Double-Density Pinhole Photography

Ideally, soft-focus image should have solid focused core and the soft flair around it.

The more the photographer is decent grown-up person, even soft image is rather subtle.  Though, I’m not very well grown up decent kind = tend to take it to the extreme   😀  (Hence, if I cook for myself, the taste is pretty strong = if it got to be spicy hot = it would be extremely HOT = Otherwise, what is the point to cook hot food  😀 )

Therefore, my soft-focused image goes to even more extreme = and in this  experiment, I gave a larger pinhole halo to small pinhole image = Concentric Double pinhole photo image  🙂   My approach to the Life is ” Why not ?”  😀

How you can put small hole inside of another hole  ? ? ?  = 😀

This is a Philosophical Problem = Hole is where VOID is = unlike gap, hole was represented by its circular edge, and this edge define the area of the Void = its inside is already Void, hence, there is nothing to form yet another hole  😀 

In photographic term, Pinhole can act like a lens, provided when the correct exposure was given though, when two hole exists in the same place, how to give long enough exposure (shatter time) for smaller hole while giving shorter time for larger hole ?  = 😀

—– My solution was, to cover larger hole with ND filter to reduce the incoming light.

(There is a gray filter called Neutral Density Filter to reduce the light, though together with Kodak CC (Color Compensating) filter they became hard to obtain item now.) 

—– Instead to use ND filter, I found an Aluminum coted plastic film of tea packaging. —– Not good enough for normal photography yet, enough for fuzzy pinhole photography  😀

[]To measure the Density, I placed this metallic film on front of the lens = the exposure reading was dropped from 1/1000th to 1/15 = 6 stops drop on shutter speed. 

Hence, the size of pinholes should have also 6 stops difference in F-aperture logarithmic scale.

(such as 2mm, 1.4mm, 1mm, 0.7mm, 0.5mm, 0.35mm. 0.25mm = larger pinhole, 2 mm and small one should be 0.25 mm)  —> The metallic film was stacked behind of 2 mm pinhole and a 0.25 mm hole was pierced in the center.  —– (From the result, I think, the lager hole should be 1.5 mm and smaller hole 0.18 mm = images would be a bit more sharper  😀 )

Still, the experiment which costed virtually nothing = results are not too bad  😀

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PS :  Few people who has failed to do this kind of pinhole photo asked me why —– I’m using equivalent lens (this time 100mm lens) for set-up and framing, then the View-finder was covered up with black-tape.  Stray light from View-finder makes wrong reading of exposure.

Most importantly, I’m using extremely capable Canon 5D (Mk 2 and Mk3).  

Pinhole photography may not be done with another camera. 

For instance, a pinhole shot done in 5D Mk3, with ISO 3200 and AV setting, 6 seconds —– the same pinhole mounted on Nikon D810 with the same ISO 3200 setting and 6 seconds couldn’t make picture, as it looks more than 3 stops under exposure.   Even with 30 sec’, 60 sec’, 120 sec’, further with ISO setting Hi2 (equiv’  25600) didn’t make ANY difference. 

Nikon couldn’t work with non-CPU incompatible lenses.

—– I wonder if anybody has ever done Astro-photography with Nikon D810, I would like to know how it was done ?

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PPS :  I found the way to to take Pinhole Photo by Nikon D810.

(1)  Go to the Menu / Non-CPU Lens / and set Max F-Aperture to F22.

(2)  Push Meter Coupling Lever (for Aperture Ring) anti-clock-wise, till F-aperture indicator on the Control Panel shows F45.

(3)  With ISO setting, 3200 or so and [A] (Aperture priority) = camera would give more or less correct exposure.

(*)  To adjust the exposure, even if you use the Exposure Time given by [A], say 2 second for Manual setting and select 1 second or 4 second —— exposure couldn’t be correct unless you push Meter Coupling Lever to F45 position.  (Because, the brightness of the image was not determined by the size of pinhole and the shutter-time, but by the gain of signal amplification in the image process )

 —- In fact, you can control Exposure Level by this Lever (by pushing it to F32 or F64 etc) = it is very awkward —-> Solution would be, tie a string to the Lever and fix it to the position of F45, and the Exposure adjustment should be made by changing ISO setting to another value.

