Bodie town - Bishop trip part 2

What: Bodie town , CA


Where: It shouldn't be even close to hard to find and get to this place. It's pretty popular. Google map search should get you there.

When/How: We got to this location about noon. Noon IS NOT a photographer friend. You'd get white burn here and there plus a sharp shadow on pretty much everything.

Here are the settings:

Exposure:	0.002 sec (1/640)
Aperture:	f/4.0
Focal Length:	11 mm
ISO Speed:	200

Exposure:	0.001 sec (1/1600)
Aperture:	f/2.8
Focal Length:	11 mm
ISO Speed:	200
Exposure Bias:	0 EV

Exposure:	0.001 sec (1/1600)
Aperture:	f/5.6
Focal Length:	11 mm
ISO Speed:	200
Exposure Bias:	0 EV

Exposure:	0.001 sec (1/400)
Aperture:	f/5.6
Focal Length:	11 mm
ISO Speed:	200
Exposure Bias:	0 EV

P.S. I've been busy w/ little things here and there. Next thing I know it's been 2 months since I posted part 1 of this Bishop trip. Time to move on...

Monolake, California - Bishop trip Part 1

What: This is Mono Lake in California.

Where: There are many many nice locations around Monolake for some nice tufa picture. This is one of them

When/How: So we left Bay area around 7:30pm on Friday night for a ~ 6hr drive. Got there around 1am and decided to sleep in the car for few hr until sunrise. BAD BAD idea. It drops as low as 30-35F early October. So while trying to get rest, I set up for a star trail shot of this clear, full of star sky.

The above was done at:
Focal: 18mm
F: f/7.1
EXP time: 1799.8sec - 30 min
ISO: 200

It was ok shot. Nothing special plus I was so tired from the road trip.

So we started out around 5:30am and walk for 10 min toward the lake. We set up and get ready. While everyone's setting up I gave the star trail another trial. This time it's much better at:
Focal: 11mm
F: f/5
EXP time: 668 sec
ISO: 200


Then we were playing around with the flash light trying to do light painting and wasted all the battery's life until sunrise and gave a beautiful purple sky color. I was able to get a good one at:
Focal: 25mm
F: f/4
EXP time: 55sec
ISO: 320
With a little post process, I was able to pull the color out of this one.


And this at
Focal: 5mm
F: f/14
EXP time: .62sec

Also from this same location, the tufa on land surrounding this little place make it looks like you are in a valley. These tufa are more or less 6ft. but from the look of wide lens lower to the ground with a fake tilt edit, it looks like we are in a valley :)

Golden Gate from SW corner

What: Yes, it's the Golden Gate again :) This time it's from South-West corner of the bridge.

When: I got there around midnight. It's a little dark for perfect dark blue sky. It'd be nice if it was dawn. Hopefully I'll get time to come back sometime soon.

Where: It's a little trail about 10 min hike from Lincoln Blvd between Battery Crossby Rd. and Kobbe Ave.

How: I used my Nikon D90 and kit lens 18-105mm. I brought with me 11-16mm Tokina but it was too wide for the bridge and take a good amount of negative space so I used 18-105mm to zoom in on the bridge.

Setting:

Aperture: f/7.1

Shutter Speed: 30

Focal: 42mm

Iso: 200

Exposure compensation +0.7

DIY Panoramic Tripod Head

UPDATE: I upgraded to D700 camera with Nikon 16-35mm thus the design of this panoramic needs update. I post pictures of the new version here
I've been in love with Panoramic ever seen I hold the camera. The camera, lens limit so much once the beautiful scenery is captured. Panoramic let viewer see the whole different level of photo. It let photographers take viewer to wherever they want in a more realistic way.

Then I found out something even better than 360 pano. It's the wee planet with 360 x 180 view. Sweet! Now you can see a completed place in one picture, one kinda weird looking picture. I did an OK job on these wee planet pics. But every now and then I got a miss match pics. Which lead me to search for a solution and that is NODAL NINJA . These guys make one hell of a tripod head for pano photography with a cost of an arm if you still have any left from buying camera gears. If not, they take either left or right foot too. (or $180-$530) for this

What the heck? So I decided to build my own :) why not ?

HOW:

Material list:

+ Aluminum 1/8" x 1.5" x 36" ($9)

+ Epoxy or any metal glue ($5) (Optional)

+ 3 x 1/4" screws and 1 nut

+ Washers (metal and rubber - I cut my old belt for rubber washer)

Tool list:

+ Precision ruler

+ Marker

+ Something to cut the aluminum with. I would have use my all time favs dremel. But I decided to go "pro" and use the real tools at work.

Cutting:

Follow these cuts in the drawing for L plate and I plate. The washers are optional. If you can find some that meet your needs then save time. Be very careful bending aluminum. A sharp tight corner will crack it faster than you can blink.

