Long Exposure Photography...water....stars and what is next?

I was feeling pretty good after the first few attempts at taking some images using long exposure and as we were taking a trip to Anglesey I took my camera as I would have some opportunity to take some photos.

What I did discover after setting up my camera was making sure it was steady, in focus and on the right settings. As much as I really enjoy taking photos of nature, I dislike the fact that nature moves constantly and gives some parts of my photos a blurry look. here are some of the results from the weekend away.

I was really pleased with how these turned out, in fact I was stunned as this was the first time out and about taking the photos of water. I then went and tested this same method out at the zoo to see if I could get some still water movement captured.




These photos of the small waterfall turned out better than I expected, I did have to spend time manipulating plants out of the way and also securing the camera into the ground.

The fountain at the zoo also provide to have some interesting water features once captured. I just thought it was pretty much still water, apart from the waterfall as the pond looked so calm. The long exposure shows that although it looks calm and unmoving that there is constant motion.

After the experiments with water I wanted to try out the star trails that I had read about, this took much more planning as we are not blessed with the clearest of skies at the best of times, and catching a night where there are no clouds and it is not windy or raining or really cold is pretty much remote. I have been lucky this past week that there have been a few clear nights to allow me to try out capturing the star trails. After some trial and error with setting and trying to reduce the amount of light getting in, and staying awake long enough for it to go dark is another big factor I forgot to mention, I did manage to capture a few decent shots.

I will need to work out a better power supply so I can have the camera running for longer to see if I can catch a whole rotation of the stars. We are off on holiday so I have packed up the camera and fingers crossed I will be able to get some excellent shots while away.

Final note.......AS Photography results are in and I got an A!

Long Exposure Photography Experiment One

After the success of the Pinhole Cameras it was time to try out long exposure using my digital camera. Before the first attempt I can't begin to tell you about the number of websites that I visited to read up on it and to also purchase the right equipment to get the best results.

Anyway, I tested out the equipment from the location of the seconds pinhole camera that looks out over the local motorway. I should say that at 3pm this motorway is very busy and the result made it look like a ghost road! I am wondering whether I should explore this branch of photography further and going into town when it is busy and get some "ghost" town shots.

A fantastic, and great way to test out the camera and the settings that I had carefully selected. Onto the next test.....

Second test of the day was to capture the changing of the sky as the sun was setting. I adjusted the settings slightly to factor in the changing of the light and conditions, who knew that I would be using Maths and Science to take photographs! So......here is the result, and again I am really pleased as it shows the motion of how the clouds move across the sky and the colours developing over time.

Next test it to try and capture water.....

Pinhole Cameras - Experiment Two

After the success of the first camera I decided to take a trip up to the second pinhole camera I had set up and see if it had worked. The first image is the original scan from the photographic paper straight from the camera. I was really excited to see that the image contained the light trail in the sky, which was what I had been hoping for after seeing some examples on other websites.

This is the image after the invert had been applied to the original, and it shows the light trail in the sky even more, and it has highlighted some of the details of the road which was really pleasing.

The next idea I had was to play with the photo editing software to see if I could alter the colours further using the hue and saturation settings, I also played with the brightness and contrast to see what other results I could get out of the image. I am pretty happy with the result, I was surprised with the colours in the sky that appeared, however, I did have to be careful when adding the editing so not to remove the details of the original image.

I am really excited about the results that I have been getting from the pinhole cameras, and these are only after 2 months of being up at the locations. I will be leaving the others out for longer. Fingers crossed they will still be there when I go to collect them! 

The original cameras are now reloaded with new paper and ready to go, along with 3 more that my son and I made earlier today. Just got to find some interesting locations!

Pinhole Cameras Experiment One.....

It has been approximately 8 weeks since I put the first Pinhole Camera up at home as a test run to see if I had got the design right and whether the paper would work with the truly awesome weather we have in the North-West.

After taking down the camera, I realised that I needed to move fairly quickly to ensure that the scan was done swiftly so not to expose the image to much light in the transfer from the camera to the scanner. However, I discovered that getting the paper out of the can in one quick movement was not as easy as I thought it was going to be, and after a few frantic seconds I managed to place it soon the scanner, fingers crossed that I had not damaged the image. Upon placing the paper onto the scanner we realised (husband roped in at this point) that it did not want to scan without a preview first, big no, no when doing this kind of scanning. 

A quick changing of settings into "Professional" mode and we were off, with the scan taking the best part of 5 minutes as we put it on the highest settings to capture a decent image, and yes - the image is massive, 25% and it fills more than the whole of my screen.

Here is the original scan:

We were both impressed with the detail that had been captured by the camera in the short space of time.

Here is the final image, it has been inverted so it gives the illusion that it has been processed, however, this is a much easier method than using all the chemical to actually develop the photograph paper. I am really looking forward to collecting the other cameras that we have put up, and I need to make some more. 

I am really happy with how this experiment has turned out, big smiley face, the adventure with Pinhole Cameras continues.......

Pinhole Cameras

A bit of a change from the usual Raspberry Pi related items, but something that I have become interested in over the last few months. At work the staff were given the opportunity to do the AS Photography course, as I keen photographer (pre-children) I decided it was a great opportunity to get my camera out again.

I have had lots of fun over the year collecting photos of different things and editing them to suit my needs for the AS course. My eldest son (who is 4) and I have had some lovely trips out to different places to take images to use, so much so, he has his own sketch book to keep his photos in.

I have now completed the assessments and work has been moderated so along with keeping my fingers crossed for my students, I am also hoping for a good grade myself. This has given me a bit of time to think about what I might like to do as the next unit to complete the A2 year of the course.

After much Internet searching and thinking about what I would like to try, I have decided to go back to basics and make my own cameras. In my search I cam across this website http://www.pinholephotography.org/

This has some really interesting stuff on it, and I had no idea how easy it would be to make a pinhole camera and set it up. After collecting the required items (the right photo paper being the most difficult to find) and asking my flyball team mates to keep hold of their empties for me to collect I was ready to make the cameras.

So with the video instructions written down and a good idea about how to create the basic camera I began.

Part way through and the lid is made, and all seems to be going well, I am winning the battle against the gaffa tape that wants to stick me to everything else in the house. And the battle with the children who keep running off with different items every time they visit the table to see what is going on. Loading the paper was interesting as I didn't want to expose it to much light, but as it is spending at least 6 month being exposed to the outside world a few seconds to get it in place in the can was not going to cause too much damage.

And here is the finished camera, all ready to roll. I am setting one up at home as my test one with others going up as I make them over the next few weeks. The idea is to catch a long exposure over 6 months with the paper recording the light movement to give some interesting results. It is a fantastic experiment as I have no idea what the images are going to turn out like as the camera is exposed 24/7 for 6 months tracking daylight and night time.

Here are the cameras set up in the test locations, fingers crossed that the one on the bridge does not get removed (I have put a note on it to explain what it is doing). The final challenge of setting up the cameras was to get them attached, I bought some super long cable ties, which were still not long enough unless I doubled them up and used a bit of string to keep it steady!

The idea for the project is to study long exposure photography using my own digital camera and comparing the results from the pinhole camera, using the same locations where possible. Fingers crossed....

Robots...and Soldering

After receiving a HapPi robot for Christmas it was time to really think about getting a soldering iron, or at least finding someone who had one. I should have known that my Dad had one set up on his workbench in his "man room", so a good start once I checked it out, just needed the time to get the robot controller out to assemble. This is far tricker than it sounds with 2 children running around and 3 dogs also running around, but on New Year's Day I managed to get some time to myself to sneak off and do some soldering.

At this point it should be mentioned that I don't think that I have soldered anything since my GCSE Design and Technology course - lets not discuss how long ago that was! So after setting up my work area, which consisted of moving all the random stuff off my Dad's desk to another part of the room, and piling a load of tools into a corner I was ready. I cautiously turned on the soldering iron and set a middle temperature, no luck as it was not hot enough to melt the solder so once it was turned up I was off. I decided quickly that I both like and dislike soldering, I like trying to make it all neat and tidy but not trying to rectify any mistakes that you makes as that is tricky. I discovered this as I soldered a hole shut by accident, after trying unsuccessfully to sort it out another pair of hands were required.

I am pretty pleased with my soldering, it is quite tidy - according to my Dad. So now comes the task of putting the body together, but I shall save that for another day.

Having a Raspberry Pi and going to Picademy has made me try lots of different things that I won't have come across. The students at school love having a go at Minecraft Pi and using Python to code different things - generally arming TNT and so on, trying out networking the Pis together and lots of other practical computing they otherwise would not have tried out.

A soldering iron anyone....

I was given this the other day. Will have to go and root out a soldering iron though, the kids will love it once I have put it together.

I think I will try and add a button for the boys to play with it.