Studio in the nature

Most of the nature photographers prefer the ambient light. I like to control the light myself in my macro and plant photos. I tried the concept last year but this year I want to further develop the concept of using a mini studio set-up in the nature. I'm planning to use various background and light sources (via fiber optic adapters). Last weekend I tried the rim lighting in the nature. In this way I can separate the subject from the background. Moreover the rim light bring out the details and textures perfectly.
Some examples:

This photo has a less saturated version I like better, but it works in larger format:

DUST-AID Platinum Kit review

I’ve never been much worried about dust on the sensor. Marks from dust spots can be annoying in the photos but nothing special that can’t be cured by few clicks in photoshop. So far I used a Giotto rocket blower to clean my cameras inside, but sometimes the air-blown dirt remains in the camera and it's just moving around the sensor. I was looking for a more effective technique but I’m still hesitant to try the wet cleaning method. I considered also the electrostatically charged brush technique but these simple brushes are way overpriced. Finally, I decided to buy a specific cleaning wand from Dust-Aid. 

Sure, it’s also way overpriced but it seemed to me a clever approach. At the end of the wand there is a silicon pad you have to press firmly to your sensor and the adhesive capacity of this silicone material will remove the dust particles from your sensor (actually from the protective layer on your sensor).
Sounds like minimal chance for scratching the sensor surface. Later on the dust attached to the silicon pad is removed by applying the cleaning wand on a special cleaning strip. Sounds a bit alarming, you may contaminate later on the sensor with  adhesive from the strip but Dust-Aid promise carry over contamination neither from the cleaning strip nor from the silicon pad (special oils are used to soften rubber) when you follow some simple rules.
Let’s try it. First I cleaned my Sony NEX-5. Recently I take lots of close focus wide angle photos at small apertures (large F numbers) and the large depth of fields make the dust spots visible on the photos.

 Photo taken before the cleaning. You can see few dust spots on the right side of the photo. 

Photo taken after cleaning. No visible dust spots. It seems to be clean. 

OK, I have to admit, it was not very scientific, so I repeated the test with my sony a100. Before cleaning, I aimed my camera to a white wall and adjusted the focus to minimum (wall was out of focus). After resizing the photo I increased the contract extremely to make the spots more visible:

As you can see my sensor was quite dirty. I applied the cleaning method as described in the kit's manual.

Few very small spots remained but nothing annoying. So far I'm quite happy with the DUST-AID Platinum product. Recommended.

Curling of the fibers

Sometimes we need variable length fibers. A typical application is underwater photography when we trigger an external strobe with the onboard flash. The connection between the two flash can be an optical cable. In order place the strobe to different positions we need a variable length optical cable. The easiest way is to curl the optical fibers. I tried it before but my first attempt failed. Now I used a different approach, which worked perfectly for the very first time. I curled the fiber very tightly around a wooden stick with the proper diameter. Actually I used a wooden spoon for this purpose. I fixed the end of the fiber to the stick with a tape.

After reaching the proper length the second end was also taped to the stick. To keep this form I placed the curled fibers into hot water (around 90 C) . After the water reached boiling temperature I let it cool down around 5 more minutes. I kept the fibers in the hot water for 2 minutes. Last time I used a hair drier for this "melting step" but it didn't work that well.

Subsequently the fibers were cooled down in a glass of cold water:

That's it. The result is a nice spiral keeping its form after expanding it:

Rotunda

There are some photo subjects I like so much that I take photos almost every year again and again. In Leipzig there is a nice park nearby with small ponds and a wooden rotunda. In front of it there is a grass field with lots of crocuses in March and April.
This is my favourite from the first photo project devoted to the rotunda. It's typical light painting, so no fibers were used:

This was taken in 2008 with my first DSLR. A KonicaMinolta 7D. What a great camera. Now my brother takes wonderful bird photos with it. The camera was on a tripod and during the long exposure I manually used a flash to paint the flowers.
I repeated this photo later with sony a100 using the same lens (sigma 15mm fisheye) with the same technique:

Not much different, maybe a bit better composition and more flowers.
Few days ago I took these below, but during daytime:

I used nex-5 and 16mm with (1st) or without (2nd) the fisheye adapter lens. I also used the flexible twin flash adapter that was helpful for the vertical composition. There is not too much obvious effect of the flash but it's there. I've checked the dates of these photos and it's very interesting (from top down): 2008.02.09, 2010.03.23, and 2013.04.01. We still have some snow left but maybe this weekend the spring will arrive. I hope.

Spring re-loaded (and failed)

Spring is still not here. I had some nice plans to try my fiberstrobe adapters in the nature but spring is still not here in Leipzig. There was even snow today in the morning. At least I had opportunity to take photos of flowers in snow. I'm still trying to master the close focus wide angle technique. Previously I used the excellent sigma 15mm Fisheye lens on my APS-C camera, but now I have the opportunity to use my nex-5 with the 16mm+fisheye converter (VCL-ECF1) combo. It works fine, there is a bit of chromatic aberration visible in the photos, but otherwise I'm happy with the results:

Lighting such subjects very close to the lens (few cm) is a real challenge. You need properly positioned flashes with flags to have diffuse light but avoiding light spill directly to the lens. You need tripods, synching gears etc.
Wrong. It was tad simple. I used my twin flash adapter and the on-board HVL-F20S was enough to provide nice diffuse light. The rest was snapshoting:

More photos you can find on my new facebook page or in my flick library.
Cheers

Marcell

Tried and trusted sources

I frequently receive questions about the sources of fiberstrobe accessories. I wrote about many sources in previous blog posts but it can be time-consuming for the readers to find them, therefore I added some important links on the right side of the blog. I bought from these on-line shops and I was satisfied both with the products and the service. I live in Germany and sometimes good and not expensive accessories were not so competitive anymore at the end. I prefer Loc-Line over ARIANA when I needed flexible hoses, but despite the cheaper list price of Loc-line vendors in the US, after paying all additional costs ARIANA is getting competitive.
I'm still looking for a good European Loc-Line on-line shop. You can send me a link if you would recommend one.

More aquarium photos

Last weekend my son had his 6th birthday. We were busy with organizing the party but I had a bit of time to set up the macro fiber aquarium. My proud son showed some interest in the aquarium and I convinced him to try to take some picture. For him it was like a video game. Shoot when the strange creatures show up in the viewfinder. Here is the result (selected from many not so good):

Not bad from a six-year-old. (Daddy helped with post processing though)
But daddy also took some nice photos: