The Bokeh Filter

Tough decision – buy this for $10 ($30 for all three), or spend five minutes and $0.99 on some construction paper.

I just did a massive update to Shoot from the Belly. I uploaded photos for the following bands:

• AF-Kin
• Born Again Floozies
• Dr Killbot
• The Elvi
• Great Solar Stance
• Local H
• Max and the Marginalized

.. and I also uploaded some Other Photos as well.

Just closed out another month of photos for Project 365. I missed a few days here and there, mostly because the day was bo-ring and I was lazy.

Ten more months to go… eesh.

The best thing I’ve come across lately is called CHDK.

CHDK is a firmware enhancement that operates on a number of Canon Cameras. CHDK gets loaded into your camera’s memory upon bootup (either manually or automatically). It provides additional functionality beyond that currently provided by the native camera firmware.

It’s pretty sweet. I haven’t really explored the finer details, but the feature that I’m excited about is the ability to run scripts.

Scripts like time lapse photography.

Ever since we lost our Nikon camera in Mexico we haven’t had anything (save the computer + webcam) that could do time-lapse photography. Which obviously isn’t very practical if I’m outside of the house. My trusty(-ish¹) Canon A540 doesn’t have a time lapse mode. But now it does, and I can make time lapse videos again, and I didn’t have to go spend $300 on a new camera.

So to celebrate I made this video when we went to dinner tonight:

(3.6MB / 00:27)

¹It’s been draining batteries like crazy lately. I first thought it was that my rechargeables are starting to reach the end of their life, but normal disposable AAs drain just as quick. I don’t know…

About a month ago I started what’s known as Project 365. Simply, you take a self portrait each day for 365 days.

I’ve done it for twenty-eight days so far. I’m not totally excited about each and every photo — a lot of days I’m getting ready for bed and think “oh shit, I need to take a photo,” but the important thing is that I haven’t skipped a day yet. Only 337 more to go.

Clicking on the image above will bring you to the set. I’ll be adding one photo to it each day so keep checking back (on Flickr, I won’t be updating here often).

Today was Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, a day when — as indicated by the name — people all over the world go out with a pinhole camera and shoot photos.

The original plan was to go to Six Flags (it’s opening weekend) to shoot since the subject matter is a lot more interesting than stuff around the house or the scummy retention pond out back. But we had a late night — we made it home sometime after 3am from the Halo party at Kevin’s house — so we got a late start on the day. Justin actually didn’t get to sleep until almost 5:30am because he had to drive his parents to the airport at 4:30am. Then I check and the park closed at 5pm … so we decided to skip it. Instead we went to Justin’s parents’ house so I could photograph some flowers and such.

I’m submitting the image below to the pinholeday.org gallery; it’s my favorite of the batch. Once it’s approved you can see it on their site here.

You can see the rest of the shots I took today right here.

I need a new scanner. I have an Epson Perfection 3170 Photo which has been my faithful home-photo-lab companion for years. But I think a bulb burned out in the lid, because if you look at the photos above you’ll notice a dark band across the center of the image. It’s only an issue when scanning medium format negatives — 35mm and flatbed are fine — so I’m hesitant to throw it out since it works great otherwise. Maybe I’ll give it to someone who won’t need to use it for transparencies.

I’d love to get a dedicated negative scanner but I don’t have a grand or two lying around to spare. So I’ll probably get the more reasonably priced Epson 4490.