Cool Photography

[Aeadar]

I recently DLed Paint.net and GIMP, for the purposes of better editing of my screenshots and learning to do skins. But yesterday I decided to try and see what I could do with some of my older, non-Orbiter photos and came up with these:







...I wasn't really sure where to post them so I thought I'd resurrect Andy44s thread since there are some amazing photos there that deserve to be seen. Although only one of these is from film, and both have been through the editor, Andy44 did say,"whatever you think is cool goes here." in the first post.

Not intended as a necropost, just thought that this thread was appropriate.

Hope ya like them.

 

[Andy44]

Time to bring this thread back to life!

From yesterday of course:

And here's a few the OF community has not seen before, all from the Goddard Spaceflight Center outdoor rocket garden. Like some of the others I've posted here, these are dry-plate ambrotypes on 4" by 5" glass plates, hand-coated and shot in my home-built camera, and developed in my home. Lots of work but rewarding results.

Delta Launch Vehicle with hold-down clamps:

Delta Third Stage with payload mock-up and aero shroud:

Boilerplate Apollo Command Module and Sounding Rockets:

---------- Post added at 11:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:25 PM ----------

And I'll re-post this one for good measure; my old Lunar Space Shuttle add-on:

 

[Unstung]

This thread has been down for a while.

Most recent, still the first shot I've uploaded using my new wide-aperture lens.

I'm glad I caught this moment; it makes the baboon seem human-like.

Macro filters.

Something for O-F.

Earlier photos.

Gallery: http://unstung.deviantart.com/gallery/10887137

 

[Gerdih]

About historical processes, here're a couple of videos showing the Daguerreotype process, which was one of the first photographic processes. The first video is a French animation with no sound, and shows it step by step:
YouTube- Daguerreotip - Daguerreotype. Museu del Cinema

What the hell, its not French its Catalan.

 

[Izack]

And I'll re-post this one for good measure; my old Lunar Space Shuttle add-on:

That's done by taking a photograph of your monitor; am I remembering right?

I wonder if such a camera would work in a vacuum environment...or a microgravity one, for that matter.

 

[Andy44]

That's done by taking a photograph of your monitor; am I remembering right?

I wonder if such a camera would work in a vacuum environment...or a microgravity one, for that matter.

I don't know how the emulsion gel would react to vacuum, but the camera itself is just a wooden box with a cheap glass lens and cardboard stops. The sliding-box design allows it to telescope in and out for focusing. The home-made shutter is a gravity-driven guillotine shutter, so that won't work in freefall, but I can install different lenses, including a high-quality Schneider-Kreuznach lens with integral shutter and aperture. So this camera will work fine in a vacuum.

I built the film holders for this camera to hold either glass plates like the ones I posted, or two sheets of conventional film, which is the same type of material used by Apollo astronauts on the lunar surface, so the camera will definitely work with that in space.

Now if you can figure out a way to get me and my camera into space to test it I'm all ears!

---------- Post added at 09:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:42 PM ----------

What the hell, its not French its Catalan.

Oops...sorry about that!

 

[Artlav]

Cool photography?
What about hot?

Here is a warm soldering iron:

And there is a view outdoors in the 3.4 micron band:

Taken with a homemade MWIR thermographic camera.
A world's first, as far as i know.

The thing is not just thermal, it can take pictures in any band i can get a sensor for.
From deep blue sunset:

To the NIR still of a terrace:

Or across the bands to show the energy efficiency of household lights:

All about the project here, somewhat dated for the moment:
http://orbides.1gb.ru/photobot.php

Next step: find someone who can shape optical silicon or ZnSe, and get proper MWIR lenses - pinholes need too much amplification, and plastic lenses are not transparent enough.

 

[Andy44]

Cool photography?

Next step: find someone who can shape optical silicon or ZnSe, and get proper MWIR lenses - pinholes need too much amplification, and plastic lenses are not transparent enough.

Can't you use an old SLR camera lens? Lots of DSLRs can shoot IR, and IR film is used in film SLRs as well.

BTW, way cool project. You've always been one of Orbiter Forum's resident MacGyvers!

 

[Artlav]

Can't you use an old SLR camera lens? Lots of DSLRs can shoot IR, and IR film is used in film SLRs as well.

BTW, way cool project. You've always been one of Orbiter Forum's resident MacGyvers!

There's IR and there's IR. And a lot of confusion on which IR is which IR.

Silicon cameras (all consumer ones) are sensitive only up to about 1000nm, the NIR band.

Then goes the SWIR band, up to 3000nm.
At about 2500nm glass ceases to be transparent.
Long-range IR communications are in 1000-2000nm.
Air is opaque in 1.9um (H2O absorption), and in 2.5 to 3um (CO2 absorption).

After that we are going into thermal IR radiation, starting at the MWIR band - 3000nm to 8000nm.
There the soldering irons are light bulbs and humans are glow bugs.
Quartz glass have a small transparency window around 3500nm, where my sensor is.
But Silicon, Germanium, ZnSe are the most commonly used materials with transmission in all longer IR bands (1.1um to 7um for Si).
Air is very transparent around 3.4um, the MWIR window, a little between 4.5 and 5.5, and opaque everywhere else.

Below goes LWIR band, the ambient and below-zero thermal, extending down to 1000 microns, followed by Thz and microwaves.

Thermographic cameras are MWIR and LWIR, photographic white-trees-black-sky IR cameras are NIR.
If latter were sensitive to thermal IR, why would thermographic cameras cost multiple kilodollars per 0.016 megapixel and millions of dollars for 1-4 megapixels?

