captin nod

Foggy San Francisco

2010-02-23T07:00:00.000-08:00

$2 Portrait Project: Daniel and Samantha

2010-02-22T06:41:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has visited San Francisco for any length of time is acutely aware of the large number of people who live on the streets. It becomes depressingly easy to walk along and look straight ahead without giving any acknowledgment to the panhandler asking for change. My lovely wife, braver than I, has taken to looking right at them and at least offering a smile.

I'm not comfortable with this kind of filter-less engagement with the reality of life here in the city, but I feel like I should be. Recently, I came across Thomas Hawk's $2 Photo project, and I'm going to try it out to get over this block. The gig is simple - when someone asks for change, give them $2 in return for a portrait and a chance to find out the story behind the face.

Walking on the weekend near the Ferry Building, we came across Daniel Harlan & Samantha. Daniel hails from Muskogee, Oklahoma, and his constant companion is Samantha, his pug-nosed Himalayan cat. He told us that Samantha is one-of-a-kind, the only Himalayan cat in the city. I recognised the pair as they'd recently been in the local papers; Samantha was at one stage lost, leading to Daniel to offer a reward for her return. Samantha was found shortly thereafter, and the whole episode seemed to weigh heavily on his mind. Daniel kept a battered copy of the article with him to show visitors. He repeated that Samantha's finder was reluctant to return her; however he was mostly just glad to be reunited with his companion and the two genuinely seemed delighted to be back in each others company.

I got my photo, wished him a good morning and we got back on our way.

SF: moma soma coma

2010-02-21T10:45:00.000-08:00

Explorations in and around SF MOMA and Townsend St., San Francisco.

What English sounds like with just sounds and no meaning

2010-02-20T19:00:00.000-08:00

A work colleague and I were discussing the other day the how English might 'sound' to someone who didn't understand the words. I'm used to frequently seeing impressions of other languages from native English speakers, but rarer to see is English speakers coming up with their own 'impressions' of English.

One of the first occurrences we came across was John Cleese, who developed a type of nonsense English and has used it to great comic effect. Have a listen to this interview on NPR, around the 8:50 mark, where he talks about this nonsense language he developed. He's also used it relatively recently:

The interesting thing about this clip is the confusion it brings about - it sounds and feels like understandable language, but is in fact complete nonsense. I've passed this on to a few people I know and some have reported that it makes them feel uncomfortable as it sounds like it should make sense but doesn't.

In the NPR interview linked above, John Cleese states Stanley Unwin and his Unwinese as his inspiration for his nonsense language. I hadn't known about Stanley Unwin before, and it turns out he's absolute master of gibberish - and very, very funny to boot:

Stanley Unwin on Parkinson.

It's also possible to speak grammatically correct English without making an any sense either. The late great Ronnie Barker delighted in messing around with pronunciation and spelling, to great comic effect:

Ronnie Barker and the News at Ton.

And now for the final variation: grammatically correct, valid English that unintentionally doesn't make any sense. For example, see this classic spoof of the Turbo-Encabulator:

I think it's interesting that this low signal-to-noise-ratio style of speaking is instantly recognisable to anyone who has encountered people who speak a lot of needless business jargon. Observe this unintentionally hilarious clip from Microsoft COO, Kevin Turner, weighing in at 4 minutes 20 seconds:

If you take that same clip, and reduce it down to just business buzzwords, its 1 minute 49 seconds long - that's 42% buzzwords(!!):

I'll just leave this here:

Scheimpflug is my co-pilot

2010-02-17T07:00:00.000-08:00

Testing out a new tilt lens configuration in Potrero Hill last weekend.

Reservoir Dogpatch

2010-01-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

Just to the east of Potrero Hill, where I live in San Francisco, is the industrial waterfront suburb of Mission Bay/Dogpatch. The area used to be an old railyard area and still contains many factories and a working dockyard. It's being broken down and rebuilt as a biotech hub, along with a new UCSF campus and a whole pile of new condo housing.

Given the intermediate status of the area, it's satisfyingly quiet, urban and a bit run down, leading to some awesome opportunities for photos. I think I'm going to be spending my next few weekends poking around to see what I can see here.

These are from the area around Illinois and 22nd St.

There's an active flickr group with many photos of the area. In particular look out for photos by natu®e, who takes some awesome pictures of the area. Hes also a bit of a ninja with his iPhone pics too - very compelling stuff.

Side of an parking garage in Mission Bay

The USNS Mercy, docked at pier 70

New York City, ancillary auxiliary appendix (in 3D)

2010-01-11T07:00:00.000-08:00

No trip to anywhere I go would be complete without some needless, surplus and redundant display of flagrant geekery. Thanks to fksr, I've been bitten by the 3D anaglyph photo bug.

In an effort to try to learn a bit more about the process, I went ahead and snapped left-right image pairs in different scenarios to try to learn what does and doesn't work in stereo.

The image above has a pretty strong separation between left and right, with a definite foreground, midground and background. I've chosen to register the images in the midground, and there the 3D effect is subtle and it seems to work reasonably well. However, in the extreme foreground, the separation is pretty huge and this causes the the car in the front right to oscillate unpleasantly.

fksr also points out that stereo elements right at the vertical edges of the frame are partially cut off in both eyes, which probably doesn't help in terms of resolving the picture as stereo.