Marking and get ready to cut.

Here are the parts after cut / pre-assembly:

BOM:

+ Cut Aluminum parts

+ 3 Screws: 1 cut short, 1 long, 1 with plastic head

+ Washers: 3 small, 1 large, 3 rubber, 1 retaining washer

Assembly:

I have long screw go thru small washer, bottom L plate, small washer, then retaining washer.

Rotating joint has plastic screw go thru top L plate, plastic, large, plastic washer I plate then nut.

Camera mount has short screw, small washer, I plate then another plastic washer. This screw is a little special :). It's the long screw got cut down from 2 ends. Notice that once the swing arm go all the way down, the shot screw head can go in between 3 washers gap.

Completed assembly.

Completed assembly on tripod

With my old N65 try out.

Tada. Finished this thing a little late and haven't get time to try it out. It's a fun fast, easy project.

So I just got time to try this unit out. It's wobble a little due to the hight of L plate and the material itself. The top portion of L plate and I plate can get down from 9" to about 7" (if you are not planning on using anything other than Tokina 11-16mm). Other than that, it gives a good set of pics that stitches very well in Hugin. Here's example:

Revisit: San Francisco Pier 7

I had a post about this location before here but SF is a heaven for traveller, photographer. Places don't grow each day. You just never finish discover this city. Even the same place looks different at the revisit.

I stop by this place a little late this time. After sunset so it's hard to take good pics of the city. It's completely dark. So I got just these two

Both with D90

Using Tokina 11-16mm

Exposure: 20

Aperture: f/3.2

Focal Length: 11 mm

Exposure Bias: +1/3 EV

Using Sigma 105mm

Exposure: 10

Aperture: f/9.0

Focal Length: 105 mm

ISO: 200

Exposure Bias: +1/3 EV

Chicago's Bean

What: It's Chicago Bean in Chicago Millennium park. I've been wanting to go here ever since I came accross it Flickr. Finally had a change to drop by Chicago for a day. That's all I ever wanted :)

When: I was there on mid Aug 2009, walking around the park the day . Check out the city online before you head there. Tons and tons of things to do. I think the city really shows off her beauty by sunset. OR maybe I'm just the sunset person (or maybe I never get up early enough for sunrise to be liking it). Anyway, this shot was about 8:00 pm. It was after sunset and dark. I think it'd be nice to be there around July or so for the Lurie garden flower shots.

Here's a day picture of the bean:

Here's a night picture of the 1 of the port within walking distance from Millenneum park with a little help from PS:

Where: I was standing at the corner of the bean in order to get the bean and the whole city light. Also if you can, come to the corner of Monroe and Columbus, look toward the Pavilion at night. It's beautiful.

How: I used my Nikon D90, Tokina 11-16mm for whole view of the city, Nikkor 18-105mm sometime during the day for zoom as needed, and Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 for some night shot, and Sigma 105mm macro in Lurie garden. AND tripod!!! I had a really hard time for not bringing 1 due to its size. BRING TRIPOD BY ALL MEAN.

Here's why I brought macro lens

Palace of Fine Arts San Francisco

What: Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco

When: I was bored on Sat night so my cousins and I headed up to SF around 1am. Not that I recommend taking picture of SF at 1 am. I think sunset would be the best time for any city light pictures. That's when all the lights are on yet the sky still give enough light on buildings for a perfect picture. So these are in complete darkness.

Where: If you do a search "Palace of Fine Arts San Francisco" on google you get this location easily. If you go from Lombard st, make a right onto Lyon st. It's VERY easy to miss this turn so get your GPS with you. There are few nice location around this place. Either park along the lake or make a left to get into the parking lot and walk into the building. BTW, you be seeing some raccoon if you get there late enough.

How:

Gear: I brought all my gear with me (just in case) but ended up only use D90 (of course) and Tokina 11-16mm with a little of 18-105mm. Some serious tripod. I had with me Manfrotto 055XDB with 808CR4. This tripod set did a great job BUT when I tried to do a wide capture of the ceiling, it didn't let me go low as I wanted. If you have tripod that let you go as low as 8in or so would be better. I ended up had the camera lay on the ground on top of my jacket in order to get this one

Settings: I set as follow:

Exposure:	8
Aperture:	f/10.0
Focal Length:	11 mm
Exposure:	0.00
ISO Speed:	200
Exposure Bias:	+1/3 EV
Flash:	No Flash

With WB set to K=2600 (lowest). If you have some kind of wired or wireless remote, bring it. You'd save time from waiting for timer to go off.

I did all the shoots in RAW and Normal Large. .