 

[Andy44]

Well, learn something new every day. And your homemade IR camera is very impressive. Do we get to see what it looks like? Did you build the whole body or just use an existing unit with your new innards?

 

[Keatah]

Some of the very best aircraft photos come from Airliners.net
And then there's the sci-fi airshow, its not really photography, but a cool concept nonetheless.

 

[Artlav]

Do we get to see what it looks like? Did you build the whole body or just use an existing unit with your new innards?

There is a "making of" part on the project site, i'm slowly filling it up.
Any comments on the site's legibility and design?

Build the thing from scratch, box and all. Only recycled piece is a scanner bed for X axis.

A plywood box, wrapped in tin foil to keep EMF away.

And wrapped in duct tape to keep the tin foil intact.

Inside is the scanning robot, all the electronics, and a UPS battery to power it all.

And the main piece of magic, the InAs photodiode on the sensor head.

 

[Artlav]

Something cool on it's own.
A view of a park, 150MP, 8Mb.
Regular camera, NIR.
http://orbides.1gb.ru/etc/park_150mp.jpg

In there you can see my my camera in the wild, taking a picture:

I've finally sorted out last set of problems with noise and instability in 3.4um imaging, and wanted to take a good full resolution picture in a new location.
But the picture kind of fizzled - loose wire.

Back home, some quick fixing and testing shown the capability restored:

And a full resolution test picture followed - the same boring view from the window, upper MWIR band.

 

[Andy44]

- the same boring view from the window, upper MWIR band.

Boring? Not hardly, Artlav! Quite an achievement, and it's a beautiful photo at that! The intersection of art and engineering at its best.

Now that's you've got the capability, the next hard part is finding creative ways to use it. When I build my gadgets I always feel that finishing the build is only the beginning.

 

[Artlav]

Now that's you've got the capability, the next hard part is finding creative ways to use it.

That is so.
I was thinking of taking pictures of regular scenes in the light of a warm soldering iron - that's got to look quite psychedelic.
Unfortunately, it would take better optics than a plastic fresnel with about 1-5% transparency in the target band, and shipping times from China are never quick.

In the meantime, i hunt for the regular things in the new shape.
For example true color images, Prokudin-gorsky style.

With some NIR leakage in the red channel, amazing how adding some real color sharpens a blurred image:

And actual true color, but with some distortion in the red from the hot mirror filter.

 

[Andy44]

So you're getting chromatic aberration from your cheap lens trying to collect so many frequencies when it can only focus for a narrow band?

---------- Post added at 09:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:37 PM ----------

And how come some photos appear monochrome (black and white) and others are in color?

 

[Artlav]

So you're getting chromatic aberration from your cheap lens trying to collect so many frequencies when it can only focus for a narrow band?

No, the fresnel lens focuses all colours more or less the same.

It's the filters that cause the problems.

Hot mirror filter, the tiny one can only fit on the sensor, while the colour filters go to the lens side. With the colour filters the combination is almost perfect (first image), since they are all the same geometrically.
But there is some IR leak making the grass red.

So, i re-did the red channel, but the filter over the sensor screwed up half the image - it's variably reflective from the angles, shifts the image due to it's thickness, etc.
Different optical path.
I should have re-taken all three with the added filter, but the sun didn't cooperate.

And how come some photos appear monochrome (black and white) and others are in color?

Hm?
The camera takes monochromatic images, but you can take several ones in different bands, like red, green and blue, or visible and NIR, and combine them into a color image.
If that's what you refer to.

 

[Artlav]

China never fails to deliver.

A ZnSe lens - broad IR transmittance, and much clearer focus compared to a plastic Fresnel.

That allows for commercial-level quality images of things hotter than 90*C:

Even the reflected "light" is visible:

And the same, in classic colouration with better details:

So, anything hot around that is worth taking a picture of?

 

[Blacklight]

It's a shame that film is getting made less and less. Proper pinhole camera photography is eventually going to go away. I'm sure it's doable with a digital camera, but it's not the same, and you can't just knock one together in 15 minutes.

 

[Andy44]

It's a shame that film is getting made less and less. Proper pinhole camera photography is eventually going to go away.

Not so fast. Film is not the big consumer item it once was, but it's going strong among the art photography crowd and companies are even releasing new products. The Agfa brand name has been ressurected, new printing papers are being introduced. Even as Kodak filed for bankruptcy they announced that despite discontintuing lots of stuff, Tri-X film and chemicals are still making money. Go look at http://freestylephoto.biz/ for an example of the cool new stuff coming out.

Now the down side is that it's a lot harder to find someone to process your film and make prints since photo labs are closing. Drugstores still process C-41 film in their machines, though. If you're a serious film user you'll have to have a home dark room, which is nothing new.

It's also a little harder to find new film cameras. Canon and Nikon still make student model 35mm SLRs, but the raft of fancy consumer gear we used to see is no more. Toy cameras like Holgas and Dianas are popular, and if you got money and want to go medium format, you can still buy a Leica M7 or a Hasselblad, and Fujifilm recently released two really nice new 120-film cameras. Large format film cameras are still selling and probably will as they have always been niche items. And Fujifilm makes Polaroid-style instant film in large format. In fact, the Impossible Project is a company run by former Polaroid employees who are recreating Polaroid film for sale to the art photo world.

And if all else fails, you can build your own stuff and mix your own chemicals. That's how they did it in the 1850s.

---------- Post added 05-10-12 at 07:11 PM ---------- Previous post was 05-09-12 at 11:47 PM ----------

Right on time, a friend sent me this link today concerning the future of film:

http://www.pdnonline.com/features/The-Future-of-Film-5631.shtml