April 2014

[iguana]

This April I visited some bluebell woods, took photos of the moon on the night Mars was closest to us, and played with pinhole cameras.

Bluebells, worktops, and the Moon

Blurry photos

At the end of last month, Emily bought a pinhole camera and developed a photo she took in Elmstead Wood. Next it was my turn!

We went to Petts Wood and I found a shot that had some trees in the background and some wood anenomes in the foreground.

After getting back home, we used the cavity under the staircase as a somewhat cramped but very effective darkroom. It's the first time I've developed a photo, and pretty cool. Very strange that the exposure of the image depends on how long it's left in the first chemicals for in addition to the settings of the camera such as exposure time and aperture.

After dipping the photo paper in three different liquids, I had a good negative image. To get a positive image, I had to expose another sheet of photographic paper through the negative, to get the inverse colours.

I did less well at developing the positive, since it lost some clarity and the black point was still quite grey. Here are the two versions, with the (inverted, flipped) negative on the left, and the positive with the black point fixed on the right:



I definitely want to give it another go soon!

How to turn an expensive DSLR camera into a cheap pinhole camera

Copying an idea from Tim, I bought a replacement front body cover for my EOS 100D (the cap that covers the image sensor when the lens is removed), drilled a hole in the middle of it, and taped a sheet of black card with a pinhole in it onto the cap. Then I went out to the woods.

Here's an example of what I got with a 10-second exposure at ISO 100 (about half of what the real pinhole camera needed). The EXIF info is still intact, for the curious.



You can tell it's me because of the hat[1]. And the transparency.

I also tried a month-long exposure using solar paper through a pinhole in a shoe polish can, mounted on a window with blu-tack, but the image came out underexposed (you can possibly make out the shape of the in-view house's roof, although the dark area at the top could well also be the overhang of my roof) and I'm not sure solar paper has a useful resolution for that sort of thing anyway.



[1] A new hat, in fact! My original hat went threadbare after Laos last year, and I finally got around to sending it back to Tilley Endurables with a cheque for a fiver under their lifetime guarantee. They sent me a replacement within a week!

Bluebells in Guildford

The next weekend, we went walking in the woodland to the south of Guildford, through Chantries Wood, which had some lovely patches of bluebells.



We walked through the churchyard on St Martha's Hill, where the church happened to be selling some orange juice for charity. It was a warmer day than we'd expected so that was very welcome!

We then cut through Chilworth, over the train line, and then up Chinthurst Hill to see the tower and the great view from the top.

Introduction to Psychology

I finished the RI's six-week Introduction to Psychology course this month, having been into London every Wednesday evening for the last month-and-a-half.

Overall it was rather disappointing, although there was one lecture in particular that was quite interesting, regarding when people are better making a decision in a group rather than independently (if the competence level of the group is similar, the group outperforms the best member; otherwise the best member would have been better off making decisions alone).

Kitchen update

We've replaced all the structural elements in the kitchen now, from the under-flooring up. Mostly all that's left now is the finishing touches: side strips on the worktops, handles on the cupboards, and then tiling and flooring.



Although I do still need to build the cabinet to box in the boiler.

Most of the credit to Emily and Tim, who have been working on this while I've been at work. I did, however, get to cut off the worktop once with a circular saw!