Ar Ais Arís…

I'm back after a "little" vacation of my own, during some holidays as well as working days in fact wit a lot of sleeping upheaval, as usual. This post won't be much actually but just to announce my return! Well, if anyone cares anyway.
So, in this post, I barely have this selfie which I've shot in the first hour of August 17^th, and turning 39. I think I've made a new tradition of my own, to take a selfie with every birthday, in the first hours of it. The selfie (or self-portrait as some make a distinction between the two) was shot using Voigtländer 20mm lens (my favorite for the time being) and using a candle to light my face. My hand is not strong as before so it was a bit shaky and a bit out of focus (naturally using a wide aperture). With the help of the white balance as well, the image came out orange or bronze somewhat in color. I like the color but I have to be honest, I really hate the overall quality. It might look good in such a small size but it's not so in the original size. For this reason, I've promised myself to do some other selfie and using the candle light as well at some other time. Meanwhile, I did indeed take other selfies, with the same style, but this time using LED torch or flashlight.

Shot this right after having a shower (good thing I didn't catch a cold, yet) and used a small LED torch. Despite its size, it was such a powerful source in fact, and I've reflected the light off the wall but still there were some white areas that were out of details (because of the hard reflections from the water-soaked skin). This shot was taken with my Huawei Mate 9, so I had little control here. The only virtue I had here is the lightweight of the device. So, in a nutshell, this one, too, is not to my liking. I had other selfies which are a bit personal or occasional rather than artistic so I'm not going to post them here anyway. This said, I'm in fact about to work on a new idea regarding a selfie or a self-portrait as I'm typing this but I didn't finish it yet. Not sure how it will turn out but hopefully things will go as planned and I'd be able to post it by a week after the next.
Slowly now trying to get up on my feet again, specially after finishing off with the Huawei contest and my mind is ready to receive other ideas. I have to say though that such a contest really did some work on my brain and I'm not afraid to use my mobile phone to shoot, but definitely not as a substitution for my regular work with my DSLR and my passion for it.
I've worked already with some abstract concepts as well (on macro level) so we'll see if there is anything about it to be posted later on. Alas, I do miss my work with panoramas, but where to shoot in this place? The need to travel is arising and I'm still not sure about my decisions yet. First, let me fix this damn sleeping pattern…

Auf Arabisch... بالعربية

It seems like it doesn't matter how many hours I do sleep, there is always a need for more! One of the awkward things about having a vacation in the homeland! Anyway, I'm trying to catch on with time and I've already booked a ticket in advance for the ferry to go to Failaka island on Wednesday, for this reason, I'm typing this blog post on Tuesday - and hopefully as you read this on Thursday, I will be waiting for the ferry to pick me up from the island and get back home, with hope that I will have a load of new images (and panoramas!). Thus, I may not have done much with my camera in the past few days, but I will post about them anyway for the time being in hope that you will like them.

Auf Arabisch (بالعربية)

I've been thinking lately of starting to post in Arabic in this blog as well as I do in English. Some people liked the idea. For the time being, the posts are supposedly to be about basic photography stuff, and mainly dedicated to arabize the many terms used in the world of photography, which, unfortunately, I didn't find any current translations or contemporary language advancements. The reason for such thought is the desire to raise the linguistic awareness as much as possible for the technological terms that started to flood the arena and mainly being in English, leaving people with not much linguistic abilities almost paralyzed when it comes to learning new techniques or sciences.
Probably, the future posts would act as of some sort of dictionaries, but I do hope that it will help people who want to start at the beginner's level in photography, and yet can't get hold on the English language specifically, or any other languages.
The dilemma now is, whether to post it here, in this very same blog, or I'm supposed to create another blog for this purpose solely. My main thoughts now are, to post here, in the very same blog in which I post in English, to keep things concise and gathered in one place. This is what I think for the time being. Besides, I didn't specify a day in the week to post the Arabic article yet, but hopefully the decision will come soon. Probably, this step would be a first step in making a book even, as most books about photography in Arabic are in fact just translations of English books (and they do include a lot of English jargon inside as well). What I'm afraid of for the time being is the awkward and sluggish arrangement and format when typing such documents in Arabic. Arabic goes from right to left, unlike many other languages worldwide. This leaves much to be desired in the field of Arabic typing and writing in the digital world; Photoshop itself up to CS5, still issues a special version, entitled ME (Middle East), for those who would use the typing tools excessively in Arabic (and other ME languages like Hebrew). Not sure if newer versions after CS5 do combine the whole technology in just one pack and one version, but I'm hoping to see this any time!

Trust Me!

One of the humble trials to do something with my camera (and flashes) was an idea that had been cooking in my mind. Of course, since it is some sort of a portrait, the main subject is me myself, which increases the difficulty.

Trust Me
Canon EF 100mm, f/22, 250^-1sec, ISO100.

