Why I'm A Miserable Old Git

Oh cripes! He's at it again. "Nurse! He needs more medication!"

Well here follows some more banal gibberish, but again with a real good reason.


See that picture? It's a flash head I made for myself to help me along with my photography. I've come to realise that controlling your light can be just as important as anything else and after all, 'light' is the important aspect of photography.

Besides I did rather enjoy making this unit and the other flash head, plus the little flashes that I modified. All made from apparent junk which made me feel a little better that I've saved more space from the local landfill. Except that it'll probably land up in the bin eventually after it's prised from my cold dead hands! Never mind, started as a good intention.

It's had bits added to it too, microprocessor controlled slave, better switching power control, a couple of more tubes for more power and I'm even tinkering with an inverter to make it portable too. All costing nothing much more than my own time, (of which lately seems to be more prevelant!)

The only problem with producing this and then posting it on the internet was the damn emails I was plagued with! Request for circuit diagrams, help, ideas and of course to start with I could only abide by my good natured side and offer to help. Except that it proved to be a bit more than I could comfortably chew.



Imagine for a moment that an extra-terrestrial alien appears in your living room whilst you're watching your favourite TV programme. Of course you'd like to jump up and offer it a warm welcome to planet Earth, but it is your favourite programme after all! So after a deeply drawn breath you begrudgingly welcome the alien.

"I have come to experience the beverage you call tea", says the alien.
"Oh right", you say uninterestingly still with an eye back at that television.
"Apparently you are famous in the galaxy for your tea beverage", the alien adds.
"Oh of course!", you think to yourself, "being British seems to mean to everyone in the world that we're a nation of tea swilling idiots, let alone the galaxy".

Well, you're missing your programme due to this fascinating multi-galaxial interruption and point the alien in the direction of the kitchen adding, "Yeah, the kettle's in there."

To which the alien replies, "What is a kettle?"

"Jeez!", you exclaim in your head not wanting to sound rude and then wondering if this alien has telepathic abilities and has heard your thoughts anyway.
"It's the silver thing on the kitchen worktop plugged into the wall", you say whilst still craning your neck to watch your programme. To which the alien follows your pointing finger towards the kitchen then suddenly realising you used the water up to make a cuppa before your programme came on you add, "You might need to fill it up".

Too late, you know you've said it now and you already know what the next question is going to be.

"What do I fill it up with?", says the alien.

You're grimacing at the whole thought now and dragging your hand down your face in disbelief you leave your programme much dissapointed and head for the kitchen.
"With water!", you exclaim, then realising another error of your ways add, "From the tap!"

"What is a tap?", comes the next question from the alien.......



Get it? Imagine how frustrating this whole process is going to be of simply making a cup of tea for this damn alien. You'll offer to do it yourself realising that your favourite television programme is almost finished and nothing to lose anyway, except this alien is insisiting that they want to do it for themself.

That's pretty much how some of the emails I receieved have felt like.
If you want to build a flash unit for yourself then go ahead, there's nothing stopping you. Oh, of course there is the slight matter that you don't have the first idea of how dangerous electricity can be, know how to identify common electronic components or even distinguish the hot end of a soldering iron until it's too late! Gah!

Of course not all the emails have been that infuriating, some of them know what a kettle is......

So, 'miserable old git', for a damn good reason.

I have spent 30 years man and boy dabbling, studying, working with, career building and generally fooling around with electronics. Hence why I can build this sort of rubbish for myself, literally from rubbish and I don't need to pay for my time either. So imagine how difficult an excercise it would be to explain every single step and process to show someone else how to do it! That's why my email reply will be often regarded as quite rude when I suggest studying a bit more or just simply buy a flash.

Yes, even requests for step by step pictures and instructions to 'DIY' build a unit have been sent to me! Well, why not? After all I have all this spare time on my hands. Of course I'll happily while away the hours putting this altogether for you....not!

Sounds bitter? Well yes perhaps it does but I'm sure you'd feel the same way after repeated emails requesting help which for an electronics engineer is actually quite simple but for a beginner is fraught with dangers and problems.

I do like to help people out where I can and many of my images and articles do just that. If anyone finds any of this helpful then I'm actually quite pleased, not for myself but for whoever found the help useful and if it has helped them achieve something.

But I really have to draw a line somewhere and unfortunately I can't compress many years experience of electronics into one simple email. Plus I don't really have the time or inclination to even spread it across several emails, (even teachers are paid after all, despite us thinking education should be free!)

I'll continue to help others where I can as it seems to be in my nature, (despite how all this sounds), but it will be limited to pointers and coaxing, unfortunately not to step by step instructions.

If you disagree then that's fine, just imagine yourself in the alien confrontation mentioned and how difficult it really all can be.


Oh, and if perchance an extra-terrestrial alien did turn up in my living room unexpected, he'd find himself ejected from the property like any other unwelcome guest!


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Flash or Strobes and Why?

Most of you that know me from Flickr have seen that I've had this affliction, desire and satisfaction from building and modifying my own flash/strobe lights.

I say "Flash/Strobe" to accomodate our American cousins. A flash light here is a the word for what we call a 'torch' across the pond, they call them 'strobe lights' or 'strobes' which we this side of the pond know as those funky lights at night clubs that give you epileptic fits :-)
I may use either word but assume they mean the same thing.

But why this inane desire for flash?

Read on to find out a little more....



The simple reason for using flash is the amount of light that a flash can kick out, very easily and without all the heat incandescent lighting brings.

Let's go over a little about flash and some of the confusions.

Some of you that are familiar with flash and those that have taken a peek at it will know that flash guns, studio heads etc. are usually rated with GN, (Guide Number), Watts or Joules, (Joules being a Watt/Second), or even 'Effective Watts' or combinations thereof. They don't actually mean a lot and especially the way most people and manufacturers use them.

GN can be handy if you know what the rating is and with some simple maths you can calculate what your exposure is going to be by how far the subject is away from the camera. Great, until you move the flash off the camera, modify the light in anyway, (with a diffuser, reflector, snoot or any other such), or even simply adjust the guns zoom setting, then this GN rating doesn't actually relate in any such way.
Of course the flash 'Auto' setting won't be very hepful either!

Confusing? Of course it is and especially when you start to realise that manufacturers use the zoomed GN to give you a bigger GN number as bigger numbers will sell. I want the GN in wide, not when it's zoomed to a little pool of light thankyou very much. But then the flash will have a smaller number and 'small' doesn't sell does it?

Manufacturers then use all sorts of numbers, (probably in an attempt to help but often not very helpful), such as 'Effective Watts' which would be for a certain distance, a certain light modifier and under certain lighting conditions. Again, not really that useful.

So on the whole it's probably best to ignore them in the main, (except those of you impressed with numbers but then you please carry on, it is a free world after all).

Where does that leave us then? Not very helpful is it. Hang on a minute, there's some more to come, (and hopefully less confusing!)

Remember what I said at the start about flash/strobe lights being better than incandescent?
Well here's the basics as to why:

Let's start with a more accurate measurement of the 'Joule' or 'Watt/Seconds' variety, (hold on there with me, this is a basic comparative excercise). A flash rating of say a smaller flash gun of the type normally attached to the camera hot-shoe is about 20-30 Watt/Seconds, (I'll use the abbreviation W/S from now on). So if we say it's at the middle end of 25W/S that means that an incadescent light of 25 watts will put out the same amount of light in a second. (It's actually a little more complicated than that, incandescent bulbs losing power as heat rather than light but we'll keep it simple for now.)

So why buy an expensive flash gun when a cheap 25 watt lightbulb will apparently do?

Well a flash gun will usually put all that power and light out in a fraction of a second, (approx 1/1000ths of a second or much faster), whereas the bulb would require a whole second. Are you going to handhold a camera for 1 second? Will the subject stay still for 1 second? Of course not, (unless it's a still life example with the use of a tripod), so there's one benefit of flash straight away.

Now let's take this example to the extremes. Most of us will want to use a faster shutter speed so let's look at these examples:

A 25 watt incandescent bulb, (for this example), gives us 25 watts of light every second. So for an exposure of 1 second it would be the same as our basic flash gun example. (Not in the real world and colour balance is an issue too, another advantage of flash but again let's keep this simple.)

So 25 watt incandescent lamp @ 1 second shutter speed = 25W/S flash @ 1 second.
(Aperture will make a difference but as I said we'll keep it simple and come to that later.)

But what about a 1/2 second exposure? Well now we only see half the power of the incendescent lamp but still see all the flash guns light as it is put out much faster than our shutter speed.

25 watt incandescent lamp @ 1/2 second = 12.5 watt, (because half of the time)
25W/S flash gun @ 1/2 second = 25 watt, (as that light is put out much faster)

So now you need a 50 watt light bulb to produce the same power light as the flash gun. Of course this gets more extreme as we go up the shutter speed range and would have to keep increasing the incandescent lamps power to match the flash.

25W/S flash @ 1 second = 25 watt lamp
25W/S flash @ 1/2 second = 50 watt lamp
25W/S flash @ 1/30 second = 750 watt lamp! (Divide 25W/S by the shutter speed to get the equivalent.)
25W/S flash @ 1/60 second = 1500 watt lamp
25W/S flash @ 1/125 second = 3125 watt lamp
25W/S flash @ 1/250 second = 6250 watt lamp

So now you can see how handy that little flash gun really is. A 25 watt lamp may be cheaper than a 25W/S flash but work out how much 6250 watts of incandescent lighting would cost to purchase, let alone the electric bill to run! And a nice tan from all that heat too...

Now imagine a basic home studio flash of say 150W/S, (probably sold by the manufacturer as 200 or 250 'effective' watt/seconds!)

150W/S divided by a shutter speed of 1/125th second = 18,750 watts of incandescent light. You couldn't run that from a domestic supply let alone imagine how much all those lamps would cost you! So a good 'pro' studio flash of 1000W/S would be an equivalent of 125,000 watts of incandescent lighting, that's a quarter of a million watts!! Doesn't seem so expensive now does it?

So there you have an immeadiate understanding of why flash is much better than incandescent lamps.

But also realise that most incandescent lamps produce more heat as their power useage than light, about 5% as light, most of the rest as heat. So our examples above are wildly out in the real world. That last example of a quarter of a million watts would be nearer to 2 and a 1/2 million watts and the heat would make toast out of you! Not great for a portrait sitter, you wouldn't bring out their best side now would you?

