Sunflower harvest, speedlight guts and more…

I realize that I’ve been awhile in posting, and that most of my more recent posts have been strictly about photography.  The first is just plain laziness, and the second I have taken care of by adding a Flickr photostream to my sidebar. 

First:  the Fall of the Sunflowers

It’s been over a month and a half now, but my sunflowers finally ripened and I cut the heads down.  Here is a photo taken just before the harvest.

 

One of the astonishingly-large heads that we harvested!  Most weren’t quite this big, but…

 

 

 

Just to give you an idea, this is about HALF of the harvest!  All in all it equated to about a half-bushel of seeds.  I’m rather impressed, especially since only about half of the plants actually made it to harvest!

 

Of course most of my corn is still in the field (I need to deal with this), most of what isn’t has already been fed to the chickens. 

 

And just one more quick thing…  Have any of you ever wondered what was inside a speedlight (standard camera flash)?  I had purchased a Sunpak Auto 411 Thyristor (a fairly powerful late 70s flash) off eBay.  When I got it the thing didn’t work.  So I tore it apart to see if I could find the problem.  So far no luck, but luckily for you I photographed the innards for all to see…

Click the picture to see a larger, annotated version on Flickr. 

Hopefully I can get this sucker working; it’s fairly small but when it does work it packs a surprising punch! 

 

 

 

Well that’s all I have for now.  Hopefully I won’t go so long without a post again…

Film Photography

Yes, it’s a horrible pun but I couldn’t resist.  However this still-life is not what this post is about…

Yesterday I finally got back my test roll, and I am very pleased with the results.  My $2 Nikon performs like a champ!  Aside from the one picture that the lab screwed up, and the two that they (understandably) didn’t print the rest came out beautifully…

Sadly the same can’t be said for the photo CD that came with my enlargements.  The main problem is the resolution; the images I got are 1.6 megapixels (remember that a 35mm film camera is essentially a 10-20 megapixel camera, depending on what film you use) and the colors are screwed up (I knew I took a picture of a 24-bit palette for a reason!)  Oh well.  If I ever shoot any more film after my Kodachrome I’ll be sending it to a professional photo lab that provides “professional” photo CDs, not just the local “lab.”

Below is a somewhat hastily reconstructed picture of a sunset taken with my Nikon 5005 from the p**s poor scans on the Photo CD.  The film is Fujicolor ASA 200, camera is using programmed Auto-Exposure.  This picture looks “close” to both what I actually saw and what the actual enlargement looks like.  I will be scanning a selection of my enlargements and posting them on my online photo gallery soon.

 

Photography: Kodachrome!

You give us those nice bright
colors,

You give us the greens of
summers, 

Makes you think all the
world's a sunny day, 

Oh yeah!

Oops, sorry about that…  I just got so caught up in
the mystique of this legendary film and the old song
that I couldn’t resist!  

In case any of you didn’t know, sadly Kodachrome is
a dead product and is no longer in production.  When
I found out about that sad fact I decided that I had
to get a hold of and shoot a single roll of it, as
I will never have another chance in my life!  

Well today it arrived, along with a selection of
color correction gels (one of which I used in the
taking of the above photo).  I am rather anxious to
load and start shooting this film, as I have a
deadline (as of 12/31/10 it will be IMPOSSIBLE to
get Kodachrome film processed anywhere in the world!)
But first I want to wait for my test roll to be
developed just to make sure my $2 Nikon won’t destroy
this rare film!!!

(The above picture is taken from a test of a still-
life I am titling “The Past and Present of Film.”
The Olympus camera on the left is a stand-in for an
older 35mm.  Obviously I will be taking the final
picture before I load and shoot my first and last
roll of Kodachrome!)