This next image displays the same issues as the one here - the separation distance is pretty huge, so the foreground and background sections seem to also oscillate.

This image, taken from the plane window flying back to San Francisco, doesn't have the same issues as the first two. Here, there seems to be just a foreground and a background element, and a relatively small amount of shift. The 3D effect is less dramatic, but, to me at least, more effective.

As with the first flyover image, the 3D effect here is a less dramatic but more effective. Again, I'd argue that due to the simpler composition - background, foreground - it's less busy and the effect is more convincing. Plus, the more subtle separation between left and right helps.

So what have I learned? Well, so far it seems that for an effective image, separation distance is key, try to keep the image not too busy (i.e. having only a few elements that you want to 'pop' as 3D) and you must attempt to prevent your stereo components from intersecting the left and right parts of the image frame. Getting an effective 3D image, it seems, isn't just snapping left and right pairs - composition in the z-direction (i.e. ordering stuff in terms of depth) is also critical.

New York City, part 6: The Meatpacking district

2010-01-09T14:09:00.000-08:00

[Part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here, part 5 here]

Towering over the The High Line in the Meatpacking district of NYC is the Standard Hotel, what at first glance (for me at least) was a breathtaking, cheesy remnant of 70's architecture. I was surprised to learn then that it was only finished in January 2009.

The spindly supports of the hotel sit over the park, with no easily apparent way of getting in. It's a truly impressive sight.

The High Line park is a converted section of elevated railroad that runs from downtown into Chelsea. Though it isn't completely open, you can wander along a large section of it. The tracks themselves have been preserved, with landscaped gardens interleaved into the concrete walkways. From it's height above ground, it's peculiarly peaceful and quiet.

The Meatpacking district in New York is absolutely packed with street art. All over the place you'll find murals and installations around many indoor galleries all the way up to Chelsea. I think it's safe to say that it was my favourite bit of town and I'm keen on getting a chance to visit again some time.

I'm not sure who is behind this mural but it seems to be at least partially derived from this picture. It seems that the murals do evolve (source: here).

The artist behind this one is D*Face; there's a time-lapse video of this mural going up here.

In an attempt to depose the incumbent Mayor, Michael Bloomerg, Monty Burns ran for the post. It's good to know that he didn't do too badly in the race.

Hugh Leeman who makes awesome, floating heads. I've found examples of his work in San Francisco as well (though I didn't know who was behind it at the time).

Invader installs tasty little space invader murals all over the world, documenting the effort. Next time I go I think I'll be keeping an eye out for these little guys :)

That's the end of this series for now. New York was an absolute eye-opener, a thriving, self-assured metropolis of truly gargantuan proportions. I'm looking forward to going again.

New York City, part 5: Uptown Manhattan

2010-01-08T13:11:00.000-08:00

[Part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here]

Just up the road from my cousin's place in uptown Manhattan is the George Washington Bridge, connecting Manhattan to New Jersey over the Hudson river. It's a two-deck suspension bridge, and it's the highest capacity bridge on the planet in terms of the amount of traffic it moves every year. More awesome: the bridge is also namesake of a character in the Marvel Comics Universe :)

The Little Red Lighthouse lives under the George Washington Bridge and is the subject of a children's book.

Turns out that New York City is riddled with fallout shelters. These shelters were nominated areas for people to gather in safety after a blast, and were selected by the government during the Cold War as part of the Community Fallout Shelter program. I'm not sure if the shelters themselves are still stocked and functional, but many of the signs still remain.

The Cloisters function as a museum located in Fort Tyron Park, uptown Manhattan. The museum was built in the forties as a branch of the Metropolitan museum and is a home to many thousands of pieces of medieval art.

The building itself is constructed from the remains of monasteries and cathedrals from that period in Europe, the name itself describing the many covered, partially open walkways that medieval monks would spend time in, playing corridor cricket, beer pong or simply in quiet meditation.

New York City, part 4: The 7

2010-01-06T22:04:00.000-08:00

[Part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here]

The number 7 Flushing local MTA line was our reliable chariot for the time we were staying in New York City, and ferried us between Manhattan and Queens (where we stayed for most of the trip). There's a section of elevated rail that takes you around and above the gritty parts of Queens that lie near the subway. This is absolutely magnetic for taking the kind of photos I like, and I snapped like a madman once the conditions were right for taking photos from the subway car.

The interesting part of these pictures are in the detail, and I'd also highly recommend seeing them as a slideshow (link at the end).

The 7 seems to run through crisscrossing gullies and valleys between buildings and overpasses, and you get fleeting glimpses of traffic and life down below as the train rattles along.

The overland section of the 7 rockets through Queens and spends a couple of minutes passing by the graffiti covered 5 pointz building. The awesome story here is that the owner of a graffiti cleanup became conscious of the art he was painting over, and wrangled a space for artists to come and paint freely without fear that it would be painted back over.

