Steve's TumbleLog

You Can't Really Get Smarter by Zapping Your Head With Electricity, Can You?

Sat, 04 May 2013 01:03:00 -0500

You Can't Really Get Smarter by Zapping Your Head With Electricity, Can You?:

Interesting article about tDCS. It’s a fairly sterile description - follow some of the links to articles written by journalists who submitted to the treatment.

Scientists have rediscovered a centuries-old procedure for supercharging your brain. Depending on how its used, it could improve anything from focus to motor control to mathematical or even moral reasoning. Its simple. Its relatively cheap. The known side effects are minimal. And its so easy that you can do it…

circuits.io

Sat, 04 May 2013 00:54:57 -0500

circuits.io:

Alpha (untested) tDCS (trans-cranial direct current stimulation) circuit built on circuits.io. Great site for ee types.

Should deliver switchable 1ma/2ma current.

Yes, I’m going to shock my brain. Of course, 1-2ma is nothing and unlikely to cause any problems at all, but I’m going to be extra careful anyway.

Savaged my fingers with a kitchen mandolin.

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:31:16 -0500

Savaged my fingers with a kitchen mandolin.

Got a Raspberry Pi and have been playing with the I/O. This was...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 10:30:50 -0500

Got a Raspberry Pi and have been playing with the I/O. This was the second “project”, using python and four GPIO pins to sequence a series of LEDs. Beginner stuff, absolutely, but cool nonetheless. Subsequently got it to output text to a 16x4 LCD display.

With shairport, a USB WiFi device, and a USB audio device, I got the RPi to catch Airplay audio from my iPhone and iPad. I think I’m going to turn it into a boom box with Airplay.

Last year’s hydrangea still hangin in there. (Taken with...

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 18:21:28 -0500

Last year’s hydrangea still hangin in there. (Taken with instagram)

I’m really digging instagram. I mean, I’ve got a DSLR, and most of the past images...

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:39:00 -0500

I’m really digging instagram. I mean, I’ve got a DSLR, and most of the past images I’ve posted on this site were shot with thousands of dollars worth of equipment - and there’s still a place for that. OTOH, it’s been said that the best camera is the one you have with you, and I always have my iPhone with me.

Filters and faux polaroids can be seen as derivative and trite, I suppose, but in the end, I really love the way the images *look*, and that’s what photography is about, for me. The final result trumps all prior analyses.

I certainly don’t wanna be one of those people who confuse technique with art. You will (hopefully) never hear me say “It can’t be art, it wasn’t done with the right equipment or technique.” And if you do, feel free to kick me in the shins.

Frozen blueberries! (Taken with instagram)

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:02:38 -0500

Frozen blueberries! (Taken with instagram)

Springy out today

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 14:08:29 -0500

Springy out today

I love ferns at this stage. (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 12:16:44 -0500

I love ferns at this stage. (Taken with instagram)

Chalk! (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 12:09:57 -0500

Chalk! (Taken with instagram)

Waitin on the trains (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:25:16 -0500

Waitin on the trains (Taken with instagram)

Long Time Away

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:52:06 -0500

Been a month since I posted here. I’ve been taking pictures - I can’t help doing it - I just haven’t gotten anything squared away for my blog. Work and Real Life have been keeping me from it. I’ll be back soon, though…

Black and White?

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 00:44:47 -0500

I’ve always felt a little self-conscious converting color images to black-and-white ones, both in film and digital. Back in the day, it was usually pretty easy to spot the conversions, and we all sneered at them. They didn’t have the feel, the texture, the caché, the honesty of “real” black-and-white. Of course, this was largely an artifact of the difficulty of translating a color negative image to black and white paper and getting contrast that mattered. If you wanted “real” black-and-white, you shot Tri-X, or HP5+, or something. Maybe even type 55.

Then along came the digital revolution. There’s no monochrome sensor; they’re all color. You want black and white, you’d better not be hung up over converting it. Of course, the digital revolution also brought along the ability to change contrast with a slider; to increase or decrease exposure, lift shadows, dodge, burn, sharpen, blur, etc… all the various abuses a digital photographer can subject the images to. You can adjust the saturation of the color image that produces the black and white one; you can filter out blue, red, green, orange… whatever you want.

But I was still somewhat iffy about it. Most digital conversions I’d seen were very… plastic. Smooth. Lacking in texture. Glassy and tasteless. I cut my teeth on Plus-X and Tri-X, and dammit, I wanted to see STRUCTURE in that gray. Texture. Feel.

Then I discovered Nik Silver Efex. This isn’t an advertisement; it’s just me talking about a tool I found that accomplishes something.

The feel of Tri-X, complete with sliders. Someone spent a lot of time looking at the characteristics of film negatives, and worked very hard replicating them. I’m still reticent to convert wholesale, but I find images I have to see in B&W, to see if they still look… interesting. Black and white is easier in some ways - it’s surreal, as we never see the world that way, but everything in the image is immediately recognizable. But it’s harder in others - you can’t use colors for interest. Just tones, and the objects in the image, and their relationship to one another.

You can now approximate this with Lightroom using filters and the grain slider. Not quite the same, but still very good, and not glassy or plastic. Crisp edges, subtle textures, long tonal ranges. Blacks that are black, whites that are white.

Yes, I know all these images contain flowers. It’s not a theme; that’s just the way it broke out. But I’m over it. I can live with it. Conversion is no longer for poseurs.

Sometimes You Get Lucky

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 01:10:53 -0500

I’ve always loved shooting pictures of insects, spiders, close up things that we can’t see with the unaided eye. Revealing details that are hidden by the sheer diminutive size of the subjects. I’ve got close-up lenses, macro lenses, extension tubes, you name it. I chase bugs with a virtual arsenal of optics and accoutrements.

