Bam-zine

It’s all over

I have got to send the Canon 100-400m L series lens back tomorrow, and its going to be hard to do. It hasn’t come off of my camera since it went on, and I must have taken a good 500 plus shots with it. For all my regular readers, you will have noticed some new images on my flickr photostream, all from this sexy lens, I have hundreds more to process, but time is limited.

The lens is heavy to say the least, and it looks like it was once part of a tank. I walked round Whipsnade zoo with it on a shoulder strap for over 5 hours, and didn’t notice it, its only when you are holding it up waiting for a bird to look in the right direction that you remember how heavy it is, it was about 2.2Kg with camera and batter grip. The autofocus is fast and silent, I got a few great shots with a shutter speed as low as 1/60th at 100mm so the IS does do what is says on the tin. The only time you hear the AF and IS is in a near silent room, and then only when you are looking thru the viewfinder. I AM going to buy one in the summer, and now I have tasted L I don’t think I will buy another ‘standard’ lens, an after looking at the Canon 1D X on the interweb  last night, I think I might need another mortgage.

www.lensesforhire.co.uk thanks.

So Excited.

Hired a Canon 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 L lens from lensesforhire.co.uk looking forward to testing it tomorrow.  Expect lots of shots from Whipsnade Zoo and Ashridge. For the non photographer, its a rather nice zoom lens for wildlife photography. Well its a bit more than rather nice, its about as good as it gets.

New Project

I have been meaning to take some soap film macros for a long time now. There are some amazing colours and shapes to be found in the tiniest areas of a soap bubble. Its surprisingly easy to get some amazing shapes and patterns in the soap liquid, getting the whole frame in focus however is a different story, even at f32 it proved hard to get pin sharp focus on the small details. The image below is probably about 8-10mm across on the bubble, using one of my sons pipe cleaners (he doesn’t smoke a pipe) as a frame for the soap film.

The magic soap for the bubbles is a home made secret recipe, but if you don’t tell anyone I’ll tell you what it is. 4 parts Green Fairy Liquid, 60 parts water, and 1 part glycerine. The glycerine makes the bubble film a bit stronger and helps the film survive a bit longer before it pops. I am going experiment with different ratios for my bubble mix and see if I can improve it.

I will be putting the best of these shots in my gallery for you all to send me money for lovely artistic prints.

Back up and running

Guess who forgot to pay the bills…

IMG_7304

IMG_7304, originally uploaded by Bambi_72.

Not posted any nice pics recently

PC vs H2O

Started on version 2 of my camera controller, I suppressed the geek for a while but you can’t hold it back for long.

I have built a ‘working’ visual basic app that can send data (settings) to an arduino board and have the board send back modified data (settings) to the application. So no more fiddling about with up and down value settings via a cool, but not easy menu system, just a nice easy windows application.

I am going to future proof myself and have lots and lots of outputs for solenoids, cameras (stereoscopic images) and flash guns.  I should be able to get the timing down to the microsecond level, but not sure how accurate this will be.

Updates to follow.

Camera Controller Update

I have finally gotten my camera controller script updated.

You can read more about it here.

E.D.L & Unite Against Fascism Protests – Luton

Ever since I heard about the EDL’s planned protest and march to be held in Luton I was in two minds whether to go down with my camera and try my hand at some reportage photography.  I couldn’t make my mind up after hearing so much local gossip regarding the violence and non EDL members just turning up for a good ol’ riot. including Luton’s own MIGs. When Unite Against Fascism announced they were going to hold a counter demonstration my mind was made up to attend this if nothing else. I know the EDL say they are not racist and only want Muslims in England to follow English laws and respect English customs, but  many of their members probably are racist and just don’t like foreigners being here. I don’t agree with their views, but I do strongly believe that everyone has the right to their own beliefs. Everyone should have the right to protest against anything they don’t believe in, however distasteful the majority may find it, and to give EDL members on this march some credit, at least they have the balls to stand up and be counted, rather than sitting at home saying how bad it is and not going out and shouting.

