depth of field
This past week has been best characterized as stifled progress.
I did manage to finish a landscaping plan for a client on Monday, only like 3 months late. I don't have much for an excuse except that I had to write up 5 new weed ID sheets for the weeds in her yard, and, that I was busy.
I was supposed to clean and stratify my seeds about a month ago, and I felt like I just HAD to get it done this week. I always seem to add complications to projects to make them take longer. This time, I wanted to photograph all of the seeds I was cleaning for reference. Seems simple enough, but not so much. First I needed to set up an add-hock "studio" so I had to go to the hardware store for materials to set up a light. Then I had some problems getting a sharp image, so I had to go to some online forums to ask for advice. As it turns out, I had "stopped down" my lens to F22 (or smaller) for greater depth of field, but it turns out that since the light has to bend so much to get through the tiny aperture at F22 that distortion occurs. Back to F5.6 or F8 for me, and back to the tiny depth of field (distance that is in focus) for macro photography. I learned about, and briefly tried a process called focus stacking, but this would be a major PIA for just some seeds... though I am looking forward to giving it a try with flowers in the summer, might make it easy to get a good shot of those tricky wood lilies.
Well, the process took a lot of time, but on the bright side I guess I learned a lot about studio macro photography, and quite a bit that will be applicable in the field too. Its pretty cool that todays top-end digital cameras have sensors that are so sensitivity that every little mis-adjustment of the lens is visible. The sensors are really out-classing the lenses and other hardware, and I really have to fine tune my technique to push the limits of this technology.
So... oh yeah, the whole point of this was to clean and stratify seeds, right? Of course this takes longer than I hoped it would. At one point I was completely overwhelmed by milkweed fluff, but I persevered. Then came time to deal with the desmodiums. I spent way too much time last year extracting those seeds by hand so I went to Menards and bought some lumber and screening to and built a seed sorter box thing to clean these seeds. Problem is, Desmodium glutinosa (pointed leaf tick treefoil) has smaller seeds than its relatives, so the recommended 1/4" screen was too big to be useful. Did I mention that I had to go back to Menards twice, since I forgot my wallet the first time, to buy supplies for a seed sorter that I never even used? In the end Carol had to help me and we manually split about 100-150 seeds in about 1.5 hours. By this morning, all of the seeds were stratified, tucked away in the fridge in bags full of damp sand until "spring".
While I was in woodworking mode with the seed cleaning boxes, I also made a stand for my iPhone at my desk out of a piece of scrap wood. This particular project turned out, pretty nice. It is shaped like a baseball home base, so I call it The HomeBase This one might be a first draft only though, I have some ideas to make it even better. having the iphone up on a stand is almost like having a third computer screen for To Do's, IM, weather, facebook, email or other iphone Apps so I don't have to "burden" my other monitors with this info.
Meanwhile, I was also trying to use a scanner to document twigs of various tree species. I was inspired by this site which has some great images of wildflowers and plants. I just want some simple twigs, figured I could handle that. No dice, I contact the artist who's images these are and found out that my type if scanner essentially sucks for this work. What you need is one of those big bulky scanners you remember from the mid-90s with a florescent tube. The LED lit scanners I have don't have a big enough depth of field, only a few 1 or 2 mm are in focus, the florescent HP and Epson scanners have a depth of field of 2 cm or more. I guess I'll save the twig scanning project for next year, and keep my eyes out for an old scanner in the mean-time.
Sorry for the tedious detail here, but I guess I am trying to get the point across about how I felt about this week. This is all I really got done. I really need to buckle down and focus on one task at a time and just getting it done as fast as possible, even if in doing so I am no doing it the best I possibly can. And with that in mind, time to move on to other tasks.
I did manage to finish a landscaping plan for a client on Monday, only like 3 months late. I don't have much for an excuse except that I had to write up 5 new weed ID sheets for the weeds in her yard, and, that I was busy.
I was supposed to clean and stratify my seeds about a month ago, and I felt like I just HAD to get it done this week. I always seem to add complications to projects to make them take longer. This time, I wanted to photograph all of the seeds I was cleaning for reference. Seems simple enough, but not so much. First I needed to set up an add-hock "studio" so I had to go to the hardware store for materials to set up a light. Then I had some problems getting a sharp image, so I had to go to some online forums to ask for advice. As it turns out, I had "stopped down" my lens to F22 (or smaller) for greater depth of field, but it turns out that since the light has to bend so much to get through the tiny aperture at F22 that distortion occurs. Back to F5.6 or F8 for me, and back to the tiny depth of field (distance that is in focus) for macro photography. I learned about, and briefly tried a process called focus stacking, but this would be a major PIA for just some seeds... though I am looking forward to giving it a try with flowers in the summer, might make it easy to get a good shot of those tricky wood lilies.
Well, the process took a lot of time, but on the bright side I guess I learned a lot about studio macro photography, and quite a bit that will be applicable in the field too. Its pretty cool that todays top-end digital cameras have sensors that are so sensitivity that every little mis-adjustment of the lens is visible. The sensors are really out-classing the lenses and other hardware, and I really have to fine tune my technique to push the limits of this technology.
So... oh yeah, the whole point of this was to clean and stratify seeds, right? Of course this takes longer than I hoped it would. At one point I was completely overwhelmed by milkweed fluff, but I persevered. Then came time to deal with the desmodiums. I spent way too much time last year extracting those seeds by hand so I went to Menards and bought some lumber and screening to and built a seed sorter box thing to clean these seeds. Problem is, Desmodium glutinosa (pointed leaf tick treefoil) has smaller seeds than its relatives, so the recommended 1/4" screen was too big to be useful. Did I mention that I had to go back to Menards twice, since I forgot my wallet the first time, to buy supplies for a seed sorter that I never even used? In the end Carol had to help me and we manually split about 100-150 seeds in about 1.5 hours. By this morning, all of the seeds were stratified, tucked away in the fridge in bags full of damp sand until "spring".
While I was in woodworking mode with the seed cleaning boxes, I also made a stand for my iPhone at my desk out of a piece of scrap wood. This particular project turned out, pretty nice. It is shaped like a baseball home base, so I call it The HomeBase This one might be a first draft only though, I have some ideas to make it even better. having the iphone up on a stand is almost like having a third computer screen for To Do's, IM, weather, facebook, email or other iphone Apps so I don't have to "burden" my other monitors with this info.
Meanwhile, I was also trying to use a scanner to document twigs of various tree species. I was inspired by this site which has some great images of wildflowers and plants. I just want some simple twigs, figured I could handle that. No dice, I contact the artist who's images these are and found out that my type if scanner essentially sucks for this work. What you need is one of those big bulky scanners you remember from the mid-90s with a florescent tube. The LED lit scanners I have don't have a big enough depth of field, only a few 1 or 2 mm are in focus, the florescent HP and Epson scanners have a depth of field of 2 cm or more. I guess I'll save the twig scanning project for next year, and keep my eyes out for an old scanner in the mean-time.
Sorry for the tedious detail here, but I guess I am trying to get the point across about how I felt about this week. This is all I really got done. I really need to buckle down and focus on one task at a time and just getting it done as fast as possible, even if in doing so I am no doing it the best I possibly can. And with that in mind, time to move on to other tasks.