Well that's helped you realise one of the main benefits of flash lighting. I'll go into more detail about other such mathematical nonsense, (and a far simpler explanation), of aperture use to reduce and/or balance ambient lighting with flash and also explain out the much dreaded "Inverse Square Law" of light in another post.


So why do I build and modify flash guns? Well, because I can, (which helps), I enjoy it and I'm also a tight git and can do it much cheaper myself than buy one. I know not all of us can but this post may make you realise how cost effective flash/strobes really are and how damn useful they can be.

I'll leave you with a picture of another flash studio head I built.



It was originally a 1000 watt continuous lamp I picked up as a broken unit, (bulbs had blown and so had the main fuse). I converted it to a 90W/S flash head and for the reasons explained above it would need to be 16,200 watts for my Olympus sync speed of 1/180th of a second. Plus it cost less to do than the price of the bulbs and fuse!

Want to discuss this further?
Then why not pop over to The Inverted Image discussion group on flickr.

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Polarised Plastic

This is something I haven't tried for years -



"Crossed Polarisation" is the name for the technique. The first time I came across this was whilst studying engineering, we made mock up components from acrylic and then used crossed polarisation to study the effect of stresses on the component.
I always loved the rainbow effects, (kid!)

Back then it required a light table, (expensive!), polarised sheet, (even more expensive!), and polarised glasses, (where as a younger man I thought they made me look cool), but I'll show you how to do this with a simple setup of things you may have to hand.



Right, you want to have a go at this now don't you? (OK, just us big kids.)

All you'll need is your trusty camera, (you can do this with film as well as digital), a polarising filter, (probably still stuck in the camera bag since last summer), and an LCD screen, (VDU, laptop, even an LCD picture frame will do the job).

First of all have a quick look through the polarising filter at your LCD screen and rotate it around, you should notice the screen go from visible to black. Now try holding something made of clear plastic, (such as the box the filter came in), between the LCD, the filter and you.

Woah! Trippy man. Haven't seen colours like that since I was a young man and didn't take hallucinogenic drugs, (honestly officer!)

To share your 'trippy' experience with eveyone else we can also photograph this effect.
The basic setup I used was as below -



Now please be warned, (and this bit is the disclaimer!), be VERY careful with your LCD of choice. LCD's are delicate things and don't stand a lot of abuse, so if you break it don't come running to me. I have a bad enough time with my 'idiot' teenaged kids that break things and try to blame someone else! You have been warned....

To get the LCD to display nothing but white I simply opened an image editing package, (anything you have will do, GIMP, Photoshop, Paintshop etc.), made a new image that was white and set it to view full screen. Simple.

Then I simply placed some plastic parts, (one of the kids old trig set seemed to do the job), Rotated the polarising filter until the background became black, (but you could just as easily leave it white, the cross polarisation would work just as well), and took some pictures. Your camera may struggle with the exposure so either go to manual, EV offset in Aperture mode, or keep shooting until you get a good shot. You might even have to manual focus as the camera may struggle with AF, (which uses a polarisation method).

This was the result of the above setup with the trig set plastic -



Not bad hey?

Now you know how to do this why not have a play.
Try bending the plastic and see the rainbow effects change, (due to the stresses induced in the plastic material - see my engineering studying wasn't completely wasted!) Try other clear materials, CD cases work well, or even that crinkly plactic material they wrap flowers in nowadays, just scrunch it up and place it on the LCD. Clear plastic cups, cutlery, whatever you have to hand, experiment.

Your imagination is the only limit and yep, it's probably another technique you'll eventually get bored with. But it'll be fun if you've never tried this before and is another technique you can stick in your photography experience 'bag'.

Above all, have fun!


Fancy sharing your images produced with this technique?
Then why not pop over to The Inverted Image discussion group on flickr and post your results for all to see.



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Can you hear the sound of the tumbleweed? Well at least now it's the sound of Christmas!

How long as it been since I last posted anything here?!?!?!

I must admit that after a very good start I did get a little lazy and found so much time being absorbed by work and all the other things that seem to need doing.

Not that should be any excuse, but I couldn't resist a little time to send some seasons greetings.

So with little ado, (but maybe more after!), may I just wish you all a

Merry Christmas & all the very best for the New Year!




Cor, now that does feel better. I hope not to leave it so long before anymore posts, I should really at least take a day or two out to post at least something. Not that I haven't had much to say, (I've never been known as a person with not much to say!), but literally just been busy with things. Actually, right now I'm still in uniform after a long day selling cameras to last minute irate xmas shoppers, (it really isn't our fault that stock has all sold out, perhaps you should have come earlier!) At least I know there will be many people happily unwrapping their gifts of new cameras and accessories and that more than makes up for it.

It hasn't all been work, work, (well not so much of the paying kind anyway!), but also busy with other activities. Funnily enough all photography related too.

Took a while to get used to the Olympus dSLR and I realised that I really should read the manuals more thoroughly. Still finding out things this little bit of kit can do! The biggest things has been playing around with so called 'legacy' glass bolting on my old Olympus Zuiko and M42 film lenses. What a wonderful adventure that has been allowing me to use optics I once favoured and discovery some new ones. I've also played around with some more macro work with my bellows and DIY rail

I've also been making somewhat of a return to film but trying desperately not to ignore the new digital side I've been exploring for the last year or so. The darkroom is all up and operational again and my enlarger is now firmly back in place fully lined up. Some early xmas presents were shopped for on eBay and it's so good to have a set of stainless film developing reels and tank to work with again. (Infinately better than any plastic reel system.) Some other bargains such as an old 'rangefinder' which shall be put into use for some of my old cameras, (more on that in another post. Yes, I promise there will be some more posts!)

All of this return to film has actually been helped to be reinvigorated by a colleague of mine at the camera store, (Hiya Mas!!) He started to get into film big-time and I gave him an old 120 roll film Diana, (original 60's model), to have a play with. His enthusiasm for film and using old cameras has been somewhat enthralling and reminds me of the same enthusiasm I used to feel at seeing a shot come out of something so old, clunky and rather lacking in features and actually come out well.

It's also come back about due to some dabbling with digital B&W prints. Now there are some wonderful processes out there from carbon inkjet systems to laser scanned silver papers and after forking out a small fortune for test prints I was left somewhat disparaged. I felt that even some of my ealier Resin Coated B&W work had more depth to them than these prints that had cost so much. I didn't even feel like I had a hand in producing them simply sending the digital files off and waiting impatiently for the results. Not that they are no good, far from it but unless you've experienced a well made print on silver rich heavyweight paper you really don't know what your missing. I'll admit the skills for a good traditional print do take some time and experience, much like photography, skills like pre-flashing, split-grading, dual-toning, let alone the mastery of dodging and burning using your hands to literally 'paint with light'. A master printer is really worth their weight in gold but this is something that with practice and time can come to you also.

So expect a little bit of time spent with some of these results and thoughts in upcoming posts.

Anyway, rather than 'gabble' on in one post I'd probably be better leaving this for more postings, (and leave myself something to talk about!)
So I shall now put my feet up by our log fire I've just lit up, sip my Laphroaig and take a puff on my Cuban cigar, (thanks again to you Mas!)


Again, wishing all of you the very best at this seasonal time of year.
Here's to a prosperous New Year to you all and hopefuly a few more posts from me :-)



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Fun with Flash - Water drop shots

Gorgeous isn't it?
Well I thought so and so did many of you, this shot made Flickr's Explore the first day it was uploaded. (So a big thankyou to you all!)

The good thing is, it's so simple to do as well!

Read on to find out more....



I love flash - how it 'freezes' moments, provides a huge amount of light from a little xenon filled tube and when used wisely gives you incredible control of your photography.
Yet many people view flash lighting as if it has a technical mystery.
It is after all just light and most of us are used to using natural or continuous lighting. Flash just gives you better lighting and you're in complete control of it, (unlike the sunshine!)

The one thing that does surprise me is how many people will only use automatic flash especially in the age of digital photography.

In the old days of film it was more of a pain to use - careful metering, maybe even polaroid proofs and sometimes just pure experience. Most 'decent' flashes were completely manual controlled, some were 'computer' controlled, (that used to make me laugh, it was just a simple light sensor circuit to shut off the flash), and there were some 'almost' clever TTL, (Through The Lens), systems. I say 'almost' clever as most automatic systems, (which Olympus kick started by the way), were much like an automatic car - it doesn't drive itself, it just helps.

Yet with digital you get instant results. You can see that image the moment you've made it and adjust accordingly, (unlike polaroid proofs where you had to swap around your film backs - if you had a camera that could!) Instant preview of your lighting and you don't even need to get the flash meter out - wonderful.


Anyway, I'm babbling. What about this water drop setup?

Well here it is....



Simple - A little reservoir to hold your dripping water supply, (I originally used a plastic food bag filled with water and pierced it with a pin), a tray to catch the drips, camera and flash.

OK, I've got an off camera flash, (you get the best control), but you could easily achieve these types of shots with your pop-up flash on the camera, although the lighting will be different.

Even simply having a bowl of water in your kitchen sink and the tap dripping into it whilst shooting with your camera can produce similar results. You just need a bit of patience and maybe some luck, take as many shots as you can and one of them is bound to herald a frozen moment of a water splash.

The only reason the water drop becomes frozen in time is not due to your cameras exposure or shutter speed but the briefness of the flash light. A small flash gun only produces a small amount of light output and is very brief, (some 1/2000ths to 1/10,000ths of a second), and so 'freezes' the capture. The same is true for a larger flash gun or studio flash set to low power, (in this case my gun was set to 1/16th power output).

Now this is a lot simpler to do with digital than it ever was with film. The last time I tried this with film, (too many years ago!), I rattled off two rolls of 36 exposure 35mm film and when processed I only had three decent shots!! With digital you can rattle off as many shots as your memory card will allow or if you're really unlucky, (and can't get a single drop shot), your patience may just run out. Not as much as it does with film however.

The blue colour? Well the flash output is daylight balanced so I simply set the cameras white balance to tungsten which then made the picture blue. Simple, didn't even need to post process it except for the square crop.


Water drop shots to some may appear 'cliche', (you can find thousands on the internet), yet they're simple to take, fun to do and I always think they look wonderful. I've seen thousands of sunsets and sunrises, photographed hundreds and seen thousands of pictures of them in my life time so far. Yet I always look forward to the next ones I get to view, whether through my own eye, camera lens or someone else's picture.

So here's another drop shot just for the fun and pleasure of it :-)





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Fun With - Long Exposures, Light Spirals

Oh it's so good having a dSLR, and I'm remembering things I used to do when I was using my film SLR's. Light Spirals is one of them and so easy to do to!

All you need is some string, a torch and a darkened room.

Read on to find out more...



Well I was busy building my new small flashes when my soldering iron packed up :-(
(Need a new element!)

So I set about trying some things I haven't done in a while, in fact the last time I was regularly using a film SLR and light spirals was one of them.



Looks great doesn't it?

Right, you've got your string and a torch, yes?
All you need now is your dSLR set to long exposure, (about 30 seconds is great), and have a darkened room handy.

Then you simply attach the string to the torch, (I used LED type torches and had a red one and a white one handy but you can use any colour you fancy), and then attach the string to the ceiling. Make sure the torch is pointing downwards of course.
Now setup your camera on a tripod or the floor, (careful you don't tread on it!), making sure it's pointing upwards and about central to where the torch is hanging from the ceiling. Wide angle is handy for big swings but you can zoom in for smaller length swings should you need to.

Now get the camera ready for this, (I used a 10 second delay from pressing the shutter), start the torch swinging on the string in a circular fashion, press the shutter and turn out the lights. Listen for when your camera has finished exposing, turn on the lights and get ready to view your natural masterpiece on that LCD. (A lot quicker than rushing off to have a film processed!)

How did that go? Fun isn't it?!

With a simple piece of string and a torch you get circular patterns much like the second image shown. But the fun doesn't stop there. By attaching a second piece of string to the vertical piece hanging from the ceiling and attaching this second string horizontally to the wall, the swing path is affected. Which gives similar results to this:-



Sort of reminds me of 'Spir-o-graph'! Anyone else have one of those kits as a kid?

Now the images already shown are straight out of the camera, (EXIF data is preserved, only a crop was performed), but you can post process and introduce whatever colours you like.



Don't let that stop you there, your imagination is the only limit!

Try two torches, or two pieces of string from different points on the ceiling attached to one. Try tying multiple horizontal strings to the vertical for all sorts of weird swing paths. Set the camera to an angle to give more eliptical views.

Or even have fun building a whole light symphony of torches in a complex mobile!!

Darkened rooms, swinging and exposure - how come that didn't sound rude when you where a kid?!

Give it a go and see what you come up with.

Have fun!!




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Getting to know you, getting to know all about you....

Ha! There's another cat out of the bag - I do like a good old musical number ;-)

Anyway, what am I on about now.

Well I'm still 'playing' with the Olympus E-410 and finding out all the things it can do. I recently started playing around with the cameras in built flash functions and had a bit of a revelation.

Read on to find out more...



The pop-up, inbuilt flash on a camera is rubbish, right?
Well when applied intelligently it's not as bad as first seems. However start using flash off-camera and things really start to happen.

As some of you may be aware I played around with flash on the old Fuji S5700 for my first ever experience of digital and flash some time ago now. Boy was it brilliant!

I'd had experience over the years of flash with film and that was a bit more difficult to do. Calculating flash exposures, measuring flash output, maybe even a polaroid test on a large or medium format camera, (if you had a polaroid back), and bracketing to guarantee your flash exposure was right. Even then you often got it slightly wrong and only experience would help you with that one!

With digital it was a pure revelation to have an instant preview available and adjust your lighting and exposure on the fly. Made it far simpler to achieve some great or better results.

But, with the Fuji and most compact/bridge digital cameras I had to circumvent a small problem, namely no hot-shoe connection. I also found that standard old film type optical slaves wouldn't trigger properly and this was due to the pre-flash system that digital cameras employ. A brief flash comes first for exposure measurement and white balancing by the camera and then the main flash. So the old systems wouldn't work. I got around this in the end by building some clever circuitry that would see the first pre-flash and then trigger the slave flash on the second digital flash. Which worked a treat.

I found the new dSLR did pretty much the same thing with it's inbuilt pop-up flash.
So again my old slave equipment would not work, but my clever slave circuitry would. Which was good news especially after spending all that time building my DIY studio flashes!

However after verifying that my old Vivitar 5000FD I used to use on the Olympus OM was safe to use on the new Olympus hot-shoe I gave that a go. Then found that my studio flashes wouldn't trigger! Why? Well the hot-shoe connection, (on a non-dedicated flash), would revert to standard x-sync, ie. one flash with no pre-flash.

Not a problem with my circuitry as I could reprogram them to sync on one flash, but then I realised that my old slave gear would now work! Excellent news - and then I discovered something else.

The Olympus E series has the ability to alter the pop-up flash to be fully manual with power control from full, all the way down to 1/64th power.
When it's in this flash manual mode there is NO pre-flash!

So I dug out one of my old flash guns and attached an old optical slave connector to it and fired off the new Olympus dSLR.



SUCCESS!

I couldn't believe my eyes but it all worked and from the cameras in-built flash too.

This is brilliant news as I can now utilise my old collection of camera flashes I have lounging in the dark room.



