Chris’s Blog

I had been trying to replicate a photo I saw online recently of a bowl of jellybeans though water drops. Not having a bowl of jellybeans lying around – I cheated. I loaded a picture of jellybeans onto my iPad and used that as a backdrop. Here are a couple of shots:

The main issue I had was getting the water to form beads. This time round I applied Glaco (Similar to RainX) to a different sheet of glass. The water beaded up instantly. This time I used some candles as the backdrop instead of the jellybeans.

 To take photos like this you don’t need much. I made a basic frame using knex, and then placed a clean piece of glass over the top. It did take a while to get the glass clean enough, trust me – its worth spending alot of time getting it perfectly clean. Dust specs and watermarks show up very clearly. I recommend using newspaper to clean and polish the glass.

I used a spray bottle to make the water drops. If you want more control over the layout, try using an eyedropper.

At the bottom of my frame I set up a grid of red and yellow/white candles. I tried a few different patterns, but this looked the most appealing.

I was using macro tubes for the first few photos. After removing them I noticed that I could still focus close enough to get a good shot. So, use them if you need to but check to see if you can achieve the effect without them first.

You will also need a good tripod. I have a Manfrotto that allows you to slide the center column out sideways, making it very easy to aim the camera straight down. Getting the camera position just right is very important if you are using macro tubes. Just a centimeter or so too high/low will put your image out of focus. I used a coin to help getting the camera in focus.

You may also want to adjust the aperture to control the bokeh.

I really should make an effort to post more. Anyway – I thought this would be the best place to upload my HDR panoramic test shot. I don’t think Picasa or Facebook would be very good for an image with such a high-resolution. After taking a bunch of shots (multiplied by five times for the HDR) the image size came out at a staggering 383 megabytes (23909×2803) and Photoshop was using 7 gigabytes of memory! After bringing it down to a more reasonable resolution and optimizing for web, it came out at 6.8MB.

For those of you on slow connections, you may want to pass on this one. I tried a few different panorama plugins for WordPress to try and make the image scrollable, but none worked very well. WP-PhotoNav came the closest, but it seemed pretty buggy. Not sure if it was the plugin or my theme however. I guess lightbox will have to do for now.

Bought a new Pentax k20d camera this weekend. Managed to get it for a big discount as it was the only one left and it was a floor model. After doing some research, it turns out I should – and I use the word should, not need (my wife would object otherwise) get some decent lenses.

Included with the kit was a 18-55mm lens. Many people have indicated that a 50mm prime lens is essential for good quality pictures. It might be a while until I can afford some decent lenses, but I can play around with what I have for now. I also ordered some lens filters to play around with. I got a polarizing filter and a macro filter (I know a lens is much better, but I can’t afford it) from DealExtreme.

Went out over the weekend to take some pictures of the surroundings – uploaded some to iStockPhoto. Hopefully they will be accepted and I might be able to make back some money.