Random crap with Uno.

[Unorthodox]

Ok, optical illusion.  It's not nearly as deep as that photo makes it look.  Here's a video. 

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/18739079@N07/8196843188/" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://www.flickr.com/photos/18739079@N07/8196843188/</a>

[Buster's Uncle]

There's an idea there in the giant skull - I could imagine you making something impressive with burlap and monster mud of a half-buried giant skelton...

[Unorthodox]

Been there, done that.  Sorry, those were before digital photos.  Pro job I did for a dinosaur museum, enter through a Trex mouth, naturally. 

[Unorthodox]

Alright.  Here's Moshrider.  He took to improving on my Harvest design for his display (not walk through), since he's a professional lighting designer for stage shows. 

Deadman Street 2012 Halloween Light Show by Night Glow Productions

There are 24 RGB color mixing LED fixtures of various brands and quality.
6 Elation moving head lights
7 old school small moving head lights
2 black lights
2 traditional spot lights
a string each of orange and purple LEDs across the front of the house.
The lighting is controlled by Hog 3PC. To time the lighting to the sound track the Hog system receives commands directly from the audio file via MIDI. The Midi commands are embedded as a separate track that only the lighting control system receives. Each time there is to be a lighting change there is a Midi command that triggers that change. This happens 98 times during the show. The show also contains 30 cues that the lighting console controls the timing of, giving the show a total of 128 cues.

It's really too bad he was doing this in obvious windy conditions.  Light shows don't work well without fog. 

And why on earth would you make something cool and then put purple christmas lights up? 

[Unorthodox]

It's back on. 

New owner wouldn't agree to the whole free concept though.  Are getting all profits go to charity though. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Bumbles bounce!

[Unorthodox]

Teaching my daughter how to make snowflakes...

[Buster's Uncle]

Was there suposed to be a picture?  There really should be...

[Unorthodox]

Her first.

[Unorthodox]

Temple of doom is on TV. 

So much great stuff in that Thugee temple.  I'm going to have to sit down and study it again. 

[Unorthodox]

For instance, the great charicatured skull under the statue of Kali.  Hell, the whole Kali statue is pretty awesome. 

As the whole room where indy gets possessed after drinking the blood. 

[Unorthodox]

Bertha might be getting an upgrade through a downgrade this Christmas. 

Bertha is my DSLR that is very specifically tailored to taking low light photos.  It's lacking most features of even entry level DSLR's, and was pretty much panned by reviews in every area when it came out, save one.  By some strange quirk, it's the best DSLR on the market for low light photography as it just naturally doesn't acquire all the noise most photo sensors do.  Still.  Coming up on 10 years past it's release.  Hence why I bought one at less than half price after the "newer, better" models were released several years back. 

Problem I'm having is it's a pentax (which was a selling point at the time as grandpa was a pentax owner and I've been using his old lenses since first taking up photography class), and they've gone online-only with their sales, and pentax lenses are PRICEY!  With the move to online only, sales are down, and no third party vendors are making lenses now.  This has led to everyone upgrading to a different brand and a slew of lenses hitting the market.

Pentax is probably going away soon.  Many used lenses are hitting the market, but the fancy DA lenses (built for digital cameras) are still fetching quite a sum.  However, the old "m" (30+ year old manual only lenses) series lenses are going for a song, because 90% of the users don't realise how to get them to function on DSLR's. 

I've got a line on a number of prime lenses all under $50.  These were $800+ lenses at time of sale.  New ones are $700 or more and plastic, not this quality metal construction.  Never had a prime lense, always wanted some.  Yeah, it's 40 year old tech and I'll have to shoot full manual.  Who cares?  True low light OPTICS to go with my low light body?  Oh, man, I'm drooling. 

Hopefully Pentax releases another new body that has this low lighting quality before they go under. 

[Buster's Uncle]

If it's useful to your photography, I'm for it.

[Unorthodox]

Well, found someone locally who didn't know what they had, and grabbed 3 primes for $50.  Not each, the lot of them. 

Old school film camera as well, but whatever. 

The steal of the lot was the 50MM prime F1.7. 

Ostensibly meant for portrait work, it features supreme bokeh. 







Which is also a limitation when wide open. 



What it DOES for me, however, is allow a whole other level of low light photography. 


(this is hand held outside, no tripod, no fill light, nothing.)  I've notoriously had trouble shooting RED lighting from my props (and some will tell you not to even try).  No more. 

[Unorthodox]

The next lens of note is a 28mm F2.4 . 

It's wider focus just allows for a different depth to shots. 

I foresee this being useful for highlight shots where I get up close and personal like.



The final lense is a 200mm F3.5 Tamron prime.  Third party, but still prime. 

I was actually quite surprised at how well this performed compared to my 80-300 kit lens. 

Moon, it's a little hazy out so not the best shooting conditions.

 

For giggles I wanted to make sure it would work with my doubler.  (so 400 mm)  No tripod, on the full res version you can pick out craters...