I remember seeing this factory when I was last in New York in early 2001, and with a few pieces of graffiti here and there on the building and it struck me as one of the few places in the city that actually had graffiti. Now, it's the only place in the city where graffiti is legally allowed; the sheer amount of art on the building, especially compared to my memory of 2001, is striking.

Slideshow link for the entire subway ride is here.

New York City, part 3: No sleep till Brooklyn

2010-01-05T20:21:00.000-08:00

[Part 1 here, part 2 here]

The awesome part about traveling around a city with locals is getting to see a side of the city that tourists regularly don't. One of the stops we made was at what is by some measurements the tastiest pizza in NYC - Grimaldis, in Brooklyn. However, like nearly everything over the holiday break in NYC, epic queues are involved.

We camped in the cold for about an hour in line for (admittedly extremely tasty) pizza. However, while in line, we got to have a good long look at some fairly random street art that seems to pop up all over the place in the city.

[I'm guessing that this is from an illustration of the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.]

After warming up with the pizza, we headed over the Brooklyn bridge. I'd never previously understood the fascination people had with it - it's not a particularly big bridge, and the pictures of it I had seen were from a distance and seemingly not all that big a deal.

Seeing it in real life, however, corrected that error. The pedestrian walkway doesn't go on one side of the bridge - it goes right down the middle, where as you walk along you are surrounded by a spectacular net of cables.

Once you get on to the Manhattan side, you are also afforded a spectacular view of the city. The towers of steel and glass rise incongruously from the old buildings at the foreshore, and in the afternoon light they seemed to take on a non-quite-real rendered quality.

The Woolworth Building looms into view when you exit the bridge on the Manhattan side. As far as skyscrapers go, it's one of most splendid and held the title of being the tallest in the world from 1913 to 1930.

My uncle, who is a safety engineer, worked there in one of his first jobs checking that the elevators were safe. The job involved climbing into the dimly lit area on top of elevator cars, finding something to hold on to that wasn't going to mangle or maim you and holding on for dear life as the elevator rocketed up 57 floors, an expanding, tiny little square of light at the edge of vision representing the top of the shaft.

New York City, part 2: Midtown Madness

2010-01-04T21:28:00.000-08:00

[Part 1 here]

For someone used to warmer climates, New York in the winter can be a bit of forbidding place. With the temperature regularly dropping below freezing, simply getting around town involves layers of clothing and moving around like the stay puft marshmallow man. It doesn't seem to bother New York locals, however, and after a bit of coaching I got more-or-less comfortable with the frigid environment.

A layer of snow in New York - especially a fresh one - momentarily transforms the city into something unrecognisable. The ever-present layer of grit and grime is simply just painted over, and it does take on an unfamiliar, postcard-like look. In particular, Central Park benefits from this transformation.

There's an ice-skating rink on the downtown side of the park, and it wasn't surprising to see it jam-packed with skaters.

New York always seems to be busy, and multiply so at tourist magnets. We thought we'd stay off the beaten track for this trip, but the cold drew us inside the fantastic American Museum of Natural History. It was, of course, absolutely stuffed to the gills with people. Just downstairs, however, was the A to Z Holiday Tree (say it like zee, not zed, and it works better :P). I've got a soft spot for paper creations so this was a particular treat for me.

On the clear days, the temperature at night dropped well below freezing, prompting us to run around outside and voluntarily turning ourselves into icicles. Despite wearing rather excellent gloves, keeping my hands out of my pockets for any extended period of time to operate a camera was a particular ordeal. However, visiting Times Square without taking a few photos would have been complete madness, so I went ahead and snapped away with inappropriate equipment until my fingers stopped functioning.

My uncle Niru tells me that the busy, lively Times Square on 42nd Street as we know it wasn't always as welcoming as it is today. In the 70's and early 80's, the area was known to be pretty dangerous, and he'd avoid wandering outside on to the street when changing trains at the Times Square subway interchange.

The cold doesn't seem to slow down the locals; on the contrary, it seems to make them a bit more eager to get from point to point above ground.

New York City, part 1: Queens

2010-01-04T00:25:00.000-08:00

I was lucky enough to get a chance to spend the Christmas/New Years break in New York City. Apart from having a really awesome time catching up with friends and family, I took my camera gear along and went absolutely beserk taking photos.

The city itself is pretty photogenic, having many different faces and feels in it's five boroughs, with the weather itself (snow!) giving it yet another dimension. Rather than pile things together into one rambling post, I'm going to do a short series of posts (one every day for the next 5-6 days) covering different areas of the city.

First up: Queens. The complete set is here.

There was an enormous snow-storm the weekend before we arrived, and that was the thing which gave us the experience of our first White Christmas (pretty much ever).

Right near where we were staying at my uncles place are the Big Six towers, just off Queens boulevard. Dating back to the sixties, they were named after the Local 6 of the International Typographical Union.

Apart from the usual photo-geekery, I had also taken along the Bokeh masters kit so I could continue testing it:

Bokeh Masters Kit Review

2009-12-22T22:55:00.000-08:00

I was recently contacted by the always awesome Udi from diyphotography.net, and I was delighted when he sent one of his Bokeh masters kit in my direction to review.