When you pursue images this way, you frequently get nothing usable. The depth-of-field is measured in millimeters, working distance in centimeters, and the slightest breeze can make shooting an image frustrating beyond all belief. Take this lady for example -

She was about 1/4” from toe-tip-to-toe-tip. She’d spun a web between a couple of the fronds on our shrubbery (no Monty Python comments). There was only the slightest breeze, but I shot fifteen or twenty images to get *this one image*. Notice that the very top of her abdomen is blurry? That’s because she’s thicker than the depth of field at this magnification (around 1:2).

Or a couple of days ago - I slipped out the back door at lunch time and went looking for this bug that I’d seen on the wife’s Hydrangeas a few days before. Bright orange abdomen, shiny black legs and body. Moved very, very slowly, but also very shy. Found one after about ten minutes of hunting:

Tried to coax him out from under the leaf, with little luck. Took twenty or so images to get this one with the ‘face’ intact. Turns out it was an assassin bug nymph, just as I’d suspected. Twenty shots to get one that seemed worthwhile. Look at that fang!

Some shots are easy, though. You point your camera at ‘em, and voila, you get an image you like:

This flower is maybe 1/4” across. I’m not sure what it goes to, but I thought it looked pretty cool all protruding from the green. It was standing in the middle of our yard.

Then, sometimes, you just get lucky. I’m selling off a bunch of lenses I don’t use, and one of them is an old Tamron 80-210 f4 that’s never been a stellar performer; just ok, and I’ve got much better glass now, so it goes on the chopping block. Anyway, I was testing it - stuck it on the K-5 and took it out in the back yard to make sure it worked before I sold it to some unsuspecting eekbay shopper - and while I’m shooting random items designed to illustrate the lens’ performance, I got lucky. Normally, I’d have my D-Xenon Macro lens, but this time, the butterfly appeared and posed for me, and all I had was a crappy old zoom:

Like I said… Sometimes, you get lucky. :D

Tale of a Cheap Lens

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 22:41:44 -0500

So I read on a forum about the Russian Helios lenses and how they were copies of Zeiss designs - the 44 being a copy of the Zeiss Biotar. Being a recovering Zeiss junkie, I had to try it out… like optical methadone. Plus, in 35mm film, my favorite lens was the venerable 85mm f1.8; this 58mm f2 would be almost exactly 86mm on the APS-c “Crop Sensor” with 1.5 crop factor.

The Helios 44M is an m42 - Pentax screw mount - lens, which means it needs an adapter. After various adjustments and finickiness, I finally got it adapted properly.

This was one of the first images I got from it. Crisp, interesting bokeh… I like it. Then:

Another crisp, exceptionally sharp image. Its Zeiss heritage definitely shows. The coatings are vintage, so it’s prone to flare, but sharp, sharp… And interesting:

And the cost? $27.00, delivered. Sometimes you don’t get what you pay for. :D

Finished my day of shredding millions of life forms with high-speed machinery - including tool-using...

Sun, 22 May 2011 07:36:51 -0500

Finished my day of shredding millions of life forms with high-speed machinery - including tool-using species of hymenoptera. Muahahahaha….

Macro n Stuff

Thu, 19 May 2011 10:35:50 -0500

Been a while since I posted here - but I’ve been taking some pictures. I learned about a diffuser for on-camera flash that works really well for macro work. Here’s an image lit with it:

I also got a 49mm reversing ring that lets me connect two lenses face-to-face. This results in a repeatable, calculable magnification ratio of L1/L2; so if I put my 100mm lens on my camera, and reverse my 50mm lens on it, the final reproduction ratio is 2:1 - that is, the image *on the sensor* will be twice as large as the item is in real life.

This is what it looks like when I get really close to 3:1 by reversing my 35mm on my 100mm:

High-magnification macro is really tough; much harder than 1:1 and less with a dedicated macro lens. These images are essentially full frame, so can print up to 10x16 at 300 dpi for ridiculously detailed images.

I always wanted to be Helmut Newton when I grew up…

Sun, 01 May 2011 19:35:10 -0500

I always wanted to be Helmut Newton when I grew up…

K-5 + Bigma; More Backyard Birds

Sat, 30 Apr 2011 00:53:13 -0500

I have this problem. I’m looking for a great lens at crappy lens weights. I picked up a deal on a Tamron 70-300 ($69 on ebay) and took it out in the backyard. Result? Pure crap. It keeps back-focusing by ~4”, and it’s not very doggone sharp at 300mm. Now, to put this in perspective, here’s an image from it:

Many people would say that’s pretty decent. But now compare it to a really sharp lens:

You can probably clearly see the difference, even at this magnification. Now here’s the crazy part. The first lens cost $69. The second one I bought way back in the late 80’s, used, at employee discount for $180, and the last one I saw on ebay sold for $799. Why do I keep expecting to find a light, cheap lens that produces the same images as a big, heavy, expensive one?

Well, anyway. I spent some time this afternoon - or maybe morning; I walked around in the backyard for half an hour shooting pix of Birds with Bigma (the Sigma 50-500 zoom). Here’s the results.

The dove has these beautiful golden feathers on its neck. Love the pink feet.

The Bluejays are much more skittish than I remember!

These two are always together - or within fifty feet of one another. She chits and follows him around for a while, then he calls and calls and chases her. They bring each other little bits of sticks and string - I presume for nest building. I just think they’re gorgeous.

Life is too short to watch Jay Leno. And that band… Did he lose a bet with Jimmy Fallon?

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 07:50:26 -0500

Life is too short to watch Jay Leno. And that band… Did he lose a bet with Jimmy Fallon?