156. Gears - June 8-14, 2016
Byron-
The first gears I thought of were the gears on my bicycle. I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could show blurred action and frozen still in the same picture. I mentally (yes, that's possible for me) referred back to Joe McNally and his style. I decided to make the photo look like it was taken in an old time bicycle repair shop. That meant warm lighting for the most part. I suspended my bike from the rafters so it would be at a comfortable working height. I set my camera's white balance to daylight. I then bounced a tungsten floodlight off a nearby wall to give general illumination to the bike. I set up a strobe behind the bike to illuminate the background. I put the tungsten filter on that light to warm it up. I then took a second strobe and attached the Byro-snoot. I aimed it so only the edge of the light would strike the rear gear cluster. That had no filter to color the light. In theory I'd end up with really warm light except where the Byro-snoot light hit the bike. With the help of Erleen stabilizing the bike I rotated the pedal about 1/2 turn. While it was rotating, I triggered the camera with my remote. There was enough ambient light to show motion and enough flash to freeze the chain. The camera was set to a 1/2 second exposure and the flash was set to rear curtain. The aperture was f8.
The first gears I thought of were the gears on my bicycle. I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could show blurred action and frozen still in the same picture. I mentally (yes, that's possible for me) referred back to Joe McNally and his style. I decided to make the photo look like it was taken in an old time bicycle repair shop. That meant warm lighting for the most part. I suspended my bike from the rafters so it would be at a comfortable working height. I set my camera's white balance to daylight. I then bounced a tungsten floodlight off a nearby wall to give general illumination to the bike. I set up a strobe behind the bike to illuminate the background. I put the tungsten filter on that light to warm it up. I then took a second strobe and attached the Byro-snoot. I aimed it so only the edge of the light would strike the rear gear cluster. That had no filter to color the light. In theory I'd end up with really warm light except where the Byro-snoot light hit the bike. With the help of Erleen stabilizing the bike I rotated the pedal about 1/2 turn. While it was rotating, I triggered the camera with my remote. There was enough ambient light to show motion and enough flash to freeze the chain. The camera was set to a 1/2 second exposure and the flash was set to rear curtain. The aperture was f8.
Deron-
Japanese Throwing Gears
Japanese Throwing Gears
Kevin-
Gears? If Byron had simply suggested Gear instead of Gears it would have opened up a world of possibilities. But I think he wanted us to take it literally, so Gears it is.
Back in the late 1990’s, early 2000’s I was working on an innovative retail hobby shop concept that would have been called The Machine Shop. Sadly the numbers didn’t work out economically. But in the course of the research I became a fan of building and modifying RC (Radio Control) cars.
These cars have been sitting in storage for fifteen years now. But they had interesting gearing mechanisms. So I hauled one out to photograph.
Team Losi was a big RC brand in those days, and this is a Team Losi XXX-S 4WD Touring Sedan. I had added every Graphite component that I could to it as well as other hop-up parts. But much has changed in the last fifteen years. For instance battery technology has improved moving from Ni-Cad to Nickel-Metal Hydride to Lithium Polymer. That changes the battery charger as well as the battery and the connecters. Since the old NiCads were totally shot I did the upgrading. At the local hobby shop I was cautioned that the old tires were probably pretty useless now. But since I would have the car on a platform during the shot that was only a minor concern.
I set everything up with the intention from the beginning to combine continuous light and flash, to freeze action and show movement of the gears and wheels. I was moving lights from here to there, playing around with shutter speed, aperture, ISO flash intensity, etc. For each shot I would only have the motor of the car running slowly and the gears and wheels turning for just a few a few brief seconds.
Unfortunately I discovered that another big problem had occurred after those years. Shortly after this exposure was taken the main gear driven drive belt you see that transfered power from the motor to the gears instantly shredded into hundreds and hundreds of little twists of, well whatever the heck the belt was originally made from. I had a lot more to do, and had only begun to play around with proper angles and tweaks, and lighting but the shoot was instantly over.
Still, you can sort of see the gears moving, and frozen, which is basically what I had wanted to achieve.
And now I am searching the web to find out if anyone has a remaining replacement belt for this 15 year old car (ha, ha, ha), and if I can find one whether that part will last any longer then this one did!
