Tag Archives: photography

Hospital Panorama

Just to prove that I occasionally do some real photography these days … Earlier in the week I was sitting outside our local hospital, waiting to be picked up after having just interviewed my wife’s consultant. Unusually for me the only camera I had on me was my mobile phone – I normally carry at least a small “point-and-shoot”. But I thought, let’s see if I can take enough OK shots with my phone to make a panorama.

I like this this joiner technique, which I originally saw done by David Hockney. The angled edges and not quite perfect fit of the images make the whole thing interesting.

Here’s the result. It’s turned out better than I expected.

Panorama of Ealing Hospital
Ealing Hospital
[Postprocessing in Photoshop Elements and Paintshop Pro]
[Click the image for a larger view]

Trail Camera

I recently bought a new trail camera. A relatively expensive one (for a trail camera) as I wanted to get better images.

OS WILD 4K DS Solar Wi-Fi Trail Camera
Dual sensor trail camera with stunning night imagery and video;
a built-in solar panel; and high capacity lithium battery

Having set it up, last week was the first full week I had it running. Over the weekend I downloaded almost 2500 captures. And the quality is stunning compared with my old trail camera. Here are the best captures from the week; all have been fairly heavily cropped. For scale, the birdbath in the images is at most 2 meters from the camera and about 40cm in diameter.

[Click the thumbnail for a larger view.]
These images are many times better than the old trail camera produced.

World Pinhole Photography Day

Bah! Humbug! to the London Marathon. Much more interestingly today is World Pinhole Photography Day – always the last Sunday in April.

Before we had lenses for cameras, and indeed before we had photographic film, it was possible to view a scene, and project it onto a wall, using a tiny aperture. This was the camera obscura used by artists since ancient times.

Pinhole Dandelion
(Click all the images for a larger view.)

Once cameras and the photographic process were available, it became possible to do this trick with a tiny pinhole instead of a lens. Needless to say the results are not sharp, as they would be with a lens, and because of the tiny aperture exposure times are much longer than we’re used to these days. But the smaller the pinhole, the sharper the image and the longer the exposure needed.

Nevertheless it is a fun, and often instructive, technique to try – and these days it’s very easy with (digital) SLR cameras. All one needs is a pinhole – and you can make that yourself! (If you hunt online there are people who will make a pinhole for your camera; or even sell you a bespoke pinhole camera.)

Pinhole Red Deadnettle

There are a number of “how to” sites on the internet. Basically you need only a spare camera body cap and bits and pieces you will already have lying around, like an empty drinks can.

A couple of years ago I made a pinhole for my Canon dSLR following the instructions on wikiHow. It was a bit tricky for me, with my ten left thumbs, but after three or four attempts at making the actual pinhole (in a piece of drinks can) I made something which works adequately if not brilliantly.

Pinhole Lilac Bush (from below)

Setting up and taking pictures is easy enough. Fit the pinhole (body cap) to the camera and mount the camera on a tripod.
Set the camera to manual and ISO 100 (or slower). You can’t adjust the aperture of the pinhole, which will be tiny, so you then have to experiment with exposure times of 10-30 seconds (compared with the normal 1/100th or faster) in good light; longer in poor light or night. Use a remote control (or the camera’s timer delay). Now experiment.

So today I found my pinhole, and had a wander round the garden to see what looked likely to make a decent photograph. The images here are the best results (slightly colour enhanced). For comparison the following final two images are of the garden with a pinhole and with a normal lens on the camera – I reckon for a piece of crude homemade old technology the pinhole doesn’t do a bad job.

Pinhole View of Our Hairy Garden
The same view of our garden with a proper camera lens!

Of those four pinhole images, I think the first, the dandelion, has worked the best. What does anyone else think?