London 2012 Festival at Southbank

Way back from the center and crossing the Waterloo Bridge, I saw huge Baobab like tree !

And a lots of cloud around the Southbank  where Festival Hall, Hayward gallery etc are

situated = It was a festival or a kind of  massive gathering  🙂 —– it seems there are some

performances but most of the people with family or friends are just hanging out there. 🙂

It was a Friday early evening.  So, just have a drink and chat together.

Some set-up for the kids to play = in fact, sandy beach is a familiar set up in the Southbank.

But this time the sand got red and blue too = supposed to be the national color of the flag. 

The festival is a side-show of the Olympic.

So that, there is a Fair Ground and some ride as well. 

When thousands of the people comes, there always the street performers. 

A magician Diobo (photo, center above) showed incredible magic which I was utterly

bemused.  = As it is an open space = there couldn’t be any set-up.  And he was bare-hand =

no sleeve to hide any trick —– still he could move a cigarette and rift it up from the

ground (no invisible string or strong air movement) or make a mouse disappear and

reappear from inside of an egg etc etc = may be usual staff though, what impressed me

was, as I said, its impossibility.  How he could do that ?

Magic Circle must be the last secret Brotherhood.  Iron rule of secrecy and the devotion

to the perfection.  

Among many performers, a Yogi like performer (photo, above right) were sitting without

any movement.  One was perched on top of a stick = looks fascinating though, this is not a

magic = they were just sitting on an iron frame which was hidden in there loose cloths.

And there was the anti-capitalists campaigners as well.

Those wild meadow like flower bed must be created in few days on a shallow soil brought

onto the concrete, and when the event was finished, they will be just thrown into a skip =

a symbol of superficiality of this kind of Green pretense.

Then, I took a bus to go back to my place. 

(Those photos above were taken from inside of the bus)

—– all the photos were taken by Zeiss Planer 85mm F1.4 lens on Canon 5D MkIII = its mean, everything

were manual = hence, due to my eyesight some are not very well focused.  😦

(I didn’t expect to shoot the photos.  Only the 85mm lens was there which I have had brought to show

to my friend  😀 )

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Waltham Abbey or its Garden

There was a party of the newly married friend in the Waltham Abbey garden.

Waltham Abbey was one of the Abbey destroyed by the King Henry 8th, situated just outside of north London, 15 min’ walk from the Waltham Cross station. 

Or just off the M25 by a car.  —– Despite its close proximity to the Capital, it is almost a forgotten place.   Hence, it was my first visit and I did it for a test of Nikon D810 (with Nikon Fisheye lens and their 85mm F1.8) too.  🙂

The  journey starts from the Railway Cathedral, Liverpool Street Station.

It was just a shot ride though, among a lots of train running on the same track, only few are stopping at Waltham Cross. (on the way back, only one train per hour ! )

Then from the station, walk straight down to the east, while crossing many creeks of River Lee ( —– I remember the image like this in a Belgian city of Bruges ).

Looks like the end of the road, there the Abbey is. —— and near by funeral parlor, a pretty well made model of the horse-drawn hearse !  

3D representation of What you are going to have  😀 

—– And Jesus is waiting for you with open arms !  How nice  😀  😀

The inside is a huge open space.

Other than the Rose garden etc, abbey garden is a sort of controlled wilderness. The grass was well-trimmed corner to corner though, rest was left for the wild plants to compete each other. 

—– still, I haven’t seen even a shadow of single fish in the water.

[]The camera, D810 worked well.  —– Though, go into the details of each point is not what Zen blog supposed to deal with = I’ll do it somewhere else.

—– still, it worthwhile to mention is = this camera might be in the point of no-return, in the aspect of the use of soft control of the imaging = departure from the pure optical image.   For example, professionals may no longer need to use wide-angle lens, instead,  resorting with  stitch-up photo = negates the needs of many specialized lens such as PC or TS lens, or ultra-wide-angle lens, even extremely large F-aperture lenses.  = (In fact, such special lens becoming perpetual [unsold] item in the show window, alongside  the huge dead stock of lenses for clop-sized image sensor camera. = such camera has been superseded by the compact Mirror-less system cameras) = Who want to carry heavy, big camera ?

