The Walnut…

Here i am with another post, and I was going to take another break for a moment, then I realized that I should talk about the walnut high-speed experiment. I'm typing this just days before my birthday (and it will be posted after my birthday), so Happy Birthday to Me!
Anyway, this might be rather a short post actually, as I gathered the shots in a video which I will be posting below. Unfortunately, i didn't manage to take a shot of the settings, but maybe a drawing would do?

Before I heed, I'd like to announce that most of the images from this experiment are available already on my Canstockphoto. They were rejected mostly from other stocks I deal with (maybe accepting 1 or 2 only) but the majority (if not all) are available on Canstockphoto.

The Walnut

Well, first let me post the schematics or chart, or plan, whatever you like to call it, and sorry for the lousy drawing here; I'm not the best artist out there you know…

The working area: (1) Silver small car shade, (2) 430EXII with globe diffuser, (3) The working area, (4) A group of speedlites; 2x 580EXII and 1x 430EXII, (5) Camera with controlling 580EXII speedlite.

Impact's oval diffuser
which was fitted
on 430EXII

Worth noting that the shooting here was done with Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro lens. Also, the car shade (1) was placed there in the beginning to reflect off the light coming from the speedlites at (4) but I realized it's not enough. The speedlites at (4) in the drawing are placed on the table but in reality they were beside the working table on stands. Anyway, since the reflection was weak, I've decided to place (2), a 430EXII speedlite with globe or oval diffuser on top, and I've made several test shots to gauge the power of the speedlite here; All work was done in HSS mode (or high-speed mode) of course.

Canon EF 100mm
f/2.8 USM Macro

The lens in use here was just about right for the perspective that I was aiming for. However, working with this lens in particular in LiveView mode is quite challenging for the change in the exposure in each test shot despite the fact that the powers of the speedlites were not changed. Finally, I've fitted a blocker on the eyepiece and it seemed to work fine but still some shots were off (probably this time related to the power of the flashes this time). Not sure why, but this problem doesn't happen often with other lenses when I work with them in LiveView; only this lens!

Initially, I started with f/16 for the aperture, but eventually raised it to f/22 (maximum for this lens). Strangely though, there was some apparent shallow depth (out of focus areas and sharp in-focus areas) in some shots despite this high f-number! It seems to me now that high-speed and macro are a No-No combination. All in all, there was of course a tweak in ISO and other things, and even the shutter speed was eventually raised to the maximum; 8000⁻¹s

Cokin's special
effect filter

Also, related to the lens in use, I've decided to place a special effect filter which I purchased from a friend (actually they belonged to his brother). These Cokin filters are apparently old and I don't have the needed adapter to fit them on the lens, but still I could hold them in front of the lens with the help of some paper clips. Before this time, I've never used these special effect filters in a shooting except for testing. You'll notice the flare in the image of the filter on the left here, and I made it that way intentionally to the show the texture of the surface, as they won't show in direct shot upfront. The filter added some touch to the images but not quite dramatic as I hoped actually.

 

The Sinking Walnut

Now coming to the actual experiment and work with the walnut shells. The main idea was to capture the impact of a water droplet on the water surface or just above the walnut shell. However, this proved to be challenging. First of all, I don't have the proper Gate gear to trigger the speedlites or the camera for that moment of impact, so I had to do all the work manually as usual, relying merely on my senses and coordination between eyes and fingers on the shutter release (using the cable remote here).
Another hurdle was the shells themselves, as I thought  they would sustain some water, and they did for some time, but eventually, started to sink, as it can be seen in The Sinking Walnut which was a test shot but I kept it just for that sparkle in the droplet (thanks to Cokin's filter here!). Apparently the walnut shells are porous naturally. Trying to keep some luster and reflection off water, I've exchanged the bowl of water with some can, put it upside down, and rely on the shallow edge to keep some water. I've also placed play clay (or whatever they call it) to stabilize the shells which proved a bit annoying in the editing phase later on, but it was a must.

Anyway, I will keep it short here and let the video do the talk. You can click the button to view it on a larger size. The whole process ended up with about 220 shots (mostly test shots of course and failed attempts) and sieved down to about 34 shots and finally, probably around 11 shots that were properly edited. Actually of the images is a composite of other shots that I deemed unusable; Not going to tell which!
I've realized during the work that I don't really have to shoot water (was using a head-less syringe for that), but at some point I've started to blow air from the syringe into the shell that had been filled with water just to make a turbulence and it worked just fine! So, a lesson to keep in mind when working in the future that the goal can be reached in more than one way, and some might sound a bit unconventional… I leave you with the video now.

In addition to these, I've created some extra pieces, just some artistic composition from one of the shots. Not sure why but I just felt like it really, but these pieces are not uploaded to the stocks like the rest. The two were saved as PNG to preserve the transparent background; So, even they are rendered as squares, but in reality they form a "X".