[Udi is a DIY photography ninja and unlike my own clumsy attempts Udi has a knack for coming up with some elegant hacks.]

Star shaped bokeh from out-of-focus traffic downtown.

The basic idea of the kit is put a cutout shape in front of the camera lens, which shapes out-of-focus lights using the shape on the cutout [Optics nerd time: I'm not sure of the exact optics going on here, but what I'm guessing is that it masks the circle of confusion formed at the image plane with the cutout shape. Someone please correct me here if I'm wrong]. Udi took the idea of his DIY shaped bokeh and turned it into a product where you can swap in one of a number of pre-made cutouts.

What's in the box:

The masters kit comes with five pre-perforated sheets. Four of these contain the shaped cutouts, and the actual 'bokehtinator', which is used to mount the discs. Another sheet folds into a little box for storing the discs when they are not in use. A rubber-band is supplied so you can attach the bokehtinator to the camera itself.

When you first punch the discs out, you might get a feeling that the plastic is a bit on the flimsy side; in particular the folds bokehtinator seem like they might tear. However, after a two days of of testing I was pleasantly surprised to find that by just being mindful of not pulling along the fold lines it is indeed quite sturdy.

Attaching the bokehtinator is relatively simple - the tabs are folded around the lens and held in place with the rubber bands. A clever part of this design means that the focusing ring is still accessible for use, as opposed to the DIY cap-based designs which would prevent this. One thing that I quickly discovered was that I needed to attach the bokehtinator with a good 5mm gap away from the end of the lens to allow room for the focusing mechanism to work.

Learning to work with shaped bokeh:

I used my trusty Canon 450D along with a f1.8 50mm nifty fifty. To really make use of the bokeh effects, you need out-of-focus light sources. If your lens has a good, big depth-of-field than you might be disappointed - as the instructions in the kit say, for this to work you need the aperture wide open (i.e. low f-stop).

The sweet-spot for usage (as I understand it) is with portrait photography with a backdrop that has point light sources. As is sometimes the case for portrait photography, you need to get in close for it to work, or alternatively settle for blurring everything out to get the effect.

In focus with the bokehtinator, and out-of-focus (larger here)

In the shot above I've taken a photo of a building downtown. Unless I got really close to the building, it was going to be pretty unlikely that I was going to get only part of the building in focus (custom lenses aside). However, if you throw sharpness out of the window, you can still get an interesting looking shot.

Christmas tree: sharp and out-of-focus (larger here)

Christmas tree: racking focus (larger here)

By turning off autofocus and manually racking the focus back and forth, you can experiment with exactly how big you'd like the effect to be. In the example above, we start off with relatively small shaped bokeh, but a nice sharp foreground. As the focus is racked, we get bigger, more impressive looking bokeh but the foreground goes out of focus.

Comparing cutout discs:

Cutout discs tested: star, recycle, cursor

To see how it affected the technical aspects of shooting, I tested with three representative cutouts. I used the star, which provided a relatively simple shape and large aperture. The recycle symbol had a lot of detail and a smaller aperture, and the cursor symbol had and off-centre aperture.

The first thing that I found was that the multi-point autofocus no longer worked with the bokehtinator in place. This wasn't a big deal; I set the autofocus point to the centre of the image, which seemed to work fine for the star and the recycle, but wouldn't work at all for the cursor cutout.

I also got mixed results with metering. I prefer to use centre-weighted metering (in aperture priority mode) on my camera, which worked fine with the star and recycle discs, but tended to over-expose with the cursor.

Top left: no disc, top right: recycle symbol, bottom left: cursor, bottom right: star

Once you get the camera set-up though, it's a bunch of fun. This is a great time of year to be playing around with this particular accessory as there are lots of seasonal decorations to give you point sources for your bokeh.

Larger version here

The shaped bokeh is sharp - in particular, I do like how it turns otherwise plain-old background bokeh into sharp shapes, which (when the composition works) match a sharp foreground subject. I was also initially a bit doubtful about the sharpness of the cutouts when I first looked at the discs, but I'm happy to report that this wasn't a problem.

Impressions & conclusion:

One could easily argue that given the relatively simple nature of the kit, that you could build your own at home. If you're the kind of photographer that can do that, more power to you, but I'd say that then this isn't the kit for you. My feeling is that this kit is aimed at the photographer who just wants to get going with shaped bokeh and doesn't have the time or inclination to craft small cutouts.

It'd also make an awesome tool for portrait photographers who are looking to differentiate their work. As cheesy as it sounds, the provided good selection of cutouts means that you can quickly pick one out that suits the occasion.

In practice, I found that my shooting tended to consist of taking a few test shots on auto-metering and auto-focus, and then switching to both manual mode (for shutter speed) and manual focus. You also need to be mindful of the depth of field of the lens that you are using, and how a careful choice of both subject and distance from the camera will affect the result. As such, I don't think this kit is for the total beginner - however, I think an intermediate to advanced photographer would get a lot out of it.