As they will be connected to slave circuitry the trigger voltages do not matter as they are not connected to the camera.

It also makes for cheaper and much simpler optical slaves to be utilised with every flash from now on, (so expect some even further miniature flash units like the old Film Pot Flash I made some time ago.)

Now, there are some drawbacks - these old flashes aren't that powerful and don't have any variable power output, (yet, but my soldering iron is twitching!) But it's a great start to producing or even purchasing some great, portable, battery operated flash units for mobile work. (Saves me lugging about heavy studio flash gear too!)

Brilliant, now how does that help all of you?
Well perhaps your Nikon/Canon/Sony etc. dSLR performs the same function?
Maybe from the pop-up flash and camera menu settings or even with a non-dedicated flash, (making sure the sync voltage is safe first!)

If so, then let us know and we'll share this information with everyone.

Opens up some options for those of us more financially challenged, or even if we have more important things to consider financially, (like the rest of the family!)
Or even if we want to try out our hand at flash work without the expense.

Let us know how you get on.

Right, I'm off to the workshop to quell my soldering irons twitching and get on with some fabulous flashes!


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Olympus E-410 with 35mm film lens adapters

Getting to grips with the new Olympus dSLR, I can now remember where most of the menu settings are. Trouble is I often forget to set them back again!

A typical example was where I did some macro tests with my new lens adapter, (more to follow), and used the very handy timed mirror lock function which is invaluable for macro work. Then when I went to take some hand held lens shots I was suprised to find the mirror locked up but it hadn't taken a picture?! Went to see what was wrong and 'clunk' a picture of my left ear was faithfully recorded.....Doh!

Back to the lens adapters - They allow me to utilise some of my old OM and M42 lens gear, (Hurrah!), but there were a few problems as well as general excitement.

Read on to find out more...



I ordered a couple of items from fleabay, an OM lens adapter and also an M42 type.
Excellent I thought, this should allow me to use all of my old OM and M42 lenses, (of which I have quite a few!) Trouble was, it wasn't that straight forward.

The adapters were of excellent quality, (from UK suppliers), very well priced and had me generally excited. Couldn't wait to try them out and proceeded to rip open the packaging and get them clicked into place on the new Olympus E-410. The OM type adapter fitted beautifully and the old OM lenses clicked into place nice and firmly and more importantly in the correct orientation.

More than can be said for the M42 adapter!

It clicked firmly into place, I then screwed in the first M42 lens and the adapter ring, (within the adapter), started to spin around as well. Damn. Turned out to be nothing more than the three retaining grub screws, (extremely small and needed my smallest jewellers screwdriver to adjust), and after some adjustment seemed to be fine.

Excellent, couldn't wait.

Now there's a common misconception that when you fit an old film lens to a dSLR that it 'magically' transforms it into a longer focal length lens. In the case of a 4/3rds system for the Olympus, (a x2 crop factor), a 50mm becomes a 100mm, right? Wrong!
The lens hasn't transformed just by adding a simple mechanical adapter, but as the sensor is seeing less of the projected image the angle of view is reduced. So by putting the 50mm OM lens on the E-410 it makes it 'appear' like it's a 100mm lens. The image projected by the lens is 'cropped' and hence the term 'crop factor'.

I know, this can all cause confusion but it's simple maths, especially when it comes to 'equivalent' focal lengths. The standard E-410 lens is 14mm to 42mm which is the true focal lengths, but that's equivalent to a 28mm to 84mm on a 35mm camera.
Let's just forget all this maths and numbers malarky for now and concentrate on the results, after all that's the important bit.



This first image shows the comparison between an old 35mm Zuiko OM 50mm lens with the adapter on the E-410 compared to the standard ZD 14-42. Not too shabby is it?

The 'bokeh' or out of focus areas are quite nice on the old OM lens as compared to the standard lens. (The standard lens was fully extended to 42mm which drops the aperture or maximum light gathering ability to f5.6, giving the nearest comparison image possible.) So it was an absolute bargain and works very well, well not quite.

The old OM lens has a maximum aperture of f1.8, trouble was it wouldn't provide a clearly focused image at this aperture. A quick scout around the Olympus site showed some details on using old OM lenses on new Olympus cameras and answered some of my problems. They reccommend that this particular lens is utilised at f2.8 to f8, (even thought the lens is capable of f1.8 to f16), and they aren't wrong either. At f1.8 accurate focusing is impossible, but drop to f2.8 and it focuses well. Up to f8 gives very good focusing but then the sharpness of the image starts to degrade at f11 and f16. I believe this is due to diffraction problems.

The other problem is that you can only utilise old lenses using the Aperture priority and Manual functions on the dSLR. Not a problem for me, it's what I was used to with my old film gear. (The old OM10 only had Manual and Auto, auto being aperture priority and that was a luxury!) For those of you used to auto focus, auto everything, then you may come a bit unstuck. But that's not a bad thing either, knock those auto functions off and use the camera with the best control system you can use - you!

Another issue is that this dSLR, (and most others), doesn't have a focus screen capable of providing you visual focusing feedback. Cameras of old often had a split prism system that was very easy to use, whereas the dSLR only has a simple matte screen. It's not impossible to focus, you just have to get used to it. (Again, some of my old film gear only had a matte screen anyway such as a large format ground glass screen.)

