Bad Boredom Ideas

I was relatively bored after returning home after school today, so I decided to take apart a lens. I'd been wanting to for a while now, but never got around to it. The aperture was stuck wide open and the aperture ring wouldn't change it. It was an old Auto MC 28mm f/2.8 for Canon SLRs that I mounted onto my newer DSLR with an adapter. However, because the adapter had additional corretive glass in it, the quality of the lens was degraded. With that problem and a broken aperture and the cheap price, I didn't really mind taking it apart. I had no clue what I was doing whatsoever. I took apart a broken Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 previously because it was a common problem and partially, temporarily fixed it before it broke about half an hour later and the glass elements just came out of the front...but that fix was completely based off a tutorial printed off the internet. And that lens is relatively simple and cheaply made, as seen through the low price tag. Old lenses were all metal, which I really like, and apparently, have a lot of parts. Also, mad props to lens creators back then, the focus rings are smoother than butter, and to be honest, smoother than most 'L' series lenses I've felt. Even the cheap old lenses felt better. They're just built so well.

So here are some pictures from the process. Didn't feel like doing editing because it would be really light editing either way.

CAP Hollywood Preparations

So. CAP Hollywood is coming up. And I'm pretty excited. I like videos. and I've been done with this documentary project a while. Oh, and about that. My group got an honorable mention. Yeah, that's cool. Proud of that. I think I'll try next year, but who knows? So for CAP Hollywood, I'm definitely going to put in work. For once. I loaf...too much. I really should try more. I could probably do okay in school. In preparation, I bought a new lens and a mic. I previously had no audio equipment/experience. It'll be something new. Maybe I can learn a bit in terms of audio effects for a certain character in our short story. I've never explored the depths of Adobe Audition.

The lens I got was an old Russian M42 screw mount for, I believe, Pentax cameras. I've been in the need for a 50 prime for a while, but didn't want to get the popular "nifty fifty" Canon 50mm f/1.8 because my sister already has it. No need to get the exact same lens. And I like to do my research, and eventually concluded to get the Super Takumar 50mm f/1.4. Quite a nice lens I must admit. Nike bokeh and what not. Not going to get into specifics. One interesting thing about this lens is that some of the glass elements contain Thorium-232. Now, Thorium is special, because it's radioactive. Boom. Whoa. After a bit of research, I found out it's ever so slightly radioactive, though. Had my family concerned for a moment there. Apparently, you would need to be exposed to it for 100,000 hours a year for it to reach the minimum dose linked to increased risk for cancer. There are a bit under 9,000 hours in a year. So, we're fine. The half-life is 14 billion years...So Thorium over time decays, and tints the glass a bit yellow. This can be fixed by exposure to sunlight or UV light. That's all the details I'll give. But it's a fantastic lens. Mic hasn't arrived yet. So until then, here are pics from the lens.

 

Extracting Quality Stills from Video

So, recently enough, Canon released the newest 1D camera, their most professional grade camera line. It's the Canon EOS 1D-C. Now, this is something new, because the C stands for Cinema. It's the first DSLR to be able to shoot 4k video, which is 4 times the size/quality of 1080p.This camera is basically a replica of the Canon 1D-X, except its video capabilities. Something itneresting about it being able to take 4k video is that you can actually extract frames from the video to use as pictures. This wasnt possible previously because the quality of video was less than half the quality of a "medium" size picture file. The details in the picture would be much less, and colors more easily blown out. Now, with this camera, one frame is about the same size as an 8 MP shot on my much cheaper T2i. Yet, at the same time, you get video, and the ability to choose from 24 frames each second for the one perfect shot, compared to the about 3.7 on my cheaper DSLR. However, there is a slight downside to this 4k video on the 1D-C: it's compressed, not RAW. Many photographers shoot in RAW uncompressed files so that they can be more easily manipulated in post, however, video is almost always always compressed, as is the case with the 1D-C. I mean, it'll still look incredible and be quite usable, but it's still not quite there. Currently, to get RAW 4k footage, you'd need an actual cinema camera that would likely cost upwards of $20,000 such as the RED Epic (about $35,000 to get up and running) or Sony Cinealta F65 (More than that).

Check out a investigation done by cinematographers (including the famous Phillip Bloom) here:




If you're interested in buying it, look here, and then give up.

Silver Chips Photography Portfolio Pics

So, I want to try and be a photographer for the school newspaper Silver Chips next year. Photography is getting more and more itneresting to me. However, to be on the staff, you need to submit a portfolio to the head photographer, which happens to be my sister. I didn't know it needed to be done within a week or two (and aparently she didn't either), so I've kinda been scrambling for photos the last few days. I still need more action shots, but it only needs to be between 8 and 12 photos, so it's not that bad.

I went out with a few friends to the local city and decided to take some pictures. I borrowed my sister's trusty 50mm f/1.8 and that is what resulted:

Find more photos/my portfolio on my Flickr
They're also higher resolution...

The Deteriorating Relation

From Old to Older...

I just stumbled upon this article on Petapixel about how a photographer found old photos of a school and then took photos from the same angle of the same things in the same school. The difference is, now, the school is abandoned. It's really interesting to see all the similarities and differences. How it changed over time or didn't change is interesting. I never think of how some things in my life now probably won't be there in 20-30 years.

This project could also be considered urbex. Urbex stands for urban exploration: a usually illegal form of exploring old, abandoned places, often for photos. There are communities for it all around. Many of the buildings are old tuberculosis hospitals or mental/insane asylums. I've been interested in this type of photography (great for HDR). I like the abandoned nature. How it's been untouched for years. How it's essentially be non-existent to the world for a time. For most people, these places don't exist, and never will. Unfortunately, they're mostly a good 30-60 minutes away from the city and, well, illegal. It's hard to get people to drive you places to trespass and risk getting caught. There's also frequently asbestos, which isn't good for your health.

Here are some sample pictures from the set:

Here are some other Urbex photos:

Reuter's 95 Best photos of the Year

Best photos of the year according to Reuters. Some of these photos are simply amazing photos capturing the wildest occurrences, some photojournalism incredible photos, and some emotional photos. As you scroll through you'll be shocked. I know I was. Just a short post about this. Definitely worth sharing.

Note: Petapixel went through the photos analyzing the EXIF data provided and compiled graphs showing the most popular settings, cameras, lenses, etc. Seen here. Canon had the majority of photos. Just saying.

Photography. An Unique Perspective.

I recently found this article on Petapixel. Petapixel is a popular photo website that shares links to interesting photography things, such as rumors about new cameras, techniques, photographer's projects, random comparisons or statistics, etc. Check it out here. This article is about a photographer, Ian Ruhter, who thinks the digital age destroyed photography, so he made his own camera, which is now the world's largest camera, in the back of his van. Each photo costs him 500 dollars using a process called the collodian process.

The collodian process or "wet plate photography" is one of the oldest photographic techniques invented by Frederic Scott Archer and Gustave Le Gray in the mid 1800s that involves coating, sensitizing, and exposing a photographic material (I believe he mentioned himself using silver plates?) within about a 15 minute time frame. It forces the photographer to have a portable darkroom (where photographers edit/finish photos that aren't digital). One more popular form of this process was the tintype that continued into the 1930s. The process was replaced by the dry gelatin plate. One plus for this type of photography is the amount of detail it can capture, as seen through the photos by Ian Ruhter. It also always provides black and white photos (which in my opinion have something special about them, they're always interesting to me).

His photos: http://ianruhter.tumblr.com

He made a documentary about his work: