Zooooooooooom

Just a bit of silliness today, because we can all use a bit of silly now and then. I recently added a set of extension tubes to my kit. Looking at my bag today, I wondered, what is the most ridiculous thing I can put together. This is that. 🙂

You are looking at my Canon M6, with 65mm of extension tubes, and my 70-200 zoom. The whole thing is 12″ long and it does work. It’s not practical at all, as you can only focus on things between about 6″ and 4′ from the lens, but it is fun to look at.

Have a great day!

They’re everywhere

I think this is an easy one. This is something that everyone uses, all the time. They may not interface directly with it on a regular basis, but it is there, doing its work. The super close focus adds a small degree of difficulty, but I suspect most will get it pretty easy. Scroll for a wider shot.

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It is your standard, run of the mill, network port. This one is on a very old switch that is destined for recycle. That might explain the dust and scratches revealed in the tight shot. I do find it fascinating to see the contacts up close like this.

Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’

We are again in that place where the picture puzzle is probably too difficult, but I just like the photo so much we are going with it. Because, look at that. That is a cool photo. There are so many interesting little bits to this. Unfortunately, even if you have used one of these, unless you have had one apart, you would never see it like this. Scroll to see just what we are looking at.

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That is the inside of a DDS tape drive. Pretty cool, right? This one is a DDS3, which is the model that, with the possible exception of the DLT8000, has seemingly won the great tape wars. We still have a lot of customers that are using both of those. I just picked up a batch of old stock and I am currently testing them to see where they stand. I do have a few nice DDS3s that are good to go if you are in the market. 🙂

The columns of power

Closing out the week with a tricky picture puzzle. I’ll give a big hint and say this is a computer component, because I feel like leaving it wide open makes it too difficult. It is something that most people will be familiar with, although they may not have run across this particular example. There may also be a very vague hint in that title. Got it? The wide shot is below.

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It’s the heatsink of a CPU. Specifically, this is a HP AD110A. That is a 1.068GHz Dual Core PA8900 processor for the RP7440 and RP8440. Those are interesting servers because they use cell boards that each contain four of those CPUs and you can partition them physically, or virtually.

Alright, have a great weekend!

More macro? Macro macro? Macroer?

Today we have some more shenanigans with macro photography, thanks to the addition of the just arrived extension tubes. That is what you are looking at in that top image. They are basically hollow tubes that you can place between the camera and the lens. The result of this is an increase in the magnification possible by the lens.

For example. This shot was taken with my Canon 100mm L IS Macro lens. It normally has a maximum magnification of 1:1. That is, at closest focus, an object appears the same size on the sensor as it is in reality. With the three tubes (13mm, 21mm, and 31mm) added, that goes up to 1.65:1. That has given us the above shot of the chip on a network card.

For reference, this is the same shot with a dime placed on top of that chip. You’ll no doubt notice a considerable difference in the depth of field between the two shots. That is because the shot of the chip is focus stacked. You are actually looking at 50 shots of that chip merged together to get a deeper focus. The shot of the dime is a single shot. At these close distances, even at f11, only the tiniest sliver is in focus.

It’s getting hot in here

Don’t you hate it when you do dumb things? Of course, we all know that you can’t leave children and pets in cars with the windows up. But apparently some of us need to be reminded that this same rule goes for cans of soda…

Somehow, I managed to leave a soda on the front seat of the car yesterday morning. Then, we had a really nice spring day. It wasn’t super hot, but it was nice, with lots of sun and blue skies. I got in the car yesterday afternoon and found that can you see above on the passenger seat. And, as you may have guessed, the soda that was once inside was on the dash, the glove box, the floor mat, and the seat. Like a tiny sugary directional charge went off. Here’s a closer look at the business end of the explosion.

It’s not a murder hornet

There has been a lot of talk about the appearance of the murder hornet in our back yard. With that in mind I ran out behind the shop to see if I could grab a photo of a bee. The likelihood of actually finding one of the hornets was obviously too remote to even consider. Unfortunately, there were no bees in play either. So, no insects, but the fact that I was outside looking is your clue for what this is.

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It is a confier cone. There are a few of them that have dropped out behind the building. If my biology from too many years ago is correct, this is the female cone (or MEGASTROBILUS), which produces the seeds. The male cones produce pollen.

Back to the drawing board

Another weekend under stay-at-home order left more time to be filled, so I decided to create another mask. This time I started from scratch with no pattern. The only direction I had going in was seeing a photo of a mask someone else had sewn that I liked.

Of course, fabric stores are not operating as normal, so this is very much a work with you have experiment. The outside of the mask is from an old pair of olive colored pantss that have been tucked away in the bottom of a drawer for years. The lining is an old polo shirt that was past its sell by date.

The end result is pretty solid. It looks great, and the fit is super confortable. The polo shirt material is very soft. Not shown is the addition of velcro on the straps, so there are no bulky ties to deal with.

The one big change I would make to the 2.0 version is to attatch the straps to the lining before joining the inside and outside. This way they will just come right out of the side of the mask. Right now you can see them attached on the inside. A bonus is that I think this will work great as an addition to the cold weather motorcycle gear.

It looks like we have a few more weeks of extra time at home coming our way. So I would encourage everyone to try something new.

Keep the movin’ parts clean

Closing out another week with a picture puzzle. This one has the advantage of being one of the least magnified shots we have tried. But it is also something of a specialized bit of kit. So, if you know it, you know it. But you might not know it. You have likely been around one of these, but perhaps never made use of it. Scroll for the reveal.

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It’s a hot shoe. This one is on top of a trigger for my speedlights, but it is comparable to what you would find on top of a lot of modern cameras. It’s interesting, because there are so many people that only shoot in available light, that never make use of the hot shoe. But I shoot a ton of stuff using off camera flash, so I use mine all the time.

I would argue that after learning the exposure triangle, off camera flash is the next thing to tackle that can dramatically improve your images. Of course, if you are one of those natural light shooters, I would be arguing with you. 🙂

The title was a big hint. That is a line from a song, and the next line starts with ‘hot shoe’.

Have a great weekend!

Throwback Thursday

I’m a bit torn on this one. I think it might be too easy. In an effort to combat that, I went black and white with the photos. The color version was way too obvious. I suspect you already know, but you can scroll for the big reveal.

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It’s my Cup Noodles from today’s lunch. I’m not sure what prompted this. I haven’t eaten these in years. But I happened on them while doing the weekly grocery shopping and caught a bit of the nostalgia bug. They hold up!