It is amazing what you can do with a little vision, even if you are pretty tied by budgetary constraints. Nate Powers and his team of students pushed their budget, and skills to the edge to create a low end (though high value) dancers bullet time shots. The challenges and work frame on this project were quite different from the ones described on a previous crowdfunded bullet time shoot, so I asked Nate to share a bit about the project.
A few weeks back I wrote about what rapid prototyping is doing to the traditional photography industry (well, any industry for that matter).
So it was a nice surprise to see this printable micro 4/3 tilt shift lens project from Joe Murphy. It is based upon the popular plunger lenses from Bhautik Joshi but is more rigid and does not use a toilet accessory.
That specific lens fits the MTF system, but the tutorial explains how to make lenses for other types of mounts.
The only think lacking in this system is a good name, "Tilt-Shift Micro Four Thirds Lens Adapter" is not very catchy. I suggest "The Bender".
Below is a short tutorial on how to make this lens (or order one using its thingiverse object), and tweak it for others systems, followed by some sample shots.
One of the more interesting things to see in this era (aside a healthy big mac) is an ongoing synergy between light painting and rapid prototyping platforms like arduino and NXT Lego sets.
The Lightplot, created by Ben Cowell-Thomas, is a light painting robot that started as an NXT experiment and evolved into a huge project involving a massive robotic arm, a animation to movement software and a tiny LED.
The software is cool enough to control both the camera shutter and the robotic arm to create wonderful light painting animations. (Kinda like sticking an LED strip on a telescope mount on steroids)
Here is a quick demo of its capabilities followed by a short behind the scenes video
Today's 60 seconds video is short and sweet. We share a tip on how you can use your house keys to help you rid of annoying ambient sound when you record video at home.
For our video, we used the Zoom H1, which is an entry level decent recorder, but this tip will apply for any recorder used.
I always thought that the process of ND filter making is a pretty mechanical thing. That you would place a sheet of glass on one end of the machine, press a button and then a constant stream of ND filters would fall onto a conveyer belt.
It turns out it is not so, that the process of filter making, at least at Lee filters is almost entirely manual.
In the movie blow, Mike Browne take the grand tour at Lee Filter's factory going through the different stations from making the resin, through various inspections, coating it with dye and shipping it off. I was really surprised to see how much manual labor goes into the process.
If you've done any light painting, you must know the Orb. Usually you create an orb by rotating a string with a light at the end while doing a little spin. Round? yes! Perfect? No! What if you wanted perfect?
Hugo Baptista Took this to a whole new level by making his orbs with a drill attached to a Telescope mount. Here is his story about creating the tool. Isn't it perfect?
Getting your camera to move while doing time-lapse movies is not a trivial thing. First you need to set a path for the camera to move in (like a slider, a dolly or a skateboard), then you need to make the camera move slowly, and lastly you need to get the camera to shoot at the right intervals (using an intervalometer).
While there are plenty DIY solutions out there (especially for the slider and intervalometer parts), building a controlled time-lapse dolly is not trivial.
The Genie is a New Zealand based project set to change that. The Genie' claim to fame is to be A simple, affordable and extremely easy to use device used for motion control and image capture for Time Lapse Photography + more.
Hey guys,
Benjamin "Von Wong" Montreal Based photographer here to write a quick article on what it's like to put together a Mass Photoshoot with two week deadline.
[udi: Ben is leaving for a super awesome photography collaboration trip funded via indiegogo, if you like stuff like this, go and check it out]
First off, what is a mass photoshoot? Well I consider it a photoshoot that involves more than 10 people. In this instance, I successfully organized a massive medieval photoshoot with over 40 models, in a medieval village over one hour thirty minutes away from the city. Despite rain and a forecast of -3 degrees we still had a 90% turn-out rate. Quite amazing for a photoshoot in which nobody was paid!
The Triggertrap mobile (and Triggertrap free) do something really simple and yet really clever. They connect your iPhone to your camera amd act as remote release devices.
It's simple because cable releases are simple devices - they usually have two contacts: a focus contact and a release contact. Closing one contact will trigger the internal focus mechanism and closing the other contact will release the shutter. In fact, its so simple that you can make one from a dead mouse.
What release cables usually lack is brains. I mean they will trigger a camera when you tell them, and some o the mode advanced models even have HDR, BULB and timelapse modes, but they cant act upon external events.
Should you shoot RAW or JPG? Every photographer asks this at a certain point.
The fine guys at SLR Lounge did something I love to do. the pixel peeped the hell out of a RAW and a JPG shot under the same conditions giving an in depth analisys on how jpg and raw files behave under every day use scenarios.
The comparison takes images shot with a Canon 5D mkII and a 50mm/1.4 lens and compares various frames: both "correct" images and "badly" exposed images. looking at both the "out of camera" versions and the lightroom "fixed" versions of the files.
If you are a photographer or a computer fanatic (or a fanatic photographer) this is a very interesting read.
RAW vs JPEG (JPG) - The Visual Guide
