I’m fascinated with shooting tiny things - I guess that might explain my penchant for shooting objects & trinkets that I can put on my desktop. I would love to shoot even smaller items, but unfortunately, I don’t have a macro lens.

It’s a good good thing then that Brian Larter wrote a little post recently on reverse lens photography. What in the world is that? In a nutshell, it involves mounting a lens backward on your camera (or on another lens) to get a makeshift macro lens.

He discusses methods of mounting a lens backward, magnification levels, and other things, but the one topic I was really thankful he tackled was controlling the aperture on your lens. No, this isn’t a problem if you’ve got a lens with manual aperture control on it - but it is when you’re dealing with EF or EF-S lenses. If you’re reading this Brian, you’re a lifesaver.

After reading this, it took me all of two seconds to whip out my camera and try this out. One of my first shots was this abstract piece. Can you tell what it is?

I moved on to other items, and soon decided to play with my makeshift macro lens in my makeshift studio. Several hours and even more shots later, I ended up with the shots of tiny things in my gallery.

So, what do you think?

Tags: macro photography, reverse lens photography, tiny things, DIY, Brian Larter, brianlarter.com

You could do just that with Aven’s iLoupe. Attach one of these babies to a Canon SD600 and you can start blowing things up to over a hundred times their original size.

By attaching different microscopic modules, you can achieve magnifications from 60x to 150x. This pretty much means you can have a digital microscope in your pocket or your bag.

There’s no word on pricing yet, but I doubt these will come cheap. They probably aren’t meant for the average consumer anyway. Aven says they’re targeting forensic investigators or other people who need to examine things up close. Unless you’ve got some really tiny things you’d like to take pictures of, you probably wouldn’t need one of these.

edit: Apparently, the SD600 is part of the package already. I wonder how much more they charge for it though.

In what will probably go down in Kultura history as the most memorable show ever, the cast and crew of Art have proven that regardless of the circumstances, the show must go on.

The evening show on the 20th was moving along smoothly. It was, in fact, turning into one of the best shows in the run. From a technical standpoint, it was damn near perfect. With the exception of a minor mistake handling one of the microphones, as well as a tiny power fluctuation that dimmed the lights just enough for me to notice, it was the cleanest show so far.

From the audience perspective, it was even better. For some reason, I felt like this audience was a lot more involved with the play than others. They laughed more, yes - but everybody laughs during the show. What seemed different was that their laughter was more contagious - at some point, I almost fell on top of the tangle of wires powering our lights. What proved to me that this audience was different, however, was their collective “aawww” during one of the scenes. I had always thought that was an “aawww” moment, but none of the other shows had gotten that. They’d elicited giggles, but not the “aawww” I was looking for. This show was different - of course, I didn’t know how different it would be until later.

At some point, just after the most physical scene in the show, the lights dimmed. They immediately powered back on, then dimmed - and this cycle repeated another time before we were plunged almost totally in darkness. Each time the lights dimmed, I heard some loud noise off in the distance. I didn’t want to say it at the time, but I knew the power wasn’t coming back on - at least not for a while.

We made some announcements and tried to figure out what to do. Since most of the surrounding buildings were in the dark, we knew we couldn’t rely on the city’s power grid. We had generators in the building, but the operator wasn’t around. We had to make do with what little light we had. We made another announcement, we made do.

It’s a good thing our play has only three characters. You see, we ended up using three lights bright enough to light them up - a flashlight we borrowed from one of the guards, and an emergency light (with two bulbs) we took off the wall. I’m also glad one of the former technical directors for Kultura was there - she helped me light up our performers.

I’m not sure if it was just the circumstances surrounding us or if it was really the audience, but the applause last night seemed louder than usual. Right now, I don’t really care. Things may have gone horribly wrong, but the show did go on. Our systems may have failed, but our performers soldiered on. Heck, the city may have been plunged into darkness, but everybody involved in the production helped to make sure that at least in the tiny space we call our theater, not to mention the path leading out to the exit, things remained bright. We lit up the place, not just with with our borrowed lights and our cellular phones, but with our enthusiasm, our smiles, and our performances.

On numerous occasions, I’ve complained about not knowing who reads my blog. Yes, I’m a bit paranoid… and this is why, up until a few months ago, I didn’t mention any names here. I got tired of playing that game, but one fact remains the same… I really wonder who actually reads my blog. I don’t obsess about it every minute of every day, but it does pop into my head every so often. Obviously, it’s on my mind now.

A comment on a recent blog, along with a bunch of others on another site, brought back this sense of… well… I’m not really sure. Basically, like I’ve mentioned already, I wonder who reads this crap.

I’d like to think I know most of the people who read my blog… I don’t think it really offers anything of interest to a stranger. The fact is, however, I’m deluding myself. I have no control over who gets a peek (albeit a very small peek) at my life, simply because I’ve posted this online. I don’t even have the satisfaction of knowing exactly who these voyeurs, if i may call them that, are. I’m… umm… I don’t know. The words that come to mind are familiar to my friends already… I’m a control-freak. I know that not knowing things is a form of losing control, and I’m freaking out. Damn… this is not fun.

Ok, I’m tempted to ask everybody who reads this to comment… but I’m not particularly fond of that idea either. I’m really not sure, despite all my claims, if I want to know who my audience is. It may be that I’m just flattering myself. What if I do know everybody who reads this blog? Do I really want that kind of blow to my ego? Another word comes to mind… indecisive. An indecisive control-freak… not a pretty sight.

Oh, I just realized… just now, I’ve exposed myself to more scrutiny than I have in previous entries.