Mark goes at it again... just bought a PL700/II!

I've done lots worse than that Mark...your story turned out good. NOTHING can be taken for granted..
 
The video for LED meter calibration is finished, so is the one about correcting an error I made on the input jacks. I hesitate to post the "error" video because it may irritate a sensitive jerk on YT.

Monologue:
"Really, you should come over some time- I'm a fun guy (bites a mushroom: "fungi") some of my friends say that I'm quite vaccinating (squirts cyalume [glow stick juice] at the camera, "fascinating"). This would shoot the whole series into the tank...
 
MarkWComer said:
The video for LED meter calibration is finished, so is the one about correcting an error I made on the input jacks. I hesitate to post the "error" video because it may irritate a sensitive jerk on YT.

Monologue:
"Really, you should come over some time- I'm a fun guy (bites a mushroom: "fungi") some of my friends say that I'm quite vaccinating (squirts cyalume [glow stick juice] at the camera, "fascinating"). This would shoot the whole series into the tank...
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Nice video, I'll need when I do my 400 II.
That "unmodified" C-1 looks familiar. I know it sounds great even in it's native state.
 
Vynuladikt said:
Nice video, I'll need when I do my 400 II.
That "unmodified" C-1 looks familiar. I know it sounds great even in it's native state.
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The only bad thing about the upgrade is the different size of the input jacks on the back. Will have to find a good way to desolder from the circuit board, don’t want to damage any traces. Thinking about a low budget desoldering device using a 4” cooling fan and aquarium hose.

New video series, I guess- the BillD upgrade…

And, yes, BTW- sounds excellent, and the holography circuit is wickedly amazing!
 
MarkWComer said:
The only bad thing about the upgrade is the different size of the input jacks on the back. Will have to find a good way to desolder from the circuit board, don’t want to damage any traces. Thinking about a low budget desoldering device using a 4” cooling fan and aquarium hose.

New video series, I guess- the BillD upgrade…

And, yes, BTW- sounds excellent, and the holography circuit is wickedly amazing!
Click to expand...
Try some of this for desoldering, it is amazingly good. They give you 5 feet.
 

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Awrite... Posting the dreadful input jack error video...

The part that might eject from YouTube is at 11:14, but there's a bunch of cornball crap throughout, starting at about three minutes.

 
Demo’ed to my nephew and his friend today…
Sez he’s gonna try to scrape up enough kopecks for a 700/WOPL…
 
Vynuladikt said:
That "unmodified" C-1 looks familiar. I know it sounds great even in it's native state.
Click to expand...
All of the BillD components replaced now. I didn’t use the blue LED, I used a white one- and it looks like a train headlight in a tunnel! Switching to the blue one…

I must have desoldered one of the jumpers by mistake, lots of crackly noise…

Yes, videos on the upgrade…
 
MarkWComer said:
All of the BillD components replaced now. I didn’t use the blue LED, I used a white one- and it looks like a train headlight in a tunnel! Switching to the blue one…

I must have desoldered one of the jumpers by mistake, lots of crackly noise…

Yes, videos on the upgrade…
Click to expand...


By messing around with the resistor/LED combo, you can tone the "train headlight" down
 
The Powerful Difference said:
Mark,

If you don't mind me asking, those photos were super sharp. If you don't mind me asking, what was the recipe that you used to take those photos?
Camera, lens, lighting, flash/no flash, f-stop, etc.

FWIW, my motivation is to leave plenty of photo breadcrumbs for anyone following behind me...and I'm never bashful to ask a fellow photographer how did they take a better than average shot?

Thanks in advance!

Cheers -
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You'd be surprised at how many photos I take with a stupid little iPhone camera. A good portion of my video clips are also with that stoopid little thing! Surprising that it can focus that close!

The best clue I can give you is LIGHT! Your subject MUST be well illuminated. Turn off as many of the automatic features on your camera as the camera will allow- manual f/stops, shutter speeds, and sensitivity. If your camera has "live view," use it, connect some sort of HD monitor to the video output and judge your focus and exposure with that instead of the viewfinder.

I use a Nikon D7500, but still have some lenses from my old F3, and I've learned how to use the old manual lenses with the digital camera. The advantages are that the max aperture can be as wide as f/1.4, so I get a lot of light through to the image sensor. Again, use a lot of light, and know about depth of field- a smaller aperture gives greater depth from foreground to back, but MOST lenses are sharpest at the midpoint of the aperture scale. Another advantage with those manual lenses is that I can use extension tubes or an extension bellows for extreme closeups. Yeah, lots of fiddling there, but the result is worthwhile. Closeup lenses don't give as good a result, but for a lot of things, are more than adequate.

So, there really isn't any great hidden secret to it other than use lots of light and turn all the automatic crap off!
 
The Powerful Difference said:
Mark,

If you don't mind me asking, those photos were super sharp. If you don't mind me asking, what was the recipe that you used to take those photos?
Camera, lens, lighting, flash/no flash, f-stop, etc.

FWIW, my motivation is to leave plenty of photo breadcrumbs for anyone following behind me...and I'm never bashful to ask a fellow photographer how did they take a better than average shot?

Thanks in advance!

Cheers -
Click to expand...
I have to add:

FILL YOUR IMAGE FIELD WITH YOUR SUBJECT! If you're photographing an entire 12" x 18" circuit board but the problem is a toasted resistor in the upper far right of the image, how does that show anything to anybody? GET TIGHT on your subject as you possibly can!

This applies to your family snapshots as well- DON'T put faces in dead center of the viewfinder, but include some context to the image. Too much "airspace" above your subject and cutting them off in mid- thigh looks dumb.

Further tirade:

"Vertical videos" made from cellphone cameras! People move laterally- action goes left and right- limiting view in a vertical format restricts the "stage of action" and also looks dumb, like looking through a keyhole...
 
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I'm a Canon guy (or was, when I was a photographer). Still have a Pelican case full of expensive stuff rotting...

I started out with an AE-1 Program in high school, and later got one of my own from a pawn shop. Graduated to a "New" F-1 (to avoid confusion, Canon went from F-1 to F-1n, to "new" F-1, so, the last generation of the F-1) a few years later. I think I went through eight or 10 New F-1's. I usually had two bodies in my bag, and a spare at home. The the task of finding and collecting the FD-L lenses I needed...

Anyway, later I got (and still have) an EOS-1v, which is the film body. Finally ending with the EOS-1d digital body.

My subjects were often moving (cars and trucks) and I always had to rely on available light. I was not happy to realize exactly zero of my FD-L lenses would work on the new EF Canon lens format. BUT, I came to appreciate the engineers did this to allow a larger final lens element diameter, thereby allowing more light. (Some of you may remember the EF 50:1.0L lens) Light gathering and sharpness "at the corners" is not much of a problem.

I slowly sold off my FD-L lenses and replaced them with EF-L lenses (except the fisheye).

Anyway, where was I... Oh, yeah. I always, since the film days, run about 1 stop of over-exposure, and let the camera decide on aperture (usually) in my case. I set shutter speed based on speed of my subject and security of myself holding the thing. I have a nice monopod I used on occasion (and a tripod of course, but rarely used that), but usually I was relying on whatever I could find- rocks, trees, other people (not ideal) vehicles... And bracketing every shot. the EOS does it via a setting and the shutter speed is so high (with enough light) there is no apparent change from frame one to frame three. The space of the bracketing and number of frames are both selectable I think. Pretty sure I ran + and - 1 stop all the time, so my -1 would be "correct" exposure.

All those parameters are set ahead of time, but it s a powerful tool.

Another neat one is you can lock focus on say a slow moving freight train coming up the line, and the camera will adjust focus constantly to keep the same feature you have highlighted in focus as it moves. Then you can concentrate on your composition, and trip the shutter with impunity.

Another one, which I used for a published photo, is the automatic depth of field option. Yes, I can sit down and figure it out long hand, but it's easier to focus on the furthest, and closest, item you want in focus in your composition, and then fire away. The camera will automatically set f-stop and shutter speed to keep everything between those two points in focus.

Fun toy. Magazine decided it wasn't going to pay me any longer for no apparent reason, so that ended that.
 
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