So anyway, I went and I took my camera along with a healthy dose of apprehension. I made my way to the UAF demonstration first and was shocked how dead Luton was, its was literally like a ghost town, at least until you hit the town centre when there was an army of police, ready for WWIII by the looks of things. There were more police per yard in Luton than I think there were for the Anti Iraq war march in London. I got a few shots of the massed Police vans, and headed on to the UAE demo, there were a few people there, maybe 2-300, but I was an hour or so early. All of the side streets in town had been closed off by 8 foot metal barriers and lines of police, it felt very strange, like being a rat in a cage. It then took me a while to find an open route round to the other end of George Street where the EDL march was due to end up for speakers and some music. The whole of St, Georges Square was surrounded by steel and boarded up shops and bars, there were a handful of locals and several real journalists and press photographers there. Unnervingly, most of the press photographers were carrying or wearing hard hats, I felt like a total amateur. I had a chat with some fellow photographers and a few of the police, many of them were not local and didn’t know the area at all, all of them were very friendly, and helpful and seemed quite relaxed. I found out where the march was due to enter the square and bagged a good spot. After about 30 minutes one of the police said they were about 4 minutes away, so everyone got in place and waited. The first thing you could see was a line of mounted police followed by a row or two of riot police with St. Georges Cross, and EDL flags waving over their heads, along with the dull chant of ” E!  E!  E-D-L! “, which I think is line 1 of their manifesto. It all started to get exciting now, there was an elderly Asian man walking slowly about 15 yards in front, being escorted by several plain clothed police. (You could see the ear pieces in the photos) I am not sure who he was, but I assume he was making a personal protest against the protesters. Then the masses descended, carrying numerous banners and placards all stating how evil Islam is and repeating line 1 of the manifesto over and over. I also heard a rather delightful chat of “Allah, Allah, Who The F*** is Allah?” which is just plain sickening coming from these educated political minds…..  I wish I had recorded that on video.  I grabbed a few nice shots at this point as I was only a yard or two away from the marchers, and got quite a bit of verbal abuse, apparently these people don’t like other people knowing their opinions, which is quite strange.

After the march had arrived in the square  I was feeling a lot bolder, even more so after spotting a guy I know from my local pub amongst them. If it did go all tits up, a least I knew 1 guy,  so I decided to get in there and grab some more pictures. There were several characters in the crowd but I felt a bit odd snapping close ups in such an alien territory to me, I was the only ginger hippy in there that’s for sure. I got several crowd shots before I plucked up the courage to ask a skinhead if I could take a picture of his bull terrier who had a very spikey harness and looked very mean indeed. He just looked at me and said “Sure!, hey look at the man with the camera… look…good girl…” Nice photo cheers. So don’t brand everyone an ass-hole just because they hold some views you don’t agree with. Hmm this is turning into a bit of a rant isn’t it.

I decided to leave after about an hour and was politely informed by the police that the road was closed and I would have to wait. I tried several exits out and was told the same thing at every exit, this was lesson two learned, a press ID will get you out. So I sat tight for another couple of hours and tried again to leave, this time near the main exit by the station, again I was told the same thing, but this time he told me to hang about as they were letting people out in ones and twos when it was quiet. After about 5 minutes a man, his wife and their little girl and a friend of theirs arrived from the station to be told the same thing, and it was obvious the girl and friend where petrified, by this time the EDL were starting to return to their trains and coaches, still chanting and being generally intimidating, so good on you EDL boys, you can scare women and children. Anyway the police let us all thru eventually and I got back into the shopping centre, which was reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead, there were that many life like people in there, just the odd alcoholic, pensioner and security guard. I exited by the Unite Against Fascism protest to see how it was going and there were so may more people there now, not as many as the EDL protest but about 1000 according to the news. As I was late and my wife was picking me up I had to leave without getting any more photos and realised how relaxed and satisfied with myself I felt. It was definitely an experience and I recommend everyone who is into photography to try and record a protest or public demonstration, you can capture so much emotion in peoples faces, well those that aren’t masked that is.(yes I know this was probably some clever statement about the Burka).  And those of you that are not into photography, go out there and protest against something that pisses you off. Politics isn’t about not bothering to do anything,and about getting up and letting people know you are pissed off, if you do nothing the other side wins.

Digital Drops Flickr Group

I have started my very own new Flickr group for drop heads who have taken things beyond manual water drops. Digital Drops is a group for people who use some kind of electronic timing when taking water drop photos. This can be anything from one of the basic hiviz delay kits to a high end retail kit like a Stopshot or a Mumford Time Machine, or even better, a homebrew project you have built to do exactly what you want it to. There are only a few members at the minute, but don’t let that put you off, come and join us and share the knowledge that allows us all to take these wonderful pictures.

Getting better

Mushroom, originally uploaded by Bambi_72.

The pictures keep getting better and better.
More to come, I have 100′s of them already.