Process : Didn't do much on this set. Only open raw in PS and playing with the color a bit. Also did a filter Fractalius on this 1

DIY Ring Flash for macro works

I've been busy with my summer fun lately and unable to update this blog. My free time pour into this ring flash project also (bad move).

What:

So I had my Sigma 105mm macro lens for sometime now and unable to get some good pics. I can't waste money on such good lens and not get the most out of it... So I decided to make myself a ring flash so I can get some serious macro works done. So here's the completed ring flash

Side view

Where: Most of the measurement, mock-up sample were done in my room. and the real cutting part in my back yard. Well, I have no real work bench or garage area to work with.

When: It takes some good 15-20 hr out of my life!

How: DO NOT DO IT!!!! PERIOD! check WHY below!

If you still come back to HOW after reading WHY... then here we go.

NOTE: I'll not go into much detail as these are pretty popular on google, flickr search plus I don't want anybody spend time doing this.

You'll need:

- Acrylic sheet

- Something to cut the sheet with ( I used my dremel)

- 5 min EPOXI or hot glue (works better and leave little mess)

- few nuts and bolt

- Aluminum foil or foil tape

- A plastic bowl and a plastic cup.

SAFETY GLASSES AND EAR PLUG if you are gonna use dremel. DO NOT START UNLESS YOU HAVE THESE ON!!!

Some dimensions to call out when buying:

- Diameter of the cup (Dc)should be bigger than your lens so it can fit in right.

- Bowl diameter (Db) is depended on how thick you want your ring to be. Thickness of the ring is Db-Dc. Mine is about 1.5" to 2" thick.

- Total Acrylic sheet area needed . I used 1x2 ft.

Procedure:
ALL DIMENSIONS DEPEND ON YOUR LENS, CAMERA, AND FLASH. I'LL JUST GIVE GENERAL DIRECTION.

Try to make paper model if you have time and wanna make it a perfect toy:

- Cut a hole at the bottom of the bowl enough to fit the cup. Cut out bottom cup as well.
- Cut the side of the bowl about 1-1.5 in. thick and little less than half circumference of the bowl.
- Cut Acrylic sheet to make top tube connecting to flash. Looking from the front, x depends on the width of flash head, y depends on hight of flash head, and z depend on how far you want the ring to extended to. I had my ring extended so that I have room for my hand on focus ring and that the lens can move freely inside the cup.
- The hard part is try to cut acrylic sheet for the front tube. Bottom tube should match the whole on side of bowl you cut earlier. Top should have x of the top tube. Make another sheet to create an angle ~45 for flash to bounce from top to front tube.
- Make an extended metal rod or thick sheet to support the ring going from bottom ring to bottom camera. Bolt it to the ring flash. Free the other end so when in used, you can attach it to the camera using the tripod plate with bolt
- Cover all sheet with foil tape.
- Cover inside bowl and outside cup with aluminum foil tape.
- Glue them together using hot glue gun.

Compare with paper model

Front view

Back view

Side view

- I cover the whole thing with black duck tape so no light can leak out.
- You'll need some type of diffuser for the ring. I didn't want to spend any more on this project so I cut a 2 gal plastic milk containder and use it as diffuser. Work pretty good.

Almost finish

Here are some example to compare:

Bolt with SB-600 flash

Bolt with on camera flash

Bolt with Ring flash

Bluetooth withSB-600 flash

Bluetooth with on camera flash

Bluetooth with ring flash

Why: I found cheap clean ring flash version on ebay for around $40 (keyword: ring flash d90 (or your camera) sb-600 (or your flash) ) even before I started this project. BUT my handy self said "NOOOO, I must build it myself with all the time I THINK I HAVE". After $20 plus into this project and it's only somewhat half way done, my "engineer and development dept." started looking at "financing and accounting dept" and go sh!t... Now if this mess up, I have $20+ worth of junk and another $40 to spend to get a some-what real flash ring from Mr. China. SO ... DO NOT DO IT, GET IT FROM EBAY/MR. CHINA and go out have fun w/ macro unless ...

Oh and here's another WHY you should NOT do it. While cutting the bowl I had a small plastic particle flew into my left eye, in the MIDDLE of it because I was lazy to put on the safety glasses for a tiny trim on the bowl. Second time, it went to the corner of my right eye even with the safety glasses on... hurt like hell! I had to poke my eye with a q-tip both time to get it out. Oh and neck got burn a little from the melted acrylic sheet when cutting with dremel. It melted, flew and stay on my neck, couldn't dust it off cuz I was holding the dremel or I'll cut my ear off with the dremel... so Again DO NOT DO IT. Unless you have some kind of laser cutting tool or planning to do it out of FEDex shipping boxes.

Update: I got something in my right eye again!!! Doesn't hurt as much but couldn't get it out. Had to come to work the following day to use the eyewash station. Damn the water hurt like hell!