He can be located on this very planet, on Wednesdays and Thursday mornings, right here.

Go see him, read his outpourings on our species and it’s relics and drop him a line to say how how dashed clever he is.

Mr C, you da man!

GSQD

To the left is the start of the reinvention of GSQD.

Watch this site for all things GSQD. We’ll be covering music, photography, media and the arts – and maybe a few other things!

Can’t promise everything will be interesting to everyone but we hope some people will get something informative or useful from some of the postings and articles to come.

Watch us, enjoy what’s to come and please contact us or leave messages as we go.

GSQD