If you fit into one of these categories, I'm going to go ahead and cheerfully recommend it.

black and white

2009-12-13T19:03:00.000-08:00

More fun with the plungercam mini - in black and white :)

Pigeons on a mission (redux)

5 5 5

Plungercam mini prototype

2009-12-06T16:10:00.000-08:00

So last week I posted up a lengthy description of an experiment I did where I tried building an optical coupler for SLR lenses and camera phones. The post got reposted to a bunch of the major geek and regular news websites and about a zillion people dropped by to have a look.

A bunch of really interesting technical discussions and observations arose out of the whole thing, and for those folks involved (you know who you are) - you're awesome.

So, as demonstrated earlier, I'm a sucker for ugly camera mods. Following up on a discussion I had with the always brilliant fksr a few months ago, I wanted to prototype a revision on my plungercam design that properly allows for both tilt and shift whilst still being being able to be fixed in position for timelapse work.

I had an old 28mm minolta lens lying about that seemed perfect for the job. It isn't a medium format lens, so the issue arose of getting it close enough to the camera sensor so we can do tilt and shift motions. In breaking with my principle of not disassembling lenses, I removed the f-stop adjustment mechanism at the back of the lens (above) so that the back end of it could comfortably fit inside the lens aperture on the camera.

The next bit is the awesome part that fksr proposed. Instead of attaching the lens to the body by using a tube, use some sort of strut mechanism that allows the lens to be posed into position. By just using stiff wire, you can move the lens to almost anywhere you like.

I took a body cap and as per usual cut out the middle of it. I then added four small holes around the edge of the cap that wire could be threaded through. Using two lengths of wire, I added four struts. To test that it worked, I clamped the newly stripped-down lens to the struts using the classic metal plumbing clip. To keep light tight and to (mostly) protect it from the elements, I added a denim sleeve.

This new mechanism allows for both tilt and, significantly, shift movements. To adjust the lens, you just pull on the kinks on the wire until it is posed into the position you desire.

I haven't had a chance to systematically test the shift movements yet; the upcoming bad weather is going to be a bit of a damper on my plans to run about and do some shooting. However, I was able to do some casual shooting earlier on in the week with it.

The two big advantages it seems to have so far: the control of focus is much more subtle, leading to the in-focus areas being much sharper than the original, and the wide field of view. Further testing and prototyping is in-progress :)

The Phone-O-Scope: Attaching SLR lenses to an iPhone

2009-12-01T00:44:00.000-08:00

[Edit #5: A slightly more sane hack: new DIY tilt-shift lens prototype]

[Edit #4: I've responded to some of the issues raised about image quality]

[Edit #3: Hi to all the folks from hackaday, wired, makezine, gizmodo, engadget, TUAW and all the other corners of the inter-tubes.]

[Edit #2: This post, translated into Russian and Chinese - how awesome is that!]

[Edit #1: See some of my other DIY projects (tilt-shift plungercam, papercraft etc) here]

[Edit #0: And follow me on twitter, here!]

I've been trying to learn a bit more about the optics involved in mid- to pro-level cameras, and I've been finding that getting out the tools and doing some hacking serves as a great mechanism for instruction. Just recently the idea of optical couplers - that is, a system to transmit light from one optical device to another to make an image - has gotten my attention.

Mainly just to see if it was possible (and to teach myself about optical couplers), I thought I'd try my hand at building an adapter so I could attach SLR lenses to my iPhone. The result is pretty cheesy, but nevertheless - I present to you, the Phone-O-Scope:

The Phone-O-Scope with an 18-55mm lens attached.

In use.

Just to get the inevitable question of 'why' out of the way - well, why not? As far as I can tell, I think this is the first - I couldn't find any similar SLR lens to camera phone attaching attempts anywhere else online (I'm not including the mini-lenses you can get as they're not 35mm lenses). The Phone-O-Scope doesn't take especially superb images, and it's a bit clumsy to handle. On the other hand, it's fun to shoot with and produces very analog (almost Holga-like) results. You also get the advantages of SLR lenses - that is, DOF effects, and the wide range of available focal lengths (i.e. macro to telephoto).

There are plenty of interesting designs for cameras floating about, and plenty of nice phones with reasonable optics attached. I'm hoping that this experiment takes the concept of a camera phone to it's illogical conclusion.

Construction

In keeping with my other optics experiments, I wanted to try something that required the minimum amount of dis assembly of expensive components (i.e. no warranty voiding!), as well as being cheap and relatively easy to assemble. The parts list (roughly) is:

Camera phone (in this case, an iPhone)
SLR lens (in this case, two Canon EF lenses)
Old surplus canon lens end cap
Hard phone case (cheapie iPhone case, ~US$10)
Old optical mechanism from a CD or DVD player (scrap - cost me $0)
Bit of old sticky putty (again, $0)
Cardboard tube for testing
2-inch PVC pipe couplers (about US$3 each)
Duct tape

I already had the lenses and phone, so the project cost me less than US$10.

Step 1:

Get the case off the phone first. This particular design doesn't do anything destructive to the phone or the case, but it's a good idea not to tempt fate :)

Step 2:

You'll need to take laser pickup (see left inset, above) out of the CD player and start to pull it to bits. I was able to get three lenses out; you'll need to verify that each one is a magnifier. These can be stacked to achieve more magnification of the lens aperture (when it is attached); the more you can magnify, the less vignetted the image will be.

