Argos

If you’ve been reading my posts for very long, you might recall that I’ve been tinkering around with a setup for doing macro and closeup photography at home. I started out by buying a 20″ light tent, but found that the lights it came with were pretty anemic. So I augmented the tent with another purchase on eBay — a couple of light stands with “daylight” compact fluorescent bulbs.

But I thought the light output from these was lacking, too. I’d really rather not have to put my camera on a tripod and use long exposures for this photography. Hand-held would be a much more flexible way to work.

So I finally broke down and bought the brightest “daylight” compact fluorescent lights that I could find — 85 watts each. I discovered a couple of things in this process:

1) They’re not cheap, about $25 each (shipped, when purchased 4 at a time).

2) They’re friggin’ HUGE — about 4 inches in diameter, and 10 inches from tip to tail.

To put things in perspective, I took this shot comparing a 35 watt CFL bulb (that came with the light stands) to an 85 watt CFL bulb, with an old 60 watt incandescent for scale:

The 35 watt CFL supposedly puts out light equivalent to that from a 100 watt incandescent, while the 85 watt CFL is supposed to be equivalent to 300+ watts of incandescent light. Still, even with two 85 watt CFL bulbs shooting through white umbrellas, this rig is good enough for small work — but it’d never do for portraits.

Flashes are expensive, and a bit fidgety — continuous / “hot” lighting from bulbs is a lot easier for an amateur to get adjusted correctly. Still, I can see why the pros go with flash. It’s the only way to get the bright light they need in the right places.

As for me, now I’m thinking about upgrading yet again to silver umbrellas…

Popularity: 15% [?]

Technorati Tags CFL, compact fluorescent, Gear, Images, light stand, light tent, Macro, photo lighting

It’s been a while since I blogged about Paris, so here’s a nighttime picture of the city in the moonlight:

It has its share of grimy areas, but as far as I’m concerned, Paris is one of the most photogenic cities I’ve ever spent time in. For this picture, my camera was clamped to one of the railings on the second level of the Eiffel Tower. The view is roughly to the northwest.

Sadly, the tower shakes a bit as the elevators go up and down, the structure moves in the wind, etc. As a result, there’s a very slight smearing in this image — so it looks wonderful at small sizes, but not so great at full size.

Sigh…

Popularity: 34% [?]

Technorati Tags city, Eiffel Tower, France, full moon, moonlight, Night, Olympus E-510, Paris

OK, I finally figured out my pinhole photography issues (as I suspected, the hole needed to be smaller). Here’s my contribution to “Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day:”

It’s a dramatic image of my neighbor across the street washing his van. Yeah, I know, not the most stunning subject — but the 27th was my daughter’s birthday, and I was a bit pressed for time.

Popularity: 52% [?]

Technorati Tags black, gray, green, neighborhood, pinhole photography, red, van

The pup and I wandered downtown last weekend to take in a museum. It was a beautiful, sunny day, with not many people around (probably all out on their mountain bikes). So of course, this meant it was also a great opportunity for a little work with my ‘510:

I really like the fact that you can see almost the entirety of the red building reflected in its neighbor across the street — makes for a colorful shot, if I do say so myself! If you want details on where I took it, just click on the image to get to its Flickr page — I’ve been pretty good at geotagging the stuff I put on there…

Popularity: 72% [?]

Technorati Tags buildings, Colorado, Denver, downtown, glass, Olympus E-510, photo, reflection, street, Urban

Today’s photo comes courtesy of a recent business trip to New Orleans. I took quite a few pictures while I was in town, but I think some of the pictures I took on the flight home are even better than the city pictures. Here’s one of my favorites:

We were fortunate in that there was a very distinct cutoff to the top of the cloud deck on our way home. From our cruising altitude high above, the cloud deck took on the look of a nearly solid surface. Here and there, a break in the clouds (we were nearing sunset, so these were invariably dark breaks in the clouds) looked much like a bay or inlet. With a bit of luck, you could see surface features in the breaks — here, you can see a river, highlighted by reflections of the bottom of the cloud deck.

In an odd coincidence, I was feeling a bit beat down after my trip, so I sprung for the $40 upgrade (this was on United, mind you) to get an exit row seat. I wound up at the window, with the seat next to me vacant. So by virtue of my tired state I wound up with lots of elbow room for messing with my camera, swapping lenses back and forth, etc.

It was the best $40 investment I’ve made in a long time…

Popularity: 87% [?]

Technorati Tags airborne, blue, clouds, flight, Images, Nature, Olympus E-510, river, travel, Twilight, weather, white