This photograph was taken by a lens with some “obstruction” on the front element. Aside from the blurry patch of nastiness in the bottom portion of the frame, the rest of the image looks pretty decent. What do you think the “obstruction” is? A little dirt? A smudge where the photographer accidentally touched the front element? A scratch? The answer is a little closer to a scratch than a smudge…
Click here to see the answer
One of the benefits of running a gear rental business is that you have a ton of equipment you can use for random experiments. That’s exactly what Roger Cicala, the owner of LensRentals, did with the UV filters he had on hand. One-upping the 19 filter stack we shared a while back, he mounted 50 different UV filters to a Canon 5D Mark II and 300 f/4 lens to see what the resulting images would look like.
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Hacker Rob Flickenger wasn’t satisfied with ordinary photographs of his ongoing Tesla coil experiments, so he decided to shoot Matrix-style “bullet time” images to capture “3D lightning”. He purchased 10 Canon A470 cameras and configured them to function as a single 70-megapixel 10-angle camera.
Why that particular camera? Partly because I found someone dumping a bunch of them on eBay for cheap, but also because they run CHDK, the infamous scriptable firmware for Canon cameras. This let me write some code to streamline the process of taking ten photos all at once, and then get them off of the cameras in a reasonable manner. By wiring all of them to the same 10-port USB hub, and using CHDK’s syncable USB remote feature, I was able to wire up a single button to make all of the cameras fire at once.
His hard work paid off, and Flickenger managed to capture some pretty unique shots of his Tesla coil in action.
Bullet time lightning [HackerFriendly.com]
National Geographic created this nifty little video teaching how to turn any room with a view into a giant camera obscura. For an even more challenging project, you can try setting up some photo-sensitive paper (either photo paper or paper you paint with emulsion yourself) on the wall to shoot giant photos with your giant camera obscura.
(via Foto Actualidad)
Tom Guilmette was doing a project in Vegas that involved a Phantom Flex high speed camera when he decided to experiment with 2,564 frames per second in his hotel room. This is the resulting video showing his random experiments.
Even ugly things in life (like dropping your phone) are beautiful in super slow motion.
(via Engadget)
Kaleb Wentzel-Fisher had the brilliant idea of using custom bokeh to spell out words in his videos, and spent a good amount of time developing and perfecting the idea. The above video, titled “Light Works”, is a demonstration of this technique in action. The results are pretty awesome.
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With a huge arsenal of camera gear at their disposal, the folks over at BorrowLenses can do a lot of fun and random experiments that us ordinary folk can only dream about. After first stacking lens filters and then teleconverters, they’ve gone to the next level by stacking $150,000 worth of camera gear into a Christmas tree.
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Now here’s a novel way to shoot the moon: stack five separate Canon 2x extenders to boost the focal length of your 800mm lens. Supposedly (and surprisingly) this rig actually captured a decent photograph of the moon.
This was done by the folks over at BorrowLenses, who also did the crazy filter stacking thing we featured recently. When you have as much gear as they do at your disposal, you have a wider range of ways to have fun with gear experiments.
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Caleb Charland is a Maine-based photographer who combines a love of scientific experiments and photographs into wonderful and amazing photographs. If Isaac Newton or Benjamin Franklin were into photography, their photographs might look something like these:
“Wooden Box with Horseshoe Magnet”
“Atomic Model”
“Demonstration with Hair Dryer and Aluminum Foil”
“Candle in a Vortex of Water”
“Fifteen Hours”
Regarding his work, Charland tells us,
Wonder is a state of mind somewhere between knowledge and uncertainty. It is the basis of my practice and results in images that are simultaneously familiar and strange. I utilize everyday objects and fundamental forces to illustrate experiences of wonder. Each photograph begins with a simple question “How would this look? Is that possible? What would happen if…?” and develops through a sculptural process of experimentation. As I explore the garage and search through the basement to solve these pictures, I find ways to exploit the mysterious qualities of these everyday objects and familiar materials.
To check out more of his work, you can visit his website.
Image credits: Photographs by Caleb Charland and used with permission.