I wrapped a thin layer of putty around the edges of the stacked lenses to stick thin strips of paper around the edges of the lenses. This is so that they can be assembled together and handled as a single unit.

Step 3:

Take the lens stack and insert it into the cameraphone case; I again used a bit of putty to hold it into place. Just out of interest - this turns the cameraphone into a pretty decent microscope. The depth of field is rubbish (in my case, about 1-2mm) but the magnification is huge.

Step 4:

Now that you've got the magnifier lenses in place, I'd recommend building a simple test rig to check roughly the distance you will need between the camera and the back of the SLR lens. The proper thing to do is do some proper calculations involving the measured actual magnification of the lens stack and the flange focal distance of the SLR lens. However, if you lack the equipment for proper measurement, you can estimate by building a set of sliding tubes with an SLR lens attached.

Start off by taking two sections of tubing, one slightly narrower than the other so it can slide inside the other. Cut strips along the tube with wider diameter so you can hold the lens on it using a rubber band. Attach this whole mechanism over the camera phone and magnifier.

The tricky part now is to get this working mechanism to make a picture. You'll need to slide the outer tube back and forth as well as adjusting the focusing ring on the lens, and there'll be a lot of experimentation until you get a sharp picture. If you find that all your images are heavily vignetted, you'll need to add another lens to the magnifier stack.

Step 5:

Components for the actual adapter. I used an old end lens cap, and two pieces of two-inch PVC pipe connectors. It was important that the connectors could be connected via a screw thread - this way we can move the whole SLR lens back and forth for secondary focusing.

Step 6:

Cut a hole in the lens end cap (inset top left). Use the measurements for the top and bottom cardboard tubes (step 4) to figure out how much you'll need to trim the PVC connectors. The distance that you get from the cardboard tubes should be the same as when the PVC connectors are roughly screwed together halfway, so you get lots of room to move them back and forth. To the top connector, attach the end cap. If you need, cut a notch out of the bottom connector (inset, bottom right) so it fits nicely on the case. Attach the SLR lens just and verify that your measurements are right.

Step 7:

Duct tape madness. Attach the bottom connector to the camera phone case (inset, middle bottom) using thin strips of duct tape. Make sure you get a nice tight fit, but don't go overboard with the tape. Use a bit more tape to also firmly attach the lens cap to the top PVC connector (inset, middle top). Don't forget to attach a bit of cardboard at the back to prevent too much light leakage into the mechanism. Screw the top connector to the bottom, and the Phone-O-Scope is complete (right).

50mm lens attached to the Phone-O-Scope:

18-55mm lens attached to the Phone-O-Scope:

Image quality

As I'd mentioned earlier, the point of this mod is to learn what is needed to successfully build an optical coupler. One important thing to keep in mind is that even if it doesn't work perfectly, it's still a win - I've observed what doesn't work and I'll have a much better idea about how to do it better next time.

The image quality issues come down to two main factors:

1) Optical axis alignment. The phone, lens stack and SLR lens alignment isn't good enough yet. I've found that small alignment errors in the axis - even as little as one or two millimeters - is enough to cause significant portions of the image to become out of focus

2) Image stack lenses used. The lenses are out of a CD player; they're not perfect magnifiers, and, they're designed to work with a specific wavelength of light. This is a significant contributor to the chromatic aberration observed.

Technical issues aside, I'd also say that there is something to be said for having an unpredictable mechanism that prevents you from getting the same photo twice. I've taken a lot of photos with the plungercam, and I've found that although I do take a lot of images that are no good, there are a few that are pretty awesome. And the best bit about that is that I can say with reasonable certainty that it'll be impossible to ever get those same shots ever again. If that doesn't appeal to you, then this type of modification is not for you.

Results

The Phone-O-Scope produces fuzzy, Holga-like images. I think a lot of the image artifacts (strong chromatic aberration, bizarro lens distortion) are down to the extreme magnifier stack. However, I've tested it with a few Canon EF lenses now and it does seem to work reasonably well with every one. At the very least, it seems to work like a telescope for the iPhone, and it is fun to shoot with (not to mention the odd looks I get when I'm using it :)

I've got a series of comparison images below; an iPhone picture is on the left, and a Phone-O-Scope image is on the right. In the interest of transparency: I've made some small corrections to the Phone-O-Scope images (exposure, white & black points):

Note the odd barrel distortion and vignetting in the Phone-O-Scope image. Taken with the 18-55mm lens.

The Phone-O-Scope isn't quite as sharp, but you can clearly see how the camera now has a definite DOF effect - in the standard iPhone picture, nearly everything is in focus. Taken with the 50mm lens.

Taken with the 50mm lens.

empty spaces

2009-11-25T09:00:00.000-08:00

A while ago I saw a collection of photos of Hong Kong where the photographer had taken photos of the city in such a way that it did indeed look not only deserted, but abandoned. His technique was simple, but rewarding - he just used a telephoto lens, picked a spot and just waited and waited until everyone cleared off from the desired shot, sort of like inverse bird-watching. I wish I could remember where I saw the photos, as it was a really great set.