Vortex Pac-Man

Gluttonite

Finale

Now that I'm done with the walnut experiment post, I'm not sure what would my next post be about, but we'll see. For this reason I might even take a little vacation off from blogging until I do something significant with my camera, or maybe to put a little announcement here for some new photos uploaded to the stocks. Meanwhile, it seems that I'm already breaking with the resolution of making an Arabic post for my other blog once a month, as it is already August, and I literally don't have any idea what to post about there. About this same topic of this post? Maybe. Even though I wouldn't know how to render it up because that blog is dedicated mainly to beginners, so a lot of instructions and explanatory must be involved; Tedious, and might be overwhelming for a beginner. I've done such a post about high-speed photography before though, so this is another thing which makes me think what is the use of a new post about the same technique (almost).
Artistically speaking, I do a lot of editing for old photos but I'm not sure if i want to post them here since they don't have any specific category or theme, or belong to some project I'm working on. But I'll keep them on the side just in case…

Eagerness for traveling is back at me again even though I know that it is even harder than before with all the crazy world around me and me being the weight of Retinitis Pigmentosa. Those travels I used to do were the only reminder for me that I can survive and live alone, doing my own business, and above all, with some peace of mind. But that's something farfetched for the time being. I think no escape from facing these mood swings and coping with an environment that feels so strange to me as if I wasn't born and raised here.
Meanwhile, I've been thinking about placing some orders online, and among the things I wish to have is some soundproof panels or anything like that to give me some peace and quiet atmosphere in this house. But because of the bad postal services, I have to think it over, as ordering is not as easy as before when I used to order my camera gear all from stores in the US. Things had changed for me. For this reason, I'm planning to check if such panels are available locally here and again, I might need someone to pick me up to and from. Sounds pretty much like begging… and just to think that some people envied me for retiring early…

Checkmate…

Strange, weird times are coming through. As much as the time appears to be slow because of the idleness, yet it is kind of pacing fast simultaneously. I feel like I didn't have much time since I finished my last blog post in Arabic, and feels like it was not weeks since I took the following shots that I'm going to talk about here! And guess what? Ramadhan is here already.
I'm actually grateful that Ramadan this year comes by while we are home, supposedly, instead of having to go to work and maybe sign up for a leave during the month to take care of my hysterical sleeping habits that get confused greatly during Ramadan, every year. It's such a bless for me, really.

Marbhsháinn

Well, this is just checkmate in Irish. I've mentioned in my previous post (or posts) a glimpse about my work with the chess set. I got this set specifically for photo shoots; I'm not a chess fan! Anyway been some time since I did something with this set, and so I thought it is time to work a bit. The annoying part though, working with chess can be quite noisy and loud unlike working with the feathers! If you are going to try to do anything like what I do here I hope you don't risk bothering anyone with the noise.

Воздушная Битва (the air battle)

Just as a starter, all my plans were set ahead to make these photos in black and white. Why? Well, let's just say it gives strength to the sense of drama here and also because black and white are strongly attached to the game of chess (in my case, the pieces are made of wood, and reddish and milky in color). In these shots, I've used 6 speedlites: 5 to flash, and 1 master to trigger the rest without shooting. This leaves me with one extra speedlite, the old 420EX which I didn't use here because it is, well, cumbersome to work with. I've checked the manual for this one and seems the only way to control its parameters is to be connected directly to the camera, but I might be wrong here. I got this speedlite for cheap from a friend. Anyway, adding this last one would not add much since I have 430EXII and 580EXII on both sides of the set, and 430EXII on top; Thus things were symmetrical. Why so many speedlites? Well, it was a high-speed session!

The chess set before adding the rest of the speedlites on left and right.
The white boards on right and left are for bouncing the light from the speedlites.

Now, the first shot, Воздушная Битва or the air battle, got me into a tiny trouble, which I had to solve by merging shots instead of doing everything in a single shot as I was planning. Well, several problems in fact:

• My hand shadow from the top speedlite did cover and obstruct the shadow of the falling knight piece. Specifically the black one because I was holding the remote with my left (I'm a leftie) and dropping the pieces with my right. The problem was minor with the white knight but was a major one with the black knight.
• As you might have inferred from the first point, I could not drop the two knights together. Working with a timer is not as precise as triggering the remote with my own hand, and holding the two knights in one hand and dropping them made them so close together which is not what I wanted. I really needed them to face each other. Thus, the only solution for this was to drop each piece alone (several times to pick the best shot) and merge them later.

Luckily, I've taken a shot before I work as a reference and that one was the base upon which the knights were merged, so in total, 3 images put together, with some edit to the shadows of the knights. Well, beside the total edit for the whole shot of course. In Воздушная Битва specifically, I like the luster on the flying black knight and in fact I've toned the luminosity of the colors when I converted to black and white specifically to keep this luster on the flying knight piece.

Фантом Кони (Phantom Horses)

Over with a high-speed shot (or composition to be precise, I guess), I moved further to the Multi or the stroboscopic flash. It's funny how this type of flash was unthinkable to me when I work with my speedlites, but now it is a favorable option when I work with such experiments. Again, I tried to throw 2 knights or horses together in one hand while triggering the camera with the other hand, but the results were not fascinating, to say the least. Thus, I needed my brother's help here and voila! It was perfect from the first shot. I had though to use also another shot for the background to merge it because my brother's hands shadows from the top speedlite. I'm not sure how many strikes of flash were there but I'm guessing 5 from the number of "ghosts" in Фантом Кони, and surely the frequency was low, probably 50Hz. In fact, 5 strikes of flash when working with stroboscopic light is now my standard and my starting point. It seems to yield some reasonable results in most cases. One thing I regret though in this shot is that I didn't ask my brother to hold the horses opposing each other face to face, so as you can see they are falling here and both looking left.