You also have to focus with the aperture open for a nice bright image and then stop down the lens aperture to that desired for the final shot. Which makes the viewfinder image even dimmer than it was. Again, this was not uncommon in older film SLRs with simple metering and again it's very easy to get used to. Although the image in the viewfinder is dimmer, you do actually get to see what the depth of field will be like, unlike some dSLRs, (except those with a DOF preview option.)

So that's all bad news then is it? No, quite the opposite.
For a few measly pounds and an old lens I now have the perfect portrait lens for my new camera! With a bokeh that is absolutely gorgeous and a lens that looks great and very small in size. Get used to the limits and you've got something that's actually pretty good for the money. Despite what I've said I have no problems whatsoever. In fact I love it and can't wait to give the lens a proper run for it's money!

So onto the macro capabilities.



I have in my collection an old set of macro stepping or spacer rings for the Olympus OM and now that I have an adapter I can utilse them on the new E-410! Just as well really because my old OM macro bellows are ruined and need new bellows. Shall build some more when I have the time.

The image shows the various magnifications I achieved with these simple rings, the 4/3rds adapter and the old Zuiko 50mm. Top left is the magnification achieved with a +1 stepping ring, top right with the +2 ring, bottom left with the +1 & +2 ring, (ie: +3), and the last image bottom left at the closest focus with the +1 & +2.

Not too bad! Now I have macro capabilities again, (I do so miss the Fuji S5700 for it's ease of just switching to macro though!) However the quality is much better, (or would have been had I got the parallel right!), and being a larger sensor at 10 megapixels cropping is a viable option too. Note that these magnifactions are shown as is without cropping just a resize for the example image.

So where does that leave me? Well, a lot more gear to be lugging about, (and there was me stating in the past that I wouldn't lug all that gear around again!), but a host of lenses that although limited provide me with some extra functionality.

In summary, with a quick test of my old lenses I have found the following:-

OM Vivitar 28mm f2.8 - this was an awful lens to start with and is even worse with the 4/3rds adapter. Give it a miss.

OM Zuiko 50mm f1.8 - used at f2.8 to f8 is makes one hell of a portrait lens!

OM Zuiko 135mm f3.5 - Hmmm, useful, field of view as a 270mm lens but I wasn't that impressed. Still to decide.

Centon 70mm to 210mm zoom - Now this wasn't the best lens ever with the old OM. It vignetted and wasn't that fast, (f4 to f5.6) However on the Olympus E-410 is makes a very useful telephoto zoom! (Equivalent to 140mm to 420mm) Fairly small size, looks the business on the new Olympus and because of the crop factor the vignette of this lens never shows! Definite keeper. (Even better with the Olympus OM X2 convertor despite the light loss.)

I have noticed one problem though. Contrast loss is always a factor with longer lenses, (as well as compressive effects and 'flatness' of the image), but it appeared a little worse with the adapter on the Olympus. Maybe it's down to the old coatings on the lens but even a lens hood didn't help much. I think the problem is due to the extra light that's present in the camera due to the image projected being that for a 35mm film camera bouncing around a chamber designed for 4/3rds(?!?). More work to come on that yet.

Oh, and what about the M42 adapter? Well I shall leave that for another time but I do have a larger collection of M42 gear than I do Olympus OM. Including a rather nice long 300mm! (Plus a x2 adapter that makes it 600mm with the crop factor on the E-410 making it a 1200mm equivalent! Probably will be awful though!)


That's all for now. Must get out and play around with all these new 'toys'!!


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Matthew Clark's New Blog - Man With a Cam

Just to let you know a good Flickr contact and friend of mine Matthew Clark, (you may know him as ClarkySnap), has just started his very own blog.

So I'd like to be amongst the first to congratulate him on his new venture and spirit of photography he enjoys so much.

Head on over to Man With a Cam blog site and enjoy his work.

Also listen to his first podcast P.A.S.M. Podcast 1. It'll have you in stitches and my sides are still aching at his great sense of humour. Really informative podcast too with his visit to a local camera club.

Great start Matt and looking forward to more from you. Congratulations!
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New Job, New Camera & New Start

Hiya All,

Hadn't realised how long ago it was since I made a posting!

As some of you are aware I started a new job and unfortunately due to working a month in hand I haven't had the finances to keep my internet connection active. However all back on track now, money's starting to come in and so I bought a new camera!



It hasn't been plain sailing either as the new camera has taken some time to figure out.

Read on to find out more.......



My new Olympus E-410, beauty isn't she?

Why an Olympus? Well the biggest factor was actually cost, but I'm more than pleased with what I got for the money. Originally I had been looking at upgrading my little Fuji S5700 to another Fuji just to get some extra options to expand my photography. I did pretty well with the little Fuji and squeezed the most out of it I could but there were often times when I wanted just a little more.
The Olympus has provided that in bucket loads!

It has given me what I was after, longer exposure times, less noisy at higher ISO's and of course a bigger sensor to give better control over DOF. But there's so much more than I could have dreamed of!