It's not an unexplored theme though - this gentleman took photos of an oddly abandoned looking London by scooting around on a bike on Christmas morning. There's a whole group on flickr that I've just discovered devoted to the topic of normal towns looking like ghost towns.

One bloke who has done well out of the idea is Christopher Thomas. His formula was to get around New York in the predawn light with a larger format camera and he gets eerie, luminous images of New York (book link here).

Caliber SF Halloween Photowalk

2009-11-01T12:42:00.000-08:00

The excellent folks at caliber SF organised a Halloween photowalk across SF yesterday; it was a riot.

Full set here, even more from the other photogs here :)

Blue Angels at San Francisco Fleet Week, 2009

2009-10-12T07:34:00.000-07:00

Slideshow here.

Why I ride a bike

2009-09-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

Route 1: Getting the 22 MUNI bus back home from work

Distance: 6.7km
Time: 45 mins (not including time to walk to the bus stop!)
Average speed: 9km/h (!!)
Pros: Not driving, can read a book
Cons: Getting stabbed in the pancreas, the malefic odour of a San Francisco transient as they sit right next to you

Route 2: Riding my bike

Distance: 11.0km
Time: 37 minutes
Average speed: 18 km/h
Pros: Exercise, the view along the waterfront, not being tied to a bus schedule
Cons: Headphone-wearing pedestrians walking out in front of you, splashback from the giant octopus that occasionally tries to destroy the Golden Gate Bridge

Bay Bridge Bypass

2009-09-07T23:44:00.000-07:00

[Prefix: A huge, enormous thanks has to go out to Margena Wade, (Community Liaison Officer) and other staff at the Bay Bridge project at Caltrans for giving me the opportunity to go out and look at the construction of the bridge. It's an amazing project on an enormous scale, and I've been enormously lucky to have had the opportunity to go out and have a look at it first hand :)]

I set out on Friday afternoon after work to have a look at the Bay Bridge bypass construction work first hand. Heading over on the trusty 108 MUNI, I scuttled about Yerba Buena and Treasure Island trying to get a few good shots. I nabbed a spectacular moonrise over the construction site:

...as well as a time-lapse with ye olde plungercam of the old bridge section being rolled out, as well as a timelapse of the moonrise :)

However, I was lucky enough to be invited back to the island for a tour of the site on Saturday evening - and it was absolutely spectacular.

This is the boat pier on the East side of the bay bridge construction site. Here a service connected the two Caltrans command centres at Yerba Buena island, and it's from here I got the awesome ferry ride out on the water to have a look at the entire span of the bridge.

On the left hand side of the image you can see the new section of the bridge completely rolled into place; when I arrived on Saturday evening it was being worked on by engineering crews who were working on a pile of verification and connection tasks.

The bypass weighs about 7000 tons (!) and was assembled 50m up in the air and slid into place on rails. I asked about what it takes to overcome that sort of inertia to get it moving, and the answer was lots of hydraulics and dish soap.

In the mid-ground on the right two-thirds of the image, you can see the existing Bay bridge; just behind it is the new bridge. For the majority of the distance, the deck is in a side-by side configuration. I believe that the current point where it is up to is named W2; from there until pier E2 (mostly obscured by the construction work) it becomes a deck suspended by a pylon, and after that it converts into a double deck configuration to enter into Yerba Buena island.

On the far left of the image, you can see 'falsework' construction leading up to pier E2; on the right, you can see the twin deck coming over from Oakland and pier W2. The falsework is in place so that the deck, which is normally going to be suspended from a pylon, can be constructed whilst the pylon is put into place. When the suspension cables are added, the falsework will be removed.

The Left Coast Lifter is one of the world's largest floating cranes, and was constructed specifically for the job of installing sections of the Bay Bridge. This behemoth is about 30 stories high (!) and after the job with the Bay Bridge is likely to be deployed elsewhere. Before construction it was used to lift a sunken WW II tugboat. Here you can see it parked at Oakland, just in front of some falsework that is going to be used to temporarily support the span of the new bridge.

One of the many characteristic cranes lining the Oakland foreshore.

Inspection of the Bay Bridge revealed that a two-inch crack in an eyebar on the East span of the bridge; I'm pretty sure the crane and lift in the middle are near where the broken eyebar is. The crack means that the re-opening of the bridge may need to be delayed whist crews work overnight on fixing the problem.

This is my favourite shot; the plungercam does all sorts of interesting things with smearing out point light sources. Golden hour at sunset is very, very kind to photographers in the Bay area summer :)

In the centre of the image you just make out the crane next to the newly discovered broken eyebar support on the bridge.

All in all, it was an awesome weekend :D The full photoset is here.

More photon-based shenanigans

2009-08-11T13:00:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was a trip up to South Lake Tahoe, and it wouldn't have been the same without some unwarranted and needless geeking out.

I was keen to test both plungercam 2 and the time-lapse recording setup under some more challenging conditions out in the field.