Кто Стоит Последним (who stands the last)

Next in order comes a simple shot, yet hard in the same time. At this point, and in order to shoot Кто Стоит Последним, I had to change the lens. In the previous shots I've used my Sigma 12-24mm and that's out of necessity a bit because the perspective needed to be adjusted a bit because of the tripod's stance. However, with Кто Стоит Последним, I had to change the lens and use Voigtländer 20mm lens so that I can use my polarizer. The Sigma lens is 82mm in diameter and I don't have a filter that fits, and converting rings (step-down) would be problematic. Thus, it was safer to just change the lens to Voigtländer 20mm which has a diameter of 52mm. The polarizer was needed here to emphasize the reflections of the pawns or pieces on the board.
The general idea for Кто Стоит Последним here does not involve any speedlites, but simply some dark atmosphere, dark enough to give me a long exposure. Meanwhile, as the exposure is on, I would be changing the placements of the pawns and keeping the kings in the middle without touching them. I was pretending to play a game of chess (don't know much about chess anyway!), so I kept knocking some pieces down and changing the placement of some others. All of this mess of course produced some ghosts, as needed. Good thing though that I didn't knock over the kings or move the board by mistake; With my Retinitis Pigmentosa in dark places thing could go... astray. Total exposure time was around 4m30s; And I guess this is exactly the time needed to defeat me in a game of chess, if not less!

Báisteach na Ridirí

(the knights' rain)

Then I had this idea, which was kind of "crazy" a bit, but I'm sure not as much crazy as other people I've known (nor my life). The trigger for this idea was that: since I've been editing or composing and merging my previous photos (except for the one using long exposure above), then why take a step further (just a bit!) and make a rain out of knights!?
I realized from the beginning that I'm going to need a lot of work done here, and as if it wasn't hard already, I had to struggle with batteries and power resources for my speedlites as I was preparing them to shoot high-speed. A LOT of high-speed shots.

Идет Дождь Коней
(It's raining knights)

My thought for working with this "project" was to divide the work on separate sessions, with each session being dedicated to shoot a specific portion of the image:

• Shooting the 2 kings at the center of the board (and fixing the focus at that point).
• Shooting the plain board.
• Shooting the dropped white knight piece on various locations from the back to the front and sweeping left to right each time.
• Doing as with the white knight but this time with the black one.
• Doing as with the white and black knights but this time dropping them both together.

The last point here was actually eliminated later and I didn't touch it because of the crowded image that later became to be when I worked with the white and black sets separately. The plain board shot was kept as usual as a backup; I didn't really use it. All shots were done with the same light, same shutter speed, as much as possible. Because I was dropping the pieces on the board, there had been tiny movements that would be visible only on comparison but they didn't have a great impact on the merging process; Excellent!
I won't go into details here about the way I organized the files and merging them, but I'd just say I've followed a systematic way (and the file size was enormous). Not all images (more than 52 in total) were used; Some of them had to be canceled for various reasons. You might have noticed in the image above that there is a knight blocking the black king and I left it there intentionally to give depth and dimension to the image.

The white and the black sets separately when combined. Of course there is a number of them that were removed in the final image shown above. Merging them alone makes some nice shot it seems so I will try this later!

Unlike the previous high-speed shots, I've slowed down the shutter speed here to 1000^-1s, down from 8000^-1s (max for Canon EOS 7D). I was hoping to capture some motion blur for the falling pieces, which it did, but not to my desire. The view on the camera's LCD was not good enough to judge, but anyway, I continued working as it is. After finishing the merging of the white and black pieces layers, I've tried to do the same with the doublets (those shots I've made for dropping the white and the black knights together, using one hand) but the image looked crowded already and no need for more. I'm keeping this set though for some editing experiments!

The Falling
One of the "doublet" images that I decided to not include in the final image.
Using the polarizer really paid off.

I had some ideas also to do an experimental light painting on the set before I move on another idea in my work with the camera but I couldn't find a suitable method or idea to apply here, and probably I don't have proper tools to do such delicate painting for small pieces like that. Most of the time, as I've encountered so far, light painting is done on a larger scale a bit and not a delicate one like a pawn and a chessboard.

Finale

Crazy times, and I'm trying to use every minute I could to the max, with my camera. Well, maybe other things as well (gaming for example?) but I'm on the go and trying to try more and more with my camera, in hope of creating something unique still.
Meanwhile, thoughts of leaving my work and do something on my own still roll around my head, as I'm not sure how stable my current job would be still. yet, I'm grateful for the situation now, but nevertheless I cannot guarantee anything in such times. Not sure where I'm heading but I'm trying to take it one step at a time, and enjoy as much as I can. If only I can control the damn mood swings.
Being in lock-down and home quarantine might not be as a catastrophic for an introvert like me, as it would be for an extrovert. Yet, I do have my feelings towards it. In such times, my eagerness for traveling has increased ten-folds than before, even though I didn't know before this crisis whether I can travel or not and probably I wasn't ready for it, but now I really need it to just change the scenery and be away from people. As for me, I don't go out of home much already as it is in normal days so a quarantine or home-stay won't make much difference, but it s the general atmosphere and the people around that would just push your buttons up and down and screw up that peace that I've been trying to work on for quite some time. I need to travel probably to change the people, and not the scenery. It is in such times I just so wish that I have a home of my own, but in a place like this, how would this be possible at all…

Fire and Water…

Weather is cooling down! Oh my what a relief! Sunrise is getting late few minutes by each day and thus I'm leaving to work every morning while it's dark somehow, and it will be darker and darker soon. I love the atmosphere, if not for some of the stupidity on the road of course. I just hope that this winter would not pass without some outside work with the camera, again. Anyway, as a continuation

Tine Agus Uisce

If you are wondering about the meaning of the subtitle here, it just means Fire and Water and you will know why just now, After finishing my work with dice and water, I thought maybe I should do another thing before I move away my gear from the set. And it occurred to me: Why not candles? Surely we can have some action by that, right? Besides, I do have a bunch of candles left around which I bought for some other project in the past and I hate to see them collecting dust like that for nothing! So here we go…