And, when we can buy incredibly well designed small camera with the same money, who would buy expensive big old zoom lens ?  —–  Camera companies shot their own leg.

* Canon’s selection to use APS size sensor in their mirror-less camera, and selling EF lens adapter is to prevent their EF-S lens become obsolete and dead stock.  🙂

* Nikon’s 36Mp sensor may give higher resolution though, I found no difference on my same laptop screen.  = Any how the quality of  the image was limited to the optical quality of the lens = screen image shows the flaw of the lens even more.

And the Nikon’s heavy use of image processing program would make aware of thephotographers that [it is not the matter of the number of the pixels, but the after process].

Nikon seemed to be using variable gain control to amplify the out-put of image sensor = effectively act like a variable ISO setting and with the enhanced color-saturation of the image under dim light = the result looks brilliant.  = save the work on photoshop though —– I’m not sure, was that a correct approach to include the “Fan shot effects”  😀

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San-sai (山菜) = Edible Plants from Mountain

Early summer, lots of Japanese goes out field or mountain to gather edible plants.

They appreciates each plant’s distinctive tastes and the flavor which is unique to the season.

= Naturally, I receive my friends Email with those stories and photographs (Link here).  (He was few years

Younger member of the Alpine Club = In his older Posts, you may see that he is climbing snowy mountain

every week and skiing ! = That’s how Japanese is living with the Nature )

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—– those custom was behind of my Bracken story. = for me, as an ex-patriot, it is a sort of nostalgia to my

Japanese taste,  in the same time it is a resistance to the modern western culture “Vegetable comes

from Tesco”, —– but in fact, it often came from a farm other-side of the earth, 

and regardless the time of year.  (Still, I got tasteful great memory to eat full-ripen tomato in the

very middle of dizzyingly vast, red tomato field in a Canary Island which tomato is destined to

a shelf of super market in England.  A farmer stopped me to pick, and gave me the better one  😀 )

For a sake of convenience, it degrading the one’s only life to a life in statistical number.

To live in its moment mean = unique moment = unique to its year’s season. = not standardized

homogeneous pattern, which was mass produced and sold by a Supermarket.

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The stories from Japan is not a kind of surprising news = went so and so place and picked this and that plants then

enjoyed eating them as a Templa and so-on.

(In the photo left, underneath is Wasabia Japonica (that Wasabi /山葵 , comes with Sushi.

They grow in a very clean mountain stream).    And the Small Bamboo Shoots (Takenoko / 竹の子 ).

The big one on top is Aralia Cordata (Udo / 独活).

Right photo is also in the Araliaceae family, Eleutherococcus Sciaphylloides (Koshi-abura / こしあぶら) = may

be not in the west and its bitter taste may be too strong for other than to Japanese ). —– Yet, I noticed, this

Japanese tradition may have some displeasure to the western people which might be originated

from the difference of the natural environment in Japan, and their attitude toward the plants.

= In comparison to the England where only 20% of the land is mountainous,  Japan got their 80% is the mountain

= hence the area where those plants grow is huge and those plants are everywhere = human activities wouldn’t

affect so much (anyhow people wouldn’t go to the same area which got too much competition) and

the plant would recover by making side shoot.

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—– It may sound too funny though, only a week or two ago I discovered that I can use Google and Wikipedia

in Japanese. 😀

Because of my knowledges of the plants are all in Japanese, I didn’t necessary wrote the name of the plant in English

or in Latin before. —– But when I Googled and saw Wikipedia in Japanese, then found the English name, I noticed,

some of the plant which Japanese eat, are the garden plants in the west.

Like Foster, they are quite common in the gardens here, and in Japanese mountain they are everywhere.

= they are easy to distinguish and easy to cook such as to put into Miso soup though, the western people may not

feel comfortable to eat them as they make pretty flowers.

The Japanese “Udo” Aralia Cordata is now widely sold in England with a fancy name of “Aralia Cordata Sun King”

hence people never considered to eat as “Udo” like Japanese does.

There is a very firm idiosyncrasy

= plants in the garden is only for visual pleasure never for eating !

And they may not want to be seen as an hungry people. 😀

Kitchen garden might be only for a show-off of their rich folly and for a talking piece.

—– For a Japanese, nature is not just for looking at. They eat a lot from the nature as well

= literally living together.

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Poppy = Impressionist’s photography / W-Pinhole Photo

As it is in the season, I’m seeing number of interesting photos of the Poppy in the Net.

One Photo-blogger Lemony showed her Poppy photo (link here) taken while intentionally

shaking the camera and created blurred image which I dubbed “Impressionist’s Photography”

and I promised her I’ll show my “Impressionist’s Photo” —– hence, here they are.

Isn’t this Impressionist, is this ?    Ha ha ha,    🙂

Those photos were taken by the Pinhole camera (Canon 5D Mk2)  but in this time it was by

two Pinholes of which the panel was fitted on front of the extension ring, therefore the

effective focal length was 84 mm.

With Two Pinholes, it produces off-positioned two images = similar to double exposure image,

or there used be a Double Image filter which used shallow prism = but such image can be made

by Photoshop much easily now. —– Still, I like those images, if the paintings of Impressionists

are still the painting, a photo of pinhole is still the photograph. (Why not ? )   😀

(What so ever, the best of all, two pinholes can make twice as many flowers instant.  😀  )

This photo was taken from the same position, but the Light Balance was set to Tungsten Light,

hence the color balance has shifted to blue. — (then,  contrast was increased and cropped)

= the image became even more like an Impressionist’s or an abstract painting.

This is an ordinary straight shot = as for a reference image. (Lens was Canon 70-200 F2.8 = set to

about 85 mm, and set to F4. —– ( This image looks like a Japanese Yamato-e Paintings.)

With the light balance set to Tungsten Light, it made the pale colored image more like a

Chinese panel painting.

Then, the same Poppies’ were taken by W-Pinhole. (not only the effect of the Pinhole, but

the wind shaken the flowers and made the image even more impressionistic  😀  )

(Under the wind, no flower stand still for 10 seconds, especially delicate Poppies )

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It seemed like the same situation, when people was bored by the too clean digital sound, they

started to go back Veiner or even Valve sound = when too clear sharp photo became too

ubiquitous, and easy to achieve, some went back to  B/W  Film Photography, some are even

trying to make their own print paper applying photo sensitive emulsion onto own material to

create textured fuzzy image (strangely, often fuzzy image seemed to have more connotations)

= there could be hundreds of the way to do photography.   (—– not only Pinhole   😀  )

This is the 84 mm W-Pinhole “lens” (?  😀 ) I’ve used.   Panel was a thin aluminum of a beer can

mounted on front of an extension ring.    Photo right is, with its “lens”  hood ! —– without lens,

it’s still need to have a Hood = you believe or not.  (Normally, a lens hood is to prevent a direct

sun hitting the lens = eliminates a ghost and halo.   Yet,  Pinhole without lens still needs to reduce

the light from the sky etc, which creates halo by scattering inside with diffraction. = Most of 

Pinhole Photographer doesn’t know this, as they think,  even the unnecessary halo is still the

character of the Pinhole photo  🙂  )  = Here,  seeing is believing.

Photo left is without Hood and the right, with hood = the difference is clear.    🙂

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Eating Bracken — Really ?

Eating raw fish such as in Sushi or Sashimi is now widely accepted

in the west. (And pretty well appreciated)

But they are only a tip of the iceberg in the “wired” Japanese menu.

A notorious fermented soya-bean = Nattou (納豆) might already been known to many

Japanese food connoisseur though, it is still not appreciated or in fact utterly rejected

by most of the westerners who feel it just rotten. 😀

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Fermentation in the food making process is a tricky business, hence its subtle technique is

unique to each culture and the products may only be consumed by the people in its culture.

One of the Japanese delicacy [Shio-kara / 塩辛] was made out of Squid or Fish-guts with

salt, kept in a jar long time, and made them decomposed and melt.  For some Japanese,

it is a mouth watering delicacy. (But may not be for your mouth 🙂 ) —– so, I thought,

this kind of cooking is unique only to Japanese though, I learned from Italian chef, they

make very special delicacy = keep the chopped rabbit meat in a sealed jar long time to

make them ferment and melt = it is the same idea.

And in Iceland, people makes very unique delicacy out of Shark meat, by keeping it long

time and made it half rotten. (then eat its ammonium smelled meat,

sound very yummy isn’t it :-D)

So, Japanese to accept [Rotten Milk products] such as Cheese, took long time

as its funny smell is nothing but a prohibitingly dirty smell to us.

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When bacteria decomposed the protein, generally we call its effect“Rotten”

though, if people find it is still useful, it was called “Fermentation” 😀

Strangely, our Taste-bud feel, somewhat decomposed protein (a kind of Amino-acid) tasty.

So that, a Soy-source was made out of decomposed (fermented) soy-bean protein.

And a Vietnamese Yokumani-source was a decomposed fish protein.

Even a beef has to be kept, about one month in a storage for its meat start to decompose

and become tender by the bacteria and its own enzyme.

And to make a good Palma-ham needs to have very delicate fermentation process = if it’s

gone too far, the meat is “rotten” and start to give a bad smell.

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But here I’m not showing fermented food, but just boiled Bracken. Yes, ubiquitous Bracken.

In the west, Bracken was classified to be a poisonous plant, but in Japan

everybody eat Bracken (Warabi / 蕨 ).

It may contain something = may be same extent of Spinach containing Oxalic Acid which

cause ulcer in the corner of the mouth if you eat a lot. ( Popeye must had one 😀 )

Unlike Spinach, eat 10 stems of Bracken once or twice a year wouldn’t cause any trouble.

As a matter of fact, non of the plant in the Fern family include Bracken has been used for

Herbal Medicine as they don’t have any potent chemical = despite of them on the Earth

hundreds of millions of years, they haven’t evolved to have even a flower, let alone a poison.

In the mountain shelter where I was a voluntary keeper, we collected 5 bin (80 cm tall) full

of Bracken to pickle in salt water, and served it to the guests all through the summer.

Naturally I eat as much amount everyday.  And a pickled Bracken was commonly sold at

shops as a local delicacy. —– In a kind of wisdom, traditionally it was boiled in ash water

though, I found it doesn’t need to be bothered.   (And I’m still here, live and kicking  😀 )

(A bitter tasted chemical seemed to be dissolved into brine or boiling water, and disappear)

Of cause, it has to be soft young shoot = the timing to get it would be crucial.

(This year, it came 2 weeks late though, colder region or mountain side may be even later)

Strangely, when I went to a park  (I wouldn’t say where, because in the strict term it might

be illegal = I never heard any English Nettle-Picker was ever prosecuted though,

I saw a news, Japanese was fined for picking Bracken = Racial matter ? )  where

I collect them every year,   I found somebody had already there. —– M m m ? ? ?

Did any Japanese come here ?   Or any English people started to eat them ?

To eat boiled  (5~7 Min’) Bracken, it has to be only with small amount of

Soy-source and Bonito fish shavings (Katsuo-bushi) to appreciate its

unique taste. (I think, they can be eaten just with Soy-source or even

with Mayonnaise but its taste might be too strong to settle with Bracken ) 

If you are interested in, you can try.

And enjoy natural taste of early summer. 🙂

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Green — Photos from Park

In japan this plant was called  Naruko-Yuri.  Naruko is a line of small wooden pieces hanged

from a long rope, similar to the Bamboo Bells, brown by the wind and hitting each other to

make noises.   The rope could be stretched across the rice-field to frighten off the birds.

Over a pond in the park, huge Willow tree has new leaves which is making messy reflection.

To look into the reflection —– in fact, often we are looking deep into our own mind.

The photo left was said to be a cousin of Asparagus hence their young shoot is edible, are they ?

And the center is a Goliath’s Stick (I’ve picked up this name long time ago though, it may be wrong.

Proper name is  Aralia Elata and in Japan we call them  Tara no Ki).  Their young shoots are

highly praised spring delicacy in Japan = (Ki no Me / Tara no Me).  In my theory, the Plants which

got a lots of thorns are normally edible.  In the same Aralia family, Udo is also edible but got thorn 

as well —- (otherwise plants need to have a poison for their own protection).  

The photo right is meant to be an answer to Ms Bente Haarstad (Link here) who showed

the Norwegian Nettle in her photo blog.  This is the English Nettle, hence they got the same

square stem and the stings, but it looks quite different from theirs. (not know the taste 🙂 )

———- So, the park can accommodate all walk of the life. 

———- Don’t think too much. Just enjoy the sun on this moment. 

(Since we didn’t have enough of it, on wet April  🙂 )

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Pink — Photos from Park

The Rhododendron’s Stamens showed holes to spread pollens. 

In a distance, I thought they are the Orchid, though they seems like a kind of Caw Slip.

I have no idea of their name.  

But, her Stamen and Pistile looks very different from other Primulaceae.  You may know better.  😉

I know the Japanese name  Nobotan  but not English name.  In fact I don’t care.  😀

A garden variety of  Pink (or pale violet ?)  Forget-me-Not.  (I rather like to forget  😀 )

I’m familiar with this flower over 35 years, but never bothered to find the English name.

Japanese name is  [Gen-no Shyoko] = it’s mean “The proof of a Devin Power” since

this plant has powerful medicinal property to cure a stomach pain.

—– When a romantic German Novels was translated into Japanese, the translator

realized that the tone of this name would destroy a sweet mood of ” young boy gave

a small flower to his sweet heart”,  translator intentionally changed it to

Rhododendron = and completely destroyed the meaning.  😀

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Yellow — Photos from Park

Probably the most common spring flower, Butter Cup.  ( Poisonus, Ranunculas Family)

I’m not sure whether they got honey — anyhow, the insect (here winged Aphis) would come

= So, a green Spider is hiding and awaits them to come.

I thought, this Wasp came to Honey though, I found,  it was not Honey but after a Spider !

Inside of a pretty flower, there quite a bloody battle was going on. 

M m m ?   No comment needed.

End of the day, way back home — He would be a star player and she might become a top model ?  

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Fuji Soft-Focus Lens

While looking for a Pentax 20 mm lens to use for Macro shot (use it with revers mount-ring

on Canon —– Canon’s 20 mm lens is too big and F-aperture couldn’t be set manually),

Then I bumped to 40 year old  Fuji Soft-focus 85 mm F4 lens, deep inside of camera cabinet.

Yah, yah, I’m still having this ! —– I remember, I used this lens twice = It is my bad habit to

buy strange Camera, Lens, funny devices whether I need to use it or not = still, to see how

it was designed or what sort of things could be created from such junk is,  I should say,

my pleasure. —– (Like £10 broken camera, it is a treasure box of spare-parts)

Any how, to test this lens, I popped out to take picture of  Chery Blossoms. (Yet again  😀 )

Most Soft focus Lens is using an optical aberration = Uncorrected Spherical Aberration, 

which cause the light spread out side of the image, hence giving soft halo around the image

while maintaining the sharply focused core image in the center.  (Though, having inherent

soft image in the view finder, to have sharp focus in the first place is not easy  😀 )

And as this Fuji Lens is using so-called Lotus-Root Iris (having lots of hole in a disc) to

control intensity of the effect, some time the artifact appears in the off-focused Boke image. 

In the photo above, you can see the ghost of multi-hole disc. = this is a sample of dirty Boke.

When soft effect works well, effect is far better than soft filter or grease, as the image has

solid core of focused image.   (With soft filter, everything become soft).

With darker background,  you can see how halo spread around the bright images.

Though, with low contrast subjects, the effect is subdued.  In fact, with smaller F setting,

the effect of aberration become very little, same as even a cheap bad lens can give sharp

image with small F-aperture setting.

These days,  even a Mob’Phone camera can take pretty sharp photos.   Sharp images with

over Photoshoped photos are everywhere, and I’ve got rather weary with them.

Our eyes are not necessary need to see everything in its details. That is why, when sharp-eyed

Photographer showed unknown view or fresh viewing angle, the image surprises us.

So, I found, soft images which shows [the details as if no details are there],  isn’t too bad.  😀

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