I'm a huge fan of Keith Loutit and his use of tilt-shift for minituarisation, and I wanted to have a go myself:

I carried a netbook, camera, lens and mini-tripod up on the hike around Emerald bay to get the shot. Chuck kindly took a couple of shots of me setting up the whole thing and running the capture, so you can get an idea of how (relatively) minimal the setup is:

On a less terrestrial scale, I also wanted to get a nice capture of stars in motion. Given that we were well outside of the city, I thought it was a a reasonable enough proposition - however, the moon was nearly full, so that did tend to wash things out a fair bit as soon as it rose. However, the result wasn't awful:

I used auto-levels to try to bring out the stars a bit, but it does tend to cause some odd colour artifacts - see the weird green hues in the second sequence above. Next time I think I'll try to control the levels manually rather than leave it to an algorithm.

On the plain old 2D front, Tahoe yielded a few nice shots:

Full set here.

...and last Wednesday, I was helping out the San Francisco Bay Guardian again by taking some candids at the annual Best of the Bay party downtown. Good time had by all :)

Full set here.

Plungercam 2: cheaper and more predictable :)

2009-07-27T15:50:00.000-07:00

[Edit #0: hi to everyone from hackaday, crunchgear, makezine, lifehacker, and wired! And Photojojo too :)]

[Edit #1: Some new results with Plungercam 2 here; earlier video experiments with tilt-shift here and here.]

[Edit #2: Those who are looking for the reasoning behind the project and details on how to get parts might want to check out the write up for the original plungercam first.]

[Edit #3: Need a tip with building the plungercam? Want to collaborate on a project? Don't hesitate to drop me an email]

[Edit #4: See some of my other DIY projects (plungercam 1, iPhone SLR lens adapter, papercraft etc) here]

The original plungercam that I built earlier this year has been an absolute joy to use. However, the original design has a couple of problems.

1) The mounting mechanism to attach it to the camera uses a plastic body cap, which was never designed to hold much weight. As a result, the teeth on the cap have been slowly disintegrating under the weight (see inset, above). Mounting the lens has now become pretty unreliable.

2) Usage - there is a lot of fun to be had by forcing the user to tweak the focus by hand, meaning zero repeatability - no two plungercam shots will ever be the same. However, this means that it is unusable for time-lapse video applications, where it is important to keep the lens in the same place between shots.

I'll go through the construction of the dead simple Plungercam 2, which addresses the above two issues. It's worth pointing out at this stage that this is the first step in getting the plungercam to behave like a proper tilt-shift lens. Currently it only really handles tilt, so, strictly speaking, it's role is more like a very quirky selective focus mechanism than actual perspective correction.

Plungercam 2 keeps in the spirit of the original plungercam by using cheap plumbing equipment and affixing it to precision optics. This iteration eliminates the need for glue altogether, so all the optical components can be easily taken out and re-used elsewhere.

The main component is a rubberized pipe coupling, which I got for $7 at the always awesome Center hardware. The two adjustable steel bands will be used to hold the mount and lens securely in place. This particular one is two inches on the narrow end, and three on the wider end.

To fix the problem with the body cap mount teeth fraying, I decided to replace it with a T-mount T-mount adapter. I picked up the one I'm using for $3 from one of the closing Ritz camera stores.

I'm re using the $12 (from ebay) Zenza bronica medium format lens that was in plungercam 1. Since this was only held in place using a metal clip, it was easy to take it out and re-use it.

Total cost: ~$22 :)

The narrow end of the pipe connector is going to be connected to the camera; to maximise the usability of the lens, we want the narrow end to be as short as is practical. The general idea is to put the t-mount adapter into the narrow end, and to use the pipe clip to secure it into place.

Slide the pipe clip as far along as it can go along the connector, and score using a hobby knife around the edge of it that is going to be attaching to the camera. Remove the clip, and cut along the score line (again, a hobby knife will do the job here) to chop off the top of the connector. Keep the cut as perpendicular to the surface as possible.

My T-mount adapter was a little than two inches on its external diameter, and the connector itself is designed with a two inch fitting on its narrow end. With a bit of careful levering, the adapter can be wedged into the connector. Whilst it is a good fit, it's a good idea to put the pipe clamp back on and screw it tightly into place. Last thing you need is the adapter falling apart when it is on the camera :P

To finish the adapter, place the lens inside the wide end of the connector, and adjust to get the tilt desired. To fix it into place, simply tighten the screw clip. To reposition, loosen the screw clip, mess about with the lens position, and try again.

The design works because the mount is rubber, and the lens size is just a little less than the diameter of its mount. The lens sits comfortably in the mount, and the adjustable rubber gives it room to move when you want to tilt it. The metal clip (when tightened!) ensures that the lens can be held in place. The field tests that I've done so far have shown that the lens is indeed held pretty solidly in place.

The main drawback is that it's not as interactive as plungercam 1, and it takes much longer to set up a shot. On the other hand, you can definitely use it for time-lapse captures, which was a goal of mine.

It's definitely still a work in progress (I still need to add a rack to more precisely control lens shift as well as tilt), but results so far are not too bad :)

link to video

Little bits of San Francisco

2009-06-12T07:45:00.000-07:00

Howard St:

Sabretooth cast on the Embarcadero:

Art at Humpry Slocombe in the Mission:

At the counter, Humpry Slocombe in the Mission: