Homemade flash bounce.

Warning: This post is audience specific. This might not make sense if you are unaware of Flash Bounce. So if you still want to go ahead and read on, here are some pre-reqs. that might help :)

Right, if we are still reading, to begin with, I own a Quantarary Manual Flash, which doesn't have a swivel(bounce) head. Putting the implications blunt and straight, I can NOT have bounce with the flash. For some weeks, I went on with no bounce, but it was giving me terrible results very often. I started feeling handicap on this aspect, and then tried looking for ways to hit this issue. (Ofcourse the best way is ruled out as I do not have ample finances for a new strobe :)

I struck gold with a few minutes of thinking... I am going to put the implementation in 3 diagrams. I guess these are self explanatory. (Forgive me for the illegible font)


Diagram 1: This is one of the reasons why I was badly in need of the bounce getting to work.


Diagram 2: This was the simplest, poorest and fastest way to have bounce on my flash.


Diagram 3: This is how the design works.

Things used:
1. Card board
2. White paper
3. Aluminium\silver foil
4. Sticking tapes to hold on the papers.

And the most important thing, IT WORKS!!

Dream comes true ...

Well WE WON THE GAME!!! That pretty much says it all!!

The Dream Finale!!

The T20 WC has been a riot of swashbuckling shots and a festival of sixes & fours. The Indians started with an unconvincing victory in a bowl out, and then a loss to NZ. But now we have made our mark on the T20 arena by packing up England, South Africa & Australia!

The Indians have really come up from the day they lost Sri Lanka in the Windies and were thrown out of the WC07. Since then, amongst rage, frustration & disappointment the Indian team has fought against all odds, and today they play Pakistan in the T20 WC Final!!

What more could you ask in return for the poor performance in the WC earlier this year! No matter what the result, we already have found "The Team India" who can really Lead India to 2011!!

ALL THE BEST TEAM INDIA!!!!!!! LETS GET GOING...

Frame-Magic

Before I begin, let me mention, this is an IMHO blog -

Recently, I found a free utility that adds custom frames to your images. If given a choice, I wouldn't go for framing all the pics, but at times it does add a lot of depth and a sense of containment :)

Have a look at this one-




















If you see the image without the frame, the tiny flowers look segregated. But with the frame, the togetherness has jumped in!

Does flash affect eyes ... especially babies?

Hmmm ... this is my second post of the day. I am thinking of following Chetan Bhagat ;) ...

Anyways the reason I write this post is based on my last months trip to Bombay. I had a family function to attend, and these are perfect occasions to try your hand at portraits. You generally find babies with colorful attires & cool expressions. They are one of my favorite subjects. But every time I click with my flash on, one question bothers me all the way... "Am I bothering their young eyes?"

Yesterday finally I found one article, which had perfectly answered my question. Some of the facts mentioned (in consent with people in medical world) were:

- The eyes of babies are sensitive and they can be harmed with prolonged exposure to concentrated and intense light. Its similar to a dried leaf, which sits unharmed on a hot-bright sunny road. But the moment you put a magnifying glass and focus the sunlight, it shall start burning away.

- The good news here is, out flash is neither concentrated nor prolonged. But the flash can create a temporary blackout in some cases.

For more information, click here
....

On that note, I'd say its safe but avoid :)

Taming the light...

Taking a shot against the light is always a difficult task. 9 out of 10 shots are unsatisfactory. Having a balance of the light falling on the subject and the light coming from the back is necessary. The simplest way to encounter this situation is to turn around and take the click with the light... :) If I have the shooting conditions in my hand, I generally prefer shooting with the light. But again thats not the case always.

A cheap way to go with, is to fire the flash which adds more light on the subject. This will make the subject brighter than the oncoming light. Might do the trick... But there are times when the oncoming light is too too bright and intense for the flash to nullify...

There is cheap, and then there is a poor mans cheap: Crop away the over exposed part!! :) This works well, as long as you don't have a tightly packed frame. (Tightness of the image is the % of the total area that the subject occupies.) So in case of tight images its again difficult to crop...

But when all the above 3 ways are dumped, we endup with the LIGHT...

We then go to the last escape, which is a combination of flash and apperture ...

Have a look at this image. A quick run through the setting of the conditions: The subject here is the vase, which is kept in front of the door. It was ~1130 in the morning, bright sunlight outside. The sunlight reflected from the wind shield & body of the car is creating intense light interfence in the picture. This was taken at 1/160sec & f5.6 AND THE FLASH DID FIRE!!



With the aperture logic, it would make sense to have a smaller appreture(higher f stop) to allow lesser light. Sure enough with a trade off with the Depth of field. But then have a look at the image below:



Certainly you can now read the number plate of the car, but it has eaten up the excess light. And I would be happy to buy this image than the one taken with excess light. This was taken at f/14. Now in here, I might have gone with a faster shutter as well, but then "Flash Sync" comes in my way, and the electronic lock binds my fastest shutter with flash to 1/160sec.

With all the above stuff, you might want to experiment with shutter speed in addition to flash and aperture. Hoping that your cameras allow you with a faster shutter and flash.

Let me know of the results..

Escrow

Of late came across a business term "Escrow".

Escrow essentially is a legal agreement done during deals. The dealing parties appoint a third party, and the asset(money) of the deal is kept with the 3rd party till all the conditions of the contract are satisfied. On completion, the escrow agent transfers the amount to the recipient.

Mystery unfolds!!

I would classify this blog for people who are really keen on Manual photography.

Before I went digital on cameras, I had been using a Full Manual Film SLR (Ricoh KR5 Super2). On this camera I had no other option to manually adjust the parameters based on the light conditions. When I took some shots with an external flash and a comparitively faster shutter speed(1/500 or even faster), I got quite a few images with a prominent black band.

An example is attached below...



View in Picasa


Completely baffled with the results, I would convince myself, considering some fault in the way the film was developed. Until recent I believed that it was the film that was causing the issue. But then I noticed the same band appearing on the images taken with my digital camera. Well, now this needs investigation!!

For symptoms, it was evident that a fast shutter was a clear suspect. Then I took a look at all the digicam images, versus the affected digicam images. I realized that the external flash was a common factor in most of the affected images. Beyond the above 2 , I could not find more culprits. But eventually these 2 were enough to nail this one down. Let me explain...

Test1:
To reproduce the issue, I started shooting with external flash + slower shutters and then increasing the shutter speed by a step. The anamoly didnt reproduce. I reached 1/250 and still there was no sign of the crime. But then with 1/500, I hit it, and subsequently all the faster shutters came with the band. So Test1 concluded that only shutter speeds 1/500 and above are affected.

Test2:
Then I tried without the manual flash, but using the inbuilt flash of the camera. But the camera wouldn't allow me to exceed the shutter speed beyond 1/180... WTF.

Then in one of the ref mans, I found something called Flash Sync!

Definition: It stands for flash synchronization. It means the fastest shutter speed you can use with the flash.

Use:
At high shutter speeds, the shutter closes faster, and only the part of the sensor is exposed to the light coming in. This leaves behind an un-exposed part of the sensor, resulting in a dark area on the image.

Icing on the cake: The old generation cameras did not have the facility to hold on the shutter speed. But now a days the digital cameras have an electronic lock on the shutter speed based on the sync speed of the flash being used. The inbuilt flash in my camera has a sync speed of 1/180, so my shutter speed locked out on the same speed. And the lock didn;t happen on the external flash because it was just a manual flash which is not identified by the camera.

Phew ... all questions answered!! Mystery sorted out!

For more information:
Flash Sync

It eludes him for the 6th time ...

Its not very exciting to see "GOD" coming so close and not getting there. Not once not twice, but 6 times on the tour.
[For all those who didn't decipher the above stmt, I am talking about Mr. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar and his unfortunate dismissals in the ongoing England tour]

The match winning 94 runs of class and elegance took India past the mammoth 316 and rung victory bells. But the 6 runs deficit still remained.

"I would like to score nineties than a century, if India wins that match" - Sachin mentioned after the match!!

The crab experience...

WARNING: Animal lovers, Veg Food eaters Don’t read on …

Generally on a rainy Sunday morning there is nothing much you can go about planning. Last weekend was one of those… The only way things can be enlightened is having a “Special Lunch”.

Out of an array of edible creatures to choose, I picked up the CRAB. *Info* you can find good fish\crabs starting from Narali Poornima *Info End* .As per the task distribution, I was the one to buy the raw material … including the dudes, ”The Crabs”.

When I hit the shop where I generally pick fish from, I saw a few strong heavy crabs. Confirming the costs, I picked up 3 dudes from the basket. The normal practice is that the shop keeper cuts off the claws before handing over the crab to the customer. The claws are the crabs only defense\offence weapons and they can hurt really badly to human hands. Knowing this, out of some thrill (which nearly cost my little finger) I asked the shopkeeper not to get rid of the claws.

At home, the moment I opened up the fellas, I saw GAINT claw poking out of the bag …

The Game was ON… My father teamed up with me versus the dude. The ladies of the house had disappeared long ago … It was running all over the kitchen platform. Due to the huge teeth on the claws, it was not possible for us to hold him at all. Priority was to defeat his claws. Not knowing how to hold him and not getting caught, we evaluated out options. We thought of pressing him down but to no avail. We also tried an attack from the back.. I know its cheating, but we had no choice. And as a punishment to unethical warfare, it he turn around and sprung on my hand … Caught unaware my little finger missed by a whisker…

So finally we slid him into the basin. With water flowing on him, he took it calm… and there was the first sign on Victory! After a grueling 10mins, we finally made it … J

And yeah, the supper turned out much more worth than the hassle !!!