The shot was edited later on with Photoshop to add final touches that can't be done on camera of course - like the teeth. The idea is to look after everything that looks nice in its appearance, but the core might be corrupted; e.g. the excessive freedom that might destroy the community with its unlimited boundaries.
Technically, I've planned the image to be in black and white with a tint or split tones, but probably the noise level that appeared later made me change my mind and stick to pure black and white. One of the mistakes I've done here is to hold the rose with my fingers covering the petals. Some people, after viewing the image, didn't realize it is really a rose, and some of them even thought it's some sort of food! The problem here, technically, was to use the Fill option in ACR excessively, which lightened the shadows, as well as the noise. Such noise, beside the original noise in the image itself without processing it, are one of the hardest things to smooth and work around.

Macranglyph

OK. I think I do sound ridiculous for inventing such words again and again, but this is really just for a title here. I'm not intending to coin it! The Macronglyph I'm talking about here is to make a 3D anaglyph image on macro level. Even though I've been working on some concepts yet in the panoramic anaglyph field, I thought how would such technique work in the macro field? The main concept is, of course, to take two shots resembling the two eyes. But the distance here is critical. On the macro level, a slight movement can prove to be a big leap!

3D Bad Teeth
Canon EF 100mm Macro, f/22, 250^-1sec, ISO100.

As a first trial, I tried my "bad" teeth here with my 100mm macro lens. Despite the fact that this is a macro lens, it is actually limited to x1.00 magnification power, or 1:1. This is, however, fair for most of macro purposes. Unless you want to go deeper, then a change of technique is due.
Anyway, in 3D Bad Teeth, I had to nudge my head a bit to the left and shoot again (using remote cable). The bad point here is that I've discovered when viewing the images that my lips muscles got lose in between the shots and thus deforming the stability of the shape (of the lips). However, when viewed with 3D red-cyan glasses it does look fair enough and pops out considerably.
Now, I'm not sure how much I did really nudge my head to the left (my left) when this shot has been made, but I doubt it would count as much as 7cm or even 5cm. And here comes the point that I need to do more research about...

3D 100 Fils (reverse)
Canon EF 50mm + 68mm ET, f/22, 30sec, ISO200.

To explain the point, in another shot made for the reverse side of a Kuwaiti 100 Fils coin, I've taken a shot for the masts of the ship (which filled the frame in fact), and the magnification factor here (using 68mm of extension tubes) counts as much as x1.36. In this shot, the difference between the right and left shots are just few millimeters in fact, but since it is a macro shot, the difference between the two shots was huge. If the engraving on the coin surface was deeper, probably the ghosting would have been more grave and more apparent.
Two thing for sure, but I can't still hold on to the mathematical concepts behind these facts:

• Degree and value of magnification has a role in the distance that to be applied. More zoom, lesser displacement.
• The distance of the subject from the image plane also plays a role. I'm not sure though if this is really significant to a great deal in macro shooting because, by virtue, in macro shots the subjects will always so close to the lens front and (relatively) to the image plane.

Note that the scales on lenses for focusing distances are actually measured from the image plane (sensor placement) and not from the front element of the lens.

Finale

This is for now. I'm looking forward to my Failaka trip tomorrow (Wednesday) - thus as you read this, I would be probably on the ferry coming back home, or still roaming till the scheduled time comes!
I have to get packing my stuff now and out this post on automatic "pilot" mode (i.e. to be posted automatically on time), and needless to say, get more and more sleep before I head over to the ferry! See ya...

Paralyzed...

As the title says. This week I've been paralyzed. Not much activity (except of some self portrait issues) and all of that because of, mainly, the car issues. In the middle of the week we had a special religious occasion and it is customary to fast on this day so I did fast 2 days in fact - and with fasting, my powers go down a bit and I wouldn't be able to do much after working hours. some ideas are there, but to work them out, I would need either more resources or, so to say, more objects to buy and/or help (something I seriously lack).

Source: B&H

My savior cable turned out not much of a savior. However, it still works. After getting the Vello 33' cable, I've found out that I can't access the speedlites via the menu in camera but I have to do mostly everything manually. Strangely, this problem persists only when the speedlite is attached to the far end, but I can access the menus when the speedlite is attached to the main head connected to the hot shoe on camera.
After contacting B&H they did indeed help me out and sent me a Return Form to be sent through UPS, but unfortunately, this service doesn't work out for international destinations like from Kuwait. Thus, I have to keep myself contented with what I have right now. The main thing is applying High-Speed options which might be problematic, but the wireless triggering works just fine so probably I would have some work out around this problem.

Source: B&H

On the other hand, the new ColorMunki is working just fine and I've already calibrated my new laptop and the desktop monitors. What is left is to try out and calibrate some projector (which I don't really need but to get the hang of it) beside doing some printer calibration when possible. All of that is on hold for the time being till I finish my car problems!
What I like about this ColorMunki is the more sophisticated options it has (beside of course the basic calibration which a beginner can still use). It has options to calibrate according to the ambient light or according to a light temperature (e.g. D50, D65) and so on. My monitor now looks significantly darker than it was with the calibration done from the old simple ColorMunki (with monitors settings set to default or factory settings).

Other toys are just fine and the pinhole mount specifically needs more experimenting, but initially the test is fine. For the time being, I'm thinking of using my light meter to initiate the calculations for finding out the required exposure time when using the pinhole (of f/222). To find the required exposure here I would have to measure the light level at a specific f-number and then build up the exposure time up to f/222. I will try the simple formula:

V = 2*Log(N) / Log(2)

Where V is the number of stops needed, and N is the f-number. However, for N here, I would substitute for the difference in f-number (i.e. ΔN) between f/222 and the initial f-number (say f/8 for example). I'm not sure this is mathematically correct, because I think I'm suppose to drive ΔV and not simply V. Anyway, my mathematical expertise is not good enough to derive such a formula. My main, and simple, derivation is from the equation mentioned in Wikipedia's page here.

Of course then, after calculating the stops (V in this case) I would use it in the following formula to get the required time for the exposure:

T = S * 2^V

Where T is the Time that we need to know for the exposure, and S is the shutter time calculated at the initial f-number (f/8 for example as stated above) by means of the light meter. You might think or feel it is kind of ridiculous to work with all these equations just to use a pinhole (while you have a set of lenses that I can use still with TTL systems), but trust me, it takes a physicist or a mathematician to realize the sweetness of such experimenting and the joy when you find out that you've done the right thing.

Away from this mess, I'm still spending some time with other people's photos and trying to enhance them somehow. Lot of nice photos but the noise level makes it horrible to work with such photos. Anyway, I'm advising everyone I can reach to get a real camera instead of a phone camera.

The Gaze
Canon EF 50mm, f/6.3,
400^-1sec, ISO200.

In the meantime, I've decided to work with my own camera little bit and do a half-portrait; after all, I didn't take much photos of myself for a long time, and I didn't even edit much of my photos to make some of them as pieces of art. The setup was time-consuming and I had to stand, literally, in a jungle of tripods. 

I've taken many shots with different setups of the speedlites and among the tens of shots Ive taken, only one that got through, even with some lighting problems. 

The Gaze II (Edit)

The main problem here is that I was using the 430EXII speedlite with a honeycomb grid to act as a spotlight and give extra light to the eye area, after lighting the whole face with 580EXII speedlite plus reflector. Anyway, pointing the spotlight is so critical and I've never got it right after all, and as you can see in the images, the closest I could get is the area under my eye, on the cheek and thus we have an overexposure in this area specifically.

The Gaze III (Edit)

However, I'm glad that one shot survived at least from the tens of shots I've made (and how ironic in the beginning I was using the speedlites on the wrong side of my body). Everything in this experiment was set on a tripod; two speedlites, monitor, and camera. Moving was something delicate. My main idea in the beginning was totally different in which I wanted to use some flash drag technique while moving my face (to create a ghosting effect) but for this case I would probably need a darker atmosphere rather than the hall in which I've conducted this experiment. In hope that I would be able to do this soon. Just thinking about the configurations and the settings that I have to do makes me a bit sluggish and lazy to do all of that. For this experiment though, I might use a simple hatchet configuration, which is made by placing 2 light sources on the sides of the face, and yet because I have 2 different speedlites here with 2 different powers, I might as well have to change the distances accordingly, making the 580EXII further away from my face (or reduce its power accordingly) - and probably the guide numbers would help with this. New venturing, let's hope it goes smoothly without much headache!

Finale

As of writing these words, I'm still struggling with my car yet and I'm not sure there is an easy way out to fix the damn A/C. Living without an A/C in your car in Kuwait means a catastrophe for most of the fields of your life - because you need to do your business outside and with no A/C, you are simply a melted chocolate!

After the shock from the original car dealer which offered fixes for 520 K.D. (approx. US$1500), I've pulled the car from there without fixing it and now I'm trying to find a good substitute. Some times I do get some hope from some garage owners, and some times they get me down, but after all one thing is certain: it's not going to be a cheap fix. I'll be just happy to finish this topic and have some peace of mind before Ramadhan's arrival and the beginning of the fast.
Mom's situation worries me and it does sound more like a chronic issue. Despite the fact that she seems to be in a good health and she goes in and out of the kitchen as she used to do before, but the matter with the dialysis is not finished yet and my elder sister brings some bad news now and then. Poor mother, we keep the bad news away from her to keep her calm, and God knows what's waiting for her. Just wish if I can give her one of my kidneys if that was possible. The least I'm hoping for for the time being, is some reduction in her dialysis times.

All what I want for the few coming days, is to stare at the sky at night and see some stars. Just, some stars...