Custom mirror lock up times - essential for macro and long exposure work to prevent any camera shake from the mirror clicking up. Automatic long exposures, this was a handy feature on my old film OM10. On the E-410 it's up to 60 seconds, (although the OM10 could manage about 20 minutes!) However it has a bulb mode too which is very handy to have. A host of flash options including things like second sync flash, if you've ever used it you know how handy it can be. If you haven't then keep an eye out as it's a feature I intend to be using in the coming weeks.

RAW, well that's a whole new ball game. I originally hadn't realised the impressive differences that RAW can give you thinking it was just a different and uncompressed file format. How wrong was I?! The standard Jpeg output is in the usual 8 bit format, with RAW on the Olympus it's a massive 14 bit which make a huge difference when it comes to processing your pictures. If I can just figure out how to effectively use this extended data for a decent B&W conversion technique I shall be more than happy.

It has a built in noise reduction mode as well which had me perplexed to start with. I've used noise reduction as a post process option and you have to be careful about losing detail, the picture can become quite soft. I thought the same would be true for the inbuilt NR and in some cases it is but there's so much more to that too.
It's fully customisable from the menu options but it also performs a dark image and pixel mapping NR which can be quite impressive. ISO 1600 looks way better than when the NR is turned off and long exposures are absolutely gorgeous! The only draw back with long exposures is that the NR takes as long as the exposure again to perform. So a 30 second exposure actually takes 60 seconds, another 30 used for the NR function. In instances of night time photography I may well set a lower ISO with the NR turned off and perform a dark field and pixel map NR post processing. You can imagine a 4 hour bulb exposure would be a pain for the camera to be processing for another 4 hours!!

I won't go into too much technical data, it can get boring. It can also start 'flaming wars' with discussions of the less intelligent kind over minuscule sensor size differences and the like.


So what's it like to use?

Well let's just say it felt like I was starting all over again! I can see why it has taken some people a little time to get used to a new camera and start producing shots like they used to. Let alone the extra facilities a dSLR can throw at you!

A whole new menu system and a host of buttons to forget what each one does! A bit of perseverance helped out there. Once I figured out the host of options available I was a bit more happy, set the camera to what I wanted and then turned that LCD off. It can be such a distraction!

So I've found myself using it much as I would have on one of my old film cameras and boy hasn't that been brilliant. No worrying, no 'chimping', just using that viewfinder and taking the shot as I see it. A complete revelation and I'm very comfortable with that.

Seems silly, all those extra options like live view and a plethora of data that can be thrown at you when viewing the LCD but those features will come in handy when they're required. Live view will be handy for those awkward shots and even macro, as in really close up macro, (especially with it's x10 magnification view making focusing a lot easier!)

Talking of focusing, I wasn't to happy to start with. The focusing ring on the 14-42, (that's 28mm to 84mm in old 35mm film money), that came with the camera has a 'fly-by-wire' focusing ring. It just didn't feel right this ring that can turn infinitely back and forth without that mechanical feedback I'd expect. However once you get used to the idea it's actually not a bad system at all. You can even use the AF, (which is pretty good so long as there's enough light), and then flick to MF and make sure the focus is where you want it. So it's good for assisting in those difficult situations. Won't help in moments where you want to use hyperfocal distance techniques though!

It should come into it's own once my lens adapters come through the post. I've ordered a couple of adapters that will allow me to utilise some of my old film lens gear which will save a small fortune. Then I'll be back to an old mechanical focus ring which will be good for me.

The thing I didn't expect was the huge difference in picture quality. When I loaded the first image onto my PC I was taken aback. Loads of detail, gorgeous colours and what appears to be a better dynamic range. Simply stunning. I know technical differences don't make up for photographic skills but this is going to allow so many more opportunities to me.

There's some things the old Fuji S5700 can do that the Olympus can't though. However I've found that most of that was down to my lack of experience and possibly because I'm a bit lazy ;-)

With the Fuji I could sync flash all the way up to it's fastest shutter time of 1/1000 second, with the Olympus it's only 1/180 second. A massive difference when it comes to controlling light on a studio style shot. My flash experience in the past had been with medium format film gear that have leaf shutters capable of syncing flash to their highest speeds, (usually 1/500 second), which was how I used them. My 35mm film work and flash was far more limited, some of my old cameras only managing 1/60 second! So why did I use that system? Control of ambient light, the lazy way!

With a fast shutter speed and a small aperture, ambient light didn't even come into the equation and so was never addressed. It meant a 'studio' could be knocked up almost anywhere and you simply ignored the other light around you. Much the same way I achieved images with the Fuji. With a SLR things are very different and you have to be aware of stray ambient light. So that's what I've got to do now and stop being so lazy!

Anyway, I've more than prattled on for now about my new toy. One thing I have noticed that has made a major difference - paid work. When you turn up with a camera no one expects, (a TLR for my medium format film work), or the little Fuji, they seem a little despondent and puzzled. It's only when the pictures arrive that the client accepts your methods and choice of camera. They are after all paying for the pictures, your knowledge and experience after all, the photographer being the important thing not the camera. However clients instantly recognise the shape of a dSLR and maybe even the make and model and seem to be more willing to part with their cash(?!?!)

Well that's enough for now but I shall be making more posts as I progress with the camera and hopefully these will be general pointers and ideas that will help you make the most of your cameras and above all help you enjoy your photography.

See you for now!


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