For a while now, I’ve been trying to get a flatbed scanner working, to no avail, to try and create a long time pin hole exposure shot like Justin Quinnell.

The other reason for the scanner was to create contacts sheet from negatives that I have, to prep some scanning sessions on the negative scanner I got for my Dad recently. So then I got an idea…

What if I simulated, my own scanner, well sort of!

• The idea goes as follows.
• Create a white image that fills the entire screen
• View the white image in full screen mode, you might need to maximise the level of brightness and contrast
• Blue tack the negative holder to the screen
• Take a picture with regular camera of the whole sheet, or individual sections of the negative sheet.
• Load pictures onto PC
• If working from black and white negatives, convert the image to greyscale
• Invert the image - hey presto!
• Depending on the quality of your negatives, you will have to adjust a) levels b) curves to get the best out of the image.
• The overall result does not give you highest quality image, but it is certainly not bad for no extra cost or extra hardware.

Here are some example shots

Original shot

The original shot of the negative

End Result

End result of home made negative scanner

Overall, a rather good result
R

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This weekend I thought I’d go for a drive, and I figured, sure why not go North, Donegal direction, via Enniskillen. The traffic was crazy in town, so I parked up and asked a local for directions to Millets camping shop, where the idea was to buy some camping gear. I got there, but dissapointingly, they stocked very few of the items I was looking for. I got what I thought was a Trangia equivalent, and headed off. On the way back to the car park, I walked by the river, took the shots of the swan and the part of the barge.

The plan was to do find a nice quiet place to park the van, and then sleep there for the night. After a some searching, and very dodgy mountain roads I found a nice little pier, where I parked up and set about getting dinner cooked. Thing was that the cooking set I had bought was missing the actual burner! Annoyed, I had to settle with a sardines in tomato sauce and potato salad sandwhich. More annoyingly, it meant no warm coffee for the morning…

I succumbed to sleep very quickly, there was a lot of driving that day, and woke at 6am the next day.  Fresh and clear - and I thought, great, lets take some pictures!! (click on the thumbnails to enlarge)

There was a lot more driving that day, but sadly after the early morning clear skies, the weather somewhat, and the light just did not work for pictures. Donegal though, is well worth visiting, make sure to get off the main roads though, as everything looks the same. Do what I did, pick a random side road - and go for it!

R

p.s. The post is numbered, as I plan on doing more trips like this over the coming year

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Photocritic has a great article here, “10 ways to break photographer’s block :: Photocritic photography blog”
What I find most interesting, is his last point, point 10:

“What are you doing reading these guides on the internet anyway? Grab your camera, get out there, do stuff. Stop moaning. No, seriously, outside. Or inside, for that matter. Just do it already!”

It is very true fact.

Currently, I feel I want to take pictures, but I feel I need to understand more about the technique behind what it is I want to shoot. There is a problem though, and to put a term on it, I think I may ‘technique shy’! Its like when you see a girl, and you think she is kinda cute, you get shy (at least I do…), and you do nothing about it. But sometimes, you just gotta grab the bull by the horns, and see what happens.  It may be great, or not so great. Either way, you will have found out that it useful, as you learned something from the experience.

Maybe it is a block of some form, ‘technique shy’ or whatever it is.  One thing I will do though, is to have a go at some of the suggestions Photocritic has.

Nothing to loose, but all to gain…

R

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In playing around and learning how to use the new negative scanner I got my Dad for Christmas, I scanned this old shot I took of crashing waves in Clare. As you can see the image on the bottom is quite speckled with dust and scratches, and also streaked from what I imagine are water streaks when the negative dried.

The whole process of carefully removing all the scratches, dust specks and streaks, was strangely therapeutic!

R

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Tonight was my camera club’s (Offshoot) meet up night, and we did some macro shooting! Below are some of the shots of the night

My favourite is the first one… (click on picture to see larger version)

R

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This is a shot I took years ago with an old Pentax Asashi, back in the day I did a little processing under the tutelage of the old man.

I just bought Dad a new scanner, so more will come

(click to see larger version)

R

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randomness rocks…

while browsing photosites and following links from one blog to the next, I came across this shot here on “Les Particules Etranges”

- which happens to be taken at the place I took the picture below last December!

most excellent!

R

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The Telegraph has a an amazing series of shots on snowflakes (http://tinyurl.com/9f7vvj)!

The structures are truly wonderful.

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Small quick test

photo’s added by flickr manager

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it took a while, but clearing up one too many updates to a well mish mashed wordpress entry finally pushed me to re-install it completely…

hope it all works as it should now  :\

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