Nikon D4s, tripod mounted, 105mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor lens, ISO 50, 1/30th of a second at f/3.2. One tungsten flood light to capture the motion and and one Nikon flash unit to freeze the action as key lights behind the RC car, one more Nikon flash unit in a small softbox near the camera as the fill light.
Gears? If Byron had simply suggested Gear instead of Gears it would have opened up a world of possibilities. But I think he wanted us to take it literally, so Gears it is.
Back in the late 1990’s, early 2000’s I was working on an innovative retail hobby shop concept that would have been called The Machine Shop. Sadly the numbers didn’t work out economically. But in the course of the research I became a fan of building and modifying RC (Radio Control) cars.
These cars have been sitting in storage for fifteen years now. But they had interesting gearing mechanisms. So I hauled one out to photograph.
Team Losi was a big RC brand in those days, and this is a Team Losi XXX-S 4WD Touring Sedan. I had added every Graphite component that I could to it as well as other hop-up parts. But much has changed in the last fifteen years. For instance battery technology has improved moving from Ni-Cad to Nickel-Metal Hydride to Lithium Polymer. That changes the battery charger as well as the battery and the connecters. Since the old NiCads were totally shot I did the upgrading. At the local hobby shop I was cautioned that the old tires were probably pretty useless now. But since I would have the car on a platform during the shot that was only a minor concern.
I set everything up with the intention from the beginning to combine continuous light and flash, to freeze action and show movement of the gears and wheels. I was moving lights from here to there, playing around with shutter speed, aperture, ISO flash intensity, etc. For each shot I would only have the motor of the car running slowly and the gears and wheels turning for just a few a few brief seconds.
Unfortunately I discovered that another big problem had occurred after those years. Shortly after this exposure was taken the main gear driven drive belt you see that transfered power from the motor to the gears instantly shredded into hundreds and hundreds of little twists of, well whatever the heck the belt was originally made from. I had a lot more to do, and had only begun to play around with proper angles and tweaks, and lighting but the shoot was instantly over.
Still, you can sort of see the gears moving, and frozen, which is basically what I had wanted to achieve.
And now I am searching the web to find out if anyone has a remaining replacement belt for this 15 year old car (ha, ha, ha), and if I can find one whether that part will last any longer then this one did!
Nikon D4s, tripod mounted, 105mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor lens, ISO 50, 1/30th of a second at f/3.2. One tungsten flood light to capture the motion and and one Nikon flash unit to freeze the action as key lights behind the RC car, one more Nikon flash unit in a small softbox near the camera as the fill light.
Paul-
Why I have a Tupperware container in my nano-studio full of gears is not all that important. That I have them, is. It enabled me to cobble together a sort of on-the-fly metallic mandala…a dented dreamcatcher…a grooved glyph…a metallurgic meme
(Sorry, I like alliteration.)
Anyway, this was fun, and I like the result.
Malleable metadata 18-55mm lens set at 30mm; aperture priority; ISO 800; matrix metered; -0.33 EV; 1.3 sec. at f/16. Object is flanked by lights directed towards the ceiling to help maintain the metal's reflective quality while allowing the dark black fabric on which it rests to stay…well, dark black.
Why I have a Tupperware container in my nano-studio full of gears is not all that important. That I have them, is. It enabled me to cobble together a sort of on-the-fly metallic mandala…a dented dreamcatcher…a grooved glyph…a metallurgic meme
(Sorry, I like alliteration.)
Anyway, this was fun, and I like the result.
Malleable metadata 18-55mm lens set at 30mm; aperture priority; ISO 800; matrix metered; -0.33 EV; 1.3 sec. at f/16. Object is flanked by lights directed towards the ceiling to help maintain the metal's reflective quality while allowing the dark black fabric on which it rests to stay…well, dark black.
Don-
I just watched a video about using a MIDI controller, such as a Behringer BCF2000
to take the place of a mouse in editing photos in lightroom. Looked pretty cool. Now
if I could only get to liking lightroom.
I just watched a video about using a MIDI controller, such as a Behringer BCF2000
to take the place of a mouse in editing photos in lightroom. Looked pretty cool. Now
if I could only get to liking lightroom.