Aqua-Sword

Aqua-Meteor

Initially, the idea was to capture the moment just before the candle's flame goes off by a blow of air. I used a compressed air canister for that. However, where is the action in that? So, right away, I've decided to change my work to include water and fire. Working with water here is a bit dangerous because it might get sprinkled around the set and all that (which it did) but small amounts of that from a syringe hurt no one, I think! And so, the game began trying to capture the right time manually. The good thing about using a syringe is the change in angles now and then, trying to get different perspectives and different action. The hard thing was, though, is getting the sprinkled water right on the flame, which caused many shots have out of focus droplets, sometimes beyond repair and not serving the image in general at all, somehow like Aqua-Meteor, but I like this one somehow.
The depth of field here ranged between f/4 to f/5.6, despite the usage of a macro lens; Canon EF 100mm Macro USM. I lowered the f-number here for two main reasons:

• Even though using 6 speedlites, I thought of lowering the power consumption to have even a shorter "flash duration" which I thought it would be better somehow to capture more precise moments. This of course requires allowing more light in by increasing the ISO or lowering the f-number, and so it was the second (while ISO was fixed at 200).
• The background contained some metallic bar which I couldn't cover, and increasing the depth of field (i.e. increasing the f-number) would cause it to be quite obvious and hard to fix later in Photoshop. In fact, it was already problematic in some shots at this f/5.6.

Der Kampf
One of the shots where
water droplets were not
stable enough even at
the speed of 8000^-1s.

All shots were taken at 1/8000 of a second for the shutter speed and this time I didn't try to gamble with the shutter speed. Yet, I think I do need more than 1/8000s to stabilize the water movement further from what I saw in the final results. I think I will do some research about available tricks to overpass this speed in high speed photography techniques. ِAnother problem was there to be dealt with which was the changing level of the candle flame itself (because of melting). So, it was a work of lowering and raising the tripod's neck (central column) and re-focusing, and forgetting to focus already for some shots. In fact, I've tried to make it a habit for me to check the focus after every shot I made in that session. Anyhow, seems I really need to work on that background in the future, in case I'm working in such set, in such place, again.



Luckily, this set of shots was accepted right away without any refusal on Canstockphoto and on Dreamstime. Probably by the time you are reading this you would be seeing some of these images in my signature frame below the post. Now, there is one more idea which I wish to do at some time but not sure when (priority goes to photo shooting more than editing) and that is to combine several of these recent shots and make new ones of various combination of fire, water and smoke. I'm sure it would be such a delicate work and probably I won't produce much images that way, but it is worth trying.

Finale

Well, on a side note, after more than a year of stopping posts on Instagram (and I mean photos, not posts related to my Ayvarith conlang on @Ayvarith), I've started to slowly post back. But this time I won't be paying attention to that stupid platform. Some people welcomed me in fact with my first post after the stop. An encouraging sign but still I didn't put much effort into that. Beside that, I've posted once a day only (so far as I'm typing this 2 photos were posted). I used post at least twice a day back when I was active there. In fact, I've even considered having a third new account to post stuff from scratch but I've forgot about this idea and decided to go back to my old account. This time though, no following, no like for like; Just nothing. I'm posting there, and whoever wants to, can give a like and leave. It would depend on my mood and my schedule as well. So, posts won't be schedules as before and I'm already planning to stop posting in some days if I have to.
In the meantime, thoughts about my life and destination is still a recurring idea in my mind. I'm not sure I do have a goal and despite about all what I hear, from all these motivational speakers, about the importance of setting a goal; I still feel that it is all nothing but rubbish. Not aiming to disregard what other people feel about themselves or the things they feel important but I'm seriously in the status of not finding any value; Specially in these societal standards and hypocrisy necessities. There is a feeling going inside when I see newspapers, TV, two people talking, something strange just tells me all that is an act. All are nothing but actors...
Just a final thought, I've made an astrological reading (paid) and one of the questions I've asked was about career or career path and what is best for me in general. I have to say that the reading in general blew me away and the lady did pin the nature of my current work without telling her anything about it. It seems I do have to focus away from the scientific field indeed. She said things will take time to find out and to get along and find the real passion in my life - well, after all the information she gave out about me (even about my delayed speech problem when I was a child), I tend to believe her in fact. Maybe then all these motivational stuff that people have the vibe with currently would make some sense to me? We'll see. For the time being, I really just want to enjoy "some" of my life; Just as she said as well.

تلاقي (Meeting)

Speed Gambling II…

I'm typing this in a very short time so I guess it will be a short post. Many things are going on and big part of that is vexing me, but some good things are happening (or happened actually by last week) when I posted my Arabic post about high speed photography in my Arabic blog.
I was not going to type anything here for this week and call it off, but I'm gathering my power (and mood) to do so. The whole week was busy and amazingly annoying with many things caused mainly by people not being able to regulate their timing and don't really know the value of time. I thought I was guilty of that myself but with this passing week, I guess I'm far way too wrong to judge myself like that. Anyway, among these tasks that I had to do, I had some time to process the last bits of my dice images which I've started 2 weeks ago, and also had the chance to filter some and even tag them (put information on these images) in order to upload them to stock websites. And there were strange events there but I will recount them later. Let's see first the Phase 2 of dice photography here.

Stroke-Stroke-Stroke

As I've posted the week before last, I was working on some high speed shooting for dice falling into water, and I've been fluctuating between the macro lens (100mm) and my trusty 50mm. However, the bulk of the work later on continued to be with 50mm since it was easier to deal with mistakes with this lens, while the macro 100mm lens needed precision (lot of it) to throw the dice exactly in place, in the viewing field of the lens.

Picasso's Dream

However, with 50mm lens, I do get the privilege of cropping the image and place the dice almost where I want in the frame. The drawback though is that the details in the water movement is not quite clear at times. Nonetheless, interesting shapes can be produced at this level. However, after some time, I thought why not speeding up the flash strokes instead of the shutter speed? In other words, what or how it would look like if I used the stroboscopic (multi) flash option? Which I did, and the results were pretty interesting here.

ارتطام (Collision)

I've started as usual with 100mm macro lens but soon I've changed to 50mm again. I realized right away that to get some nice images somehow similar to the high speed shots i can do this work alone by using regular shutter speed (far slower than the sync speed even) and simply go around that by using the stroboscopic function of the speedlite. Unless, of course, having a multiple occurrence of the object is not the aim, then the typical HSS methodology is the thing to go for, even though some shots I've made with the stroboscopic mode do look similar to HSS, as in the case of Three and Two Threes below.

Three and Two Threes

I'm guessing here that to get a closer look to HSS and eliminate multiple images is to quicken the shutter speed a bit. In the speedlite's manual, there is actually an equation to calculate the appropriate shutter speed required for a combination of flash frequency and the number of flashes. However, I've actually played around with these numbers and if there is one thing I've learned in this experiment is the fact that one should not lose oneself to the technicality and just do it. Things are not supposed to be perfect and things are not supposed to be taken with a single shot only; So, there must be a trial and error and experimenting. Calculating things can be useful as a rough estimation but NEVER decides what the end result should be nor the final outlooks.
Also, one more thing I've discovered here is the fact that increasing the number of strokes is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes having 5 or 10 strokes of flash in a single exposure is just about enough to record the movement in a clear way, while too many strokes can or might stabilize the object more or even congest the scene.

Dice Race

Another thing I've learned, the hard way, is to keep cleaning the lens after each drop of the object! As you can see in Dice Race, there are some octagonal flares caused by some water droplets on the polarizer filter over the lens. I was able to crop it out in some images but the majority persisted and it was not easy to remove them, and the best I could do to some is to reduce their "weight" in the image by cropping, and sometimes eliminating them by adjusting the curve and contrast.

Now at this level, I think I'm done with the dice experiment and I do have some ideas to further experiment with other objects and ideas. Anyway, I've taken the time to fill in the information for these images which I've prepared to upload to the stocks (31 in total). To do so, I've prepared a list of keywords and 2 descriptions to use (one for HSS shots and one for stroboscopic ones), while changing the name of the images only. It was a long process to edit these info with every image in Photoshop and I'm not aware of any software that does the work in an easier manner. However, I've uploaded the files to my main outlets: Canstockphoto, Dreamstime, 123RF, Mostphotos.
The weird story here comes from Canstockphotos. If you click the stream at the end of this post to get into my gallery (at the moment of typing and posting this blog post) you might notice 2 images being accepted ONLY. The rest were rejected for "inappropriate keywords". This took me by surprise because the keywords are the same for all images, so why accepting two of the series and rejecting the rest? This is something beyond my "intelligence". The other thing is that they don't specify really the keyword(s) that caused the problem so it is like a gambling game to adjust and re-upload and wait and so on. Thus, I've decided to delete all my images and leave only these 2 which were accepted for reasons I don't understand yet. Meanwhile, the whole collection of 31 images is available on my Mostphotos (they don't review images), which is a relief. Now, it is just a matter of time and waiting for Dreamstime and 123RF to either accept or reject. They usually take a long time; Sometimes, pretty damn long time…

Speed Gambling…

Somebody, anybody, just tells Winter to come over, please? PLEASE!? It's officially the fall season, so they say, and it is actually worth than summer itself even. Stinking humidity, allergies everywhere, and the worse of all, malfunctioning ACs and cars. Aaand let's not forget the boiler's problem at home where everyone still thinks that the water is "hot" while my body shivers violently when I take a shower and they refuse to turn it on because they think the weather, or the water, is still hot.
Anyway, I was going to post a bit about some photos I've shot from the Geology department, in my workplace, and I've edited these photos later on my PC. However, I think I'll skip that. It's just one photo which I've uploaded to the stocks already (you can click the stream at the end of this post to check my stock), and another one which I've turned into a 3D anaglyph. Not sure if I'm going to upload or do anything with the latter though. Anyway, Let's jump right into the experiment I talked about in my previous post.

Speed Gamble

In my previous post I've talked about some idea, using all my speedlites in a high speed photography set, like in the sketch on the left. Well, things weren't easy at first because, as usual and typical, I ran into a battery crisis and I had to give up on most of my rechargeable batteries that I've stocked for such work and got myself a new set of alkaline batteries, which are not rechargeable but hopefully more reliable. Another trouble was to set the table and stack the speedlites side by side and pointing at a specific point. It's a minor problem but it was quite vexing specially with connecting 3 out 7 speedlites with external power-pack (I have three 430EXII and one 420EX and these models do not accept external power sources unfortunately). All along the work process, I've changed the height of the tripod, the angle and few other settings; Most importantly from all these settings, maybe, would be the shutter speed, the ISO, flash zoom, and the flash power.
Now, flash power (for all speedlites of course) was set to manual and was controlled via the main speedlite which acts as a trigger as well (the one on the camera). I have to do this, since this is the only way to work with HSS mode AND control the rest of the speedlites wirelessly. I don't have a special trigger for that purpose. I lowered the power down, in hope that I can shoot in burst mode continuously (as this would reduce the recharging time). However, I was wrong. It didn't work that way and technically, I was limited to one shot. Anyway, I was also limited in raising the power too high up for the speedlites, because it might make my work with post-processing harder than it should be (by eliminating unnecessary parts from the metallic black tray I was using for my set).

Slow motion during a session.
For some reason I'm not sure of, the image turns black
when the flashes burst out.

As you can see from the video above, I had to work manually as usual. I've tried to set up my laser gate later on in fact but till this moment, it didn't work quite well. I'll explain the reasons below but first let's see some of the results that I've got in this way (and remember, all was manual, nothing was automated). The following images were, of course, edited and adjusted like a regular photos and they are not right out of the camera. So, there are adjustments and cropping involved; This is beside changing the lens from 100mm macro to 50mm:

The Falling One
Canon EF 100mm Macro, f/3.2, 5000^-1s, ISO200

Fallen Luck
Canon EF 100mm Macro, f/2.8, 4000^-1s, ISO160

Левитация
(Levitation)
Canon EF 50mm, f/6.3, 8000^-1s, ISO200

 

 

Let It Go
Canon EF 50mm, f/6.3, 8000^-1s, ISO200

This is a sample for some shots. Some of them had reflections on the water surface clearly and some (well, most) did not. I've used my polarizer to enhance such reflections (and also to protect the lens front). If I remember correctly, there were around 347 taken (the majority were dark frames) and been sorted down to 91 or so, and the process out is still ongoing. At the moment of typing this, the editing is still ongoing and I didn't check all images. Out of the camera, many of the images were dark in fact and did need a push in exposure while editing in RAW; Sometimes +1 and sometimes +2. Not much editing was done in RAW beside setting the exposure and controlling the highlights and shadows in various manners, including Fill, Black Point, and Contrast. As can be seen also, the shutter speed was fluctuating between 4000^-1 and down to 8000^-1 of a second, trying to freeze the water motion as much as possible. I've also changed the flash head zooming for most of the speedlites here, and in the final stages of shooting, I've settled down with 14mm (by pulling down the diffusing panel over the speedlite head) in order to spread light as much as possible on the tray, as it was hard to point the heads down at the water surface.

Not Enough Speed

Now composition-wise, I was not very happy, and probably using the 100mm Macro lens was the perfect solution, but still then I do think using 50mm was a good choice to add some elements around the action and fill the space with something; But my arrangement was a bird absurd! I did indeed try to fix that in some shots but recomposing, cloning, and cropping. At this moment, I think using 1/8000s is the perfect speed (and it is the maximum allowed by the camera).
After finishing a session or two with the manual work, I've decided to try and use the laser gate (from Ubertronix), which I got long time ago and I've seldom used it sucessfuly; In fact, never used it successfully! And this time, was no exception. I've tried at this point though, and according to some old advice from a professional, to connect the trigger to the speedlites instead of the camera because this will reduce the lag time significantly and would yield better results. This method, though, requires opening the shutter for second and allowing the speedlites to be triggered and then close the shutter (either by using timed shutter or using Bulb mode and a remote, which I kind of prefer in fact). That means, working in a dark environment. The location I was in gets considerably dark actually, but I'd have to wait till evening to have a darker atmosphere. Anyway, a quick glimpse at it (after hard work trying to align the laser beam to the receiver to form the laser gate) - told me that it's not going to work; Not the way I like it at least, for a number of reasons:

• The distance between the laser and the gate is wide across the tray (even after changing the orientation of the tray), making it almost impossible to precisely drop the dice across the beam. Thus, the gap must be narrower to drop precisely.
• The height to which I was able to set up the laser gate was relatively higher than required, as I guess. We are talking about microseconds here if not nanoseconds, thus things should be properly close to the water surface as much as possible without showing in the lens's field of view.
• Without finding a mechanism to adjust the level of the gate, it might be a quite troublesome way to use such a gate to capture the moment. If for instance the dice is captured in motion before touching the water surface, then adjusting the height of the gate is required to capture the perfect moment; Otherwise, all shots will be similar. 
• Part of fore mentioned points, I think this keeps us at the level of macro shooting.

Personally, now, after checking the situation and how things work, I think I do indeed prefer using the manual method despite its drawbacks. I think it also gives various results and unexpected results that makes the work amusing to some level. All that hassle with the laser gate is really not required unless I need to work with something quite delicate (like droplets) in the future. Otherwise, I think I will stick to this manual method for the time being. Now, there are a number of things that I think I want to try (planning to but didn't have the time before typing this blog post in fact):

• Try to merge my workflow with stereoscopic flashing, if possible.
• Use variety of lenses if possible other than 100mm Macro and 50mm.
• Try different angles as much as possible.
• Increase the power of the speedlites and use single shot method since the burst mode doesn't work here.
• Maybe change the container or the set to something smaller to give out a better composition and background, and have better control.

Finale

Now, this is it for now. Let's if I can post more about the new trials that I'm going to do with this experiment of high speed photography. Let's hope I get the time and the mood to work! This week has its toll on me already and I'm trying to hard to slow down and simplify my life.

Lately, and after closing down some settings on Duolingo website which makes me theoretically out of the "leaderboard" or whatever they call it, which is about contesting and doing more exercises for more points - after closing that down, I think I'm having more time to myself to do more useful things, specially in the Arabic section of that website. Beside that, I'm thinking of typing a blog post for my Arabic blog about this high speed photography experiment. So, my next week will definitely be busy, but I'll try to manage my time here and there - Let's hope!

Is it weird that I'm fascinated about astrology these days? Well, I had my interest in that but it's been a bit more than before nowadays. It's all just some trials to re-discover and understand myself further. Maybe forgive myself for some things as well? Well, absolutely not wasting much of time with this though (otherwise, I wouldn't be typing this blog post right?). I think all of this condensed work and thought is part of my efforts to forget about my pains and disappointments. Nevertheless, it leaves me just exhausted… Now, if only I can jot down these words that roam my heart into some poem hmm…

Touch Down
Canon EF 50mm, f/6.3, 8000^-1s, ISO200

Cártaí…

Well, the work is started and still going on with my "lil" project, the Scopa cards. As I've foresaw already, the process will not be easy, specially with no adequate place, nor proper help, and no proper props. However, I've done some cards already, and I'm using some of these basic cards (specifically the Ace or Asso cards) to create cards of multiples (up to seven supposedly). Not all the time of course, and in many occasions I would have to re-shoot.



Each suit of cards (that is, cards of specific sign) had its own problems, but mainly, the major problem is finding a proper prop or item to act for that specific suit. Talking about aces, which is the most simple and basic shot that should be there, ended up using various items far away from their "real" counterpart: a censer for a cup, a sugar bowl lid for a coin, and a scabbard for a club or baton. However, for the Ace of Swords, I did indeed get a sword (a heirloom of the family). The swords suit specifically is putting me in dilemma somewhat as I made already several cards by merging previously made ones, but I'm not sure if I should continue like this or not, as I initially had an idea of involving my dagger (which I brought from Oman) for this mission as well.

Quattro di Spade (Four of Swords)
made with repetition of a specific shot taken solely for that purpose.

Due

I've done, so far, almost all the "two" cards for each suit.  Some of them are probably on my "re-do" list, but I'll need to figure out some time for them. Basically, however, the "two" card is composed or made out of a single shot which was taken for this purpose previously. I was aiming to keep things simple in fact, to quicken my pace. However, I couldn't resist the idea of using some extra elements when it was about shooting Due di Coppe, that is the Two of Cups. Then I thought, why not merge some High-Speed into it?

Speedlite 430EX II.

Things came along together here in fact. The time this idea popped up in my mind was contemporaneous with the selling of some 430EX II Speedlites by a friend, who is converting to Nikon (as usual) and needed to get rid of his gear, and among them these two speedlites for some cheap value! It was a bargain I could not miss, and so I got them, and now I own 6 speedlites - what a High-Speed photographer wouldn't wish for?! Well, Syl Arena in one of his books made it clear that he owns about 13 speedlites for his "missions." So, having 6 speedlites is nothing really. The problem with 430EX II model though is that it does not accept external power supply like the 580EX II, and cannot be set to a Master like the 580EX II, but only as a Slave. However, in combination with what I have, it just does the job perfectly. Notice that 430EX II is a very old model by now, and Canon issued 430EX III-RT probably a year ago (RT signifies it works with Radio Transmission), and that was after actually issuing the high end speedlite, 600EX-RT. Unfortunately for me, I can't work with 600EX-RT since all my collection of speedlites work with infrared wireless beaming, I would need some extra measures to let the new and old speedlites work  together then.

My playground with 6 Speedlites.

Probably the shot here did not need to work in High-Speed, but I couldn't risk it with the movement of the water. I wanted to freeze it. Thus, I've pushed my shutter up to 1/2000s. When we talk about High-Speed, it does not necessarily mean shooting with such a high speed for the shutter, but it simply means we need to surpass the limitation of the sync speed (which is 1/250s for my camera here). I use High-Speed shooting often just to kill the ambient light, which otherwise, would be visible at the sync speed of the camera.



Now, despite the simplicity of the idea: pouring water into a grail-like bowl; yet there had been some delays to do it. Mainly because I needed a model (my brother of course) to work with me while I stand behind the camera. I tried to do it alone as with the rest of the shots before, but unfortunately, that was awkward and completely clumsy which made my concentration shatter. I had to wait for my brother till he had the time to do it with me. The first thing to do then, was to change my lens from Voigtländer 20mm (with which I've shot most of my shots in this project so far) to my old 50mm; This is to get a proper field of view. Also, f/11 was reduced down to f/8 and then further to f/6.3 to allow for more light to pass in: High-Speed mode reduces the speedlite power, so imagine bouncing it off as well, which makes it weaker further (bouncing here is essential to reduce the flare off the metallic surface) . Initially, I wanted to use only 5 speedlites on the side but the dark shadows pushed me to run the 6^th one which was used as a commander only, fitting a globe diffuser on it. The rest was a work for Photoshop, which was lengthy as well, but doing panoramas and fixes to them I guess makes this nothing to compared to them.



And since we are talking about Twos, probably I should put on this which I've shot for the Two of Coins card, but there is a strong probability that I would need to re-do it again, since the lid which I've used as a coin is off the center on my palm. I've struggled in fact to fix it to my fingers with a rubber band so I can open my palm while shooting this. What it did not occur to me at that time is the fact that I could have done that easily (relatively) by simply shooting down at my palm instead of standing in front of the camera! What was I thinking? I simply do not know...

Finale

 Well, my mind now is having a surge of ideas and I'm trying to keep concentrating on this one project right now, the Scopa project, but probably it is about time that I might have to take a break from this one and work on another idea, then go back to Scopa. Well, just to avoid being bored I guess? Maybe. Or maybe I just need to do these ideas before they rotten in my head and I lose interest. I'm already having an idea for doing a panorama and another one for a single shot dedicated to my urge to travel. Now, on the stack, there is another idea for a panorama in a narrow space (talk about claustrophobia again). I might do this latter panorama first as it is, relatively, easier to do and does not need any help (i.e. a model or so). We'll see by this weekend, with my queue line of games to play!
Winter is getting colder, with a nicer weather (to me), but maybe I should find some time to get some new winter clothes? Well, not fond of shopping in general but maybe I should make time for this. A new jacket might be good. However, it doesn't seem I would be going out this winter to shoot. Many things are there that trouble my mood and mind, so I better keep it all to myself for now. Besides, my need for sleep is growing by day as well. Sometimes I feel like having a 2 weeks vacation, for nothing but merely sleeping. I will keep my hopes for that though for the new year's eve, as I'm planning to have some long weekend by then!

Bounce…

Well, so much had been going on with my camera as I'm trying to use every day of Ramadhan before it is over and I'd be back to work then! Well, I have to say that I can be lazy at times but I think I deserve this! Here, I will be taking off from where I stopped last time, as I was experimenting with High Speed photography. After finishing with dropping a cherry into some colored water, it was time to try out a bouncing ball!

Bounce!

I thought about this idea after applying the "cherry" experiment. I was trying to implement my old trigger (again)  but I ended up shooting all good shots with remote cable alone and changing the method of shooting in between sessions (the experimenting took about one week or more a bit): once using LiveView, and other times without it, and also using the Mirror-Lock option.

Splashing Boom I
Canon EF 100mm Macro, f/20,
8000^-1s, ISO200.

The results were majorly for splashes and droplets hanging in the air instead of the ball at the moment of bouncing, but many interesting shapes resulted with these water droplets. After my experiment with falling cherries, I've decided to increase the shutter speed to its max point (1/8000s) since that does not affect the power of the speedlites in general (the aperture does). I tried to apply another technique with sharpening when processing these images, as in Splashing Boom I and others, where I've applied sharpening to specific portions of the image only to pop out some features and make it look like a 3D image somewhat.

Splashing Boom III
Canon EF 100mm Macro, f/20,
8000^-1s, ISO200

I was lucky, after many, many, many trials, to catch the moment at which the ball was bouncing of the table (which was covered with aluminum foil and sprinkled with water), while running the camera on LiveView. Many successful attempts occurred later as well and they were rotated as is the case in splashing Boom III, but with variant beauty. In fact, even with Splashing Boom III, I noticed some slight blur in water droplets and the ball even though the shutter speed was at its maximum, 1/8000s. This made me search for ways to go around this speed in some way (technical or by technique) but I'll keep that for later. The ball here in Splashing Boom III might be blurred for being slightly out of focus after all, and for this reason I've decided to boost the f-number (to increase the depth of field further) in order to increase my chances of catching the ball relatively sharp. This, of course, forced me to change the speedlites sittings (all three of them) in terms of angle at least (all were working in full power after all).

Mirrored II
Canon EF 50mm, f/22, 8000^-1s, ISO200.

As trials went on, I've changed the lens to 50mm to have more space and increase the chances to catch the ball within the frame (it was a bad choice somewhat though since water splash details are not clear at that zoom level). Anyway, at this point I decided to work with Mirror-Lock option (which requires pressing the shutter button twice to shoot the photo) as I was trying to reduce the time lag. In an email sent to Ubertronix about such lag, they explained to me that such lag is usually due the camera's shutter and it would be better to connect the trigger to the speedlite; but this is not possible in my case:

Hi TJ,

The lag is from the camera not the strike finder device or cable length. If you can set up your shot with the Strike Finder firing a flash instead of your camera, the  lag will be close to 0. Let me know what you are trying to shoot and I might have some specific setup suggestions.

Check out the information concerning shutter lag of the 7d in this link  http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E7D/E7DA6. The other thing you can do is partially depress the shutter release and hold it before a shot. That will cut your shutter lag from 83 ms to 61 ms based on these specs.

Please let me know if I can be of further assistance,

Jane

The Information here were kind of a surprise since working on LiveView does actually longer lagging time than working in normal mode! However, not that, and not even working with Mirror-Lock and a trigger, did time correctly with this bouncing wall, which at the end drove me to work, again, manually and by hand. I noticed that I did capture better results using the Mirror-Lock option and I got the camera within the frame more often, but probably the best of them all was Mirrored II here in which the ball was just taking off with a tiny trail of water underneath it. I will check with possibilities to work with triggering my speedlites instead of the camera later on, but that would require to work in complete darkness (and the camera shutter is kept open for a certain time). When everything failed, though, I've simply punched the table…

Fist
Canon EF 50mm, f/22, 8000^-1s, ISO200.

I tried here again to picture the splashing water, but seems the water wasn't enough, and it is a good thing that I used 50mm lens; Otherwise, my fist won't fit in the frame. And apparently my skin needs some care! Now, all these shots (lot of them not shown here) need to be sorted out again and filled with information for uploading to stock websites.

Sitting for the bouncing ball experiment, with my Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens. This was the initial position for speedlites, things changed later on as well as for the lens.

Finale

I could have gone further with this post, but I'll keep it short for now. There are other experiments I'm attending to at the moment, specially with my very old microscope with which I'm trying to shoot better and sharper images (so far images are kind of blurred). Along with the microscope experiments, I've been working on some various images ideas for our group's June project which is themed "Abstract." I might have some material to be posted by the next blog post.
Meanwhile, I couldn't keep my promise to myself for not placing an order right now, but I had to process an order for various items (and books) but I'm not in a hurry. Thus, all items were shipped for free (which takes nearly a week) and still to this very moment some items are being processed because they are not available. Some of these items are essential and I might talk a bit when this package arrives to me (which might be in July!). I consider this to be my own gift to my own self for my birthday, since no one I know around me would appreciate such gifts for me! Hopefully I'll cope with the finance later on.
As the financial situation is shaky; once up and once down, I'm still not sure about my plans to travel (and not sure where to). One thing is for sure: I need it. I need it like water and food. If only…