PF Photography: Tips, Tricks, & Photo Sharing

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Andy Resnick said:
Clever image- very creative!

Thanks Andy, good to hear that from a professional ;)

She is creative, talented, and a potential photographer. :smile:
 
Patting myself on the back for this one- successful decapsulation of a MEMS device (old laptop). This device costs less than $0.01 to manufacture- I found an iPhone bill of materials with this device listed. Three axis accelerometer plus tilt- STMicroelectronics CSL05E, similar to the CSL10B. The lower image is about 400X magnification.

http://imageshack.us/a/img534/6023/dsc02306zk.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img692/3649/dsc02312xpfo.jpg

My understanding is that this works by capacitance sensing- movements of the masses (suspended polysilicon) changes the spacings, leading to a signal.

We should be *astounded* by our ability to mass-produce this technology. We probably throw away millions of these every year.
 
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Jet blast from a B767 taking off in St Maarten(the airport beach) - Jan 2013

2d2iusy.jpg
 
Maui said:
Jet blast from a B767 taking off in St Maarten(the airport beach) - Jan 2013

2d2iusy.jpg


Outstanding photo. :!)



If it were the 787, you probably could have smelled these: :devil:

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/components/display_image.php?id=525289?123
 
dlgoff said:
Outstanding photo. :!)
If it were the 787, you probably could have smelled these: :devil:

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/components/display_image.php?id=525289?123

Ha ha, so true :)

Having spent nearly 3 years on PF, I've just found about this wonderful subforum. Will take a very active role, i am a photography geek and I've been to a lot of beautiful spots around the world. Stay tuned :)
 
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Shanghai from the highest observation deck in the world:

10seiyu.jpg
 
Maui said:
Having spent nearly 3 years on PF, I've just found about this wonderful subforum. ...

Says a lot about the depth of PF. There are many subforums I've yet to visit after nearly 10 years. :smile:
 
Latest batch of MEMS images- the first one was from a broken laptop, the other from a broken Wii controller. The second one was damaged during cleaning- the suspended membranes are little more than solid smoke- a puff of air is enough to smash them to bits:

http://imageshack.us/a/img221/6650/dsc02306o.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img198/8981/dsc023111.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img546/3788/dsc02317c.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img854/2199/dsc02389i.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img541/6866/dsc02404ao.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img4/5730/dsc02435pd.jpg

Full-sized images (and additional images) are on my lab's website. Enjoy!
 
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lisab said:
Maui, that shot made me dizzy!
Hold on, there's higher!

642u50.jpg
120x, hand shot

nnlgea.jpg
The moons of Jupiter(hand shot, no tripod):

w2q7p.jpg
 
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8340593490_0148499618_c.jpg

here's a photo from the jersey shore after sandy tore it up.
 
Finally- the first clear night in (what seems like) months. First image: 15/4, 8s @ ISO 800, background subtraction post-processing. Second image: 1:1 crop of 800/5.6, composite of 1/100s ISO100 and 1/4s ISO400.

http://imageshack.us/a/img191/6586/resultofdsc02785filtere.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img826/7623/dsc027793.jpg
 
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Nice photos Andy! I'm curious, can you take such photos from a big city? I ask this because I'd think it's hard to see that many stars in the sky in a big city due to "light pollution".
Also for the second photo, you made a composite of "1/100s ISO100 and 1/4s ISO400". I am curious... shouldn't 1/100s ISO 100 be almost a fully dark photo?!
 
fluidistic said:
Nice photos Andy! I'm curious, can you take such photos from a big city? I ask this because I'd think it's hard to see that many stars in the sky in a big city due to "light pollution".
Also for the second photo, you made a composite of "1/100s ISO100 and 1/4s ISO400". I am curious... shouldn't 1/100s ISO 100 be almost a fully dark photo?!

Thanks!

To the first question (light pollution): it's all about increasing the signal to noise ratio. What I did here was simply subtract the background- the slowly-varying intensity. Any location with a rapidly-varying intensity (starts, tree branches, etc) is left alone. It's easy to do- duplicate the image, blur one of them (I used a Gaussian blur radius of 100 pixels), and then subtract the blurred image from the original. Another method is 'image stacking', where multiple images are added together. There are lots of subtle details that go into optimizing a particular strategy, and there are folks here with a lot of experience who can help you.

As a point of reference, I have been able to consistently pull out magnitude +15 objects from the background. I think I can do even better once the weather warms up and I can spend more time outside.

To the second question, the answer is that I am using a lens with a large aperture; the lens is a 400/2.8 (with an optional 2x extension tube) which means for astrophotography it's a 6" refractor. This let's me use short shutter speeds, but more practically it let's me aim the camera by eye; I can 'star hop' to a particular faint object fairly quickly.
 
Andy Resnick said:
To the first question (light pollution): it's all about increasing the signal to noise ratio. What I did here was simply subtract the background- the slowly-varying intensity. Any location with a rapidly-varying intensity (starts, tree branches, etc) is left alone. It's easy to do- duplicate the image, blur one of them (I used a Gaussian blur radius of 100 pixels), and then subtract the blurred image from the original. Another method is 'image stacking', where multiple images are added together. There are lots of subtle details that go into optimizing a particular strategy, and there are folks here with a lot of experience who can help you.

I'm assuming that the background subtraction doesn't actually increase the SN ratio, it just removes the background light from the sky without affecting the abrupt changes where something blocks out the background light, such as the tree limbs you mentioned, along with the sudden increase in signal from stars? That way you can still see the tree limbs and such, thanks to the "glow" around them, and at the same time you can see the stars as well.
 
Thanks Andy for the explanation.
 
Drakkith said:
I'm assuming that the background subtraction doesn't actually increase the SN ratio, it just removes the background light from the sky without affecting the abrupt changes where something blocks out the background light, such as the tree limbs you mentioned, along with the sudden increase in signal from stars? That way you can still see the tree limbs and such, thanks to the "glow" around them, and at the same time you can see the stars as well.

That's a good point. My intention was to describe ways to stretch the contrast between star and sky.
 
Andy Resnick said:
That's a good point. My intention was to describe ways to stretch the contrast between star and sky.

Got it.
 
Have you seen this video borek?
:biggrin:
By the way, nice photo. Do you know whether it's a toad or a frog? Probably the former...
 
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fluidistic said:
Have you seen this video borek?
:biggrin:


Sigh. I thought I already know what it is about and then... Now I have coffee everywhere.

By the way, nice photo. Do you know whether it's a toad or a frog? Probably the former...

Check the file name.
 
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Borek said:
Sigh. I thought I already know what it is about and then... Now I have coffee everywhere.
lol.

Borek said:
Check the file name.
Ah, I didn't know that was possible. Nice... According to wiki:
Wiki the Great said:
When alarmed, it emits a very loud call (alarm call) and it can exude a noxious secretion which smells like garlic, hence the common name "garlic toad".
. So your specimen was around 6 to 8 cm?!
 
Borek said:
Perhaps even larger.

Nice :)
 
Wow, that must be Touchwood from Catweazle

http://www.nostalgie.webpark.cz/wp-content/gallery/caryfuk/cf9.jpg

http://www.nostalgie.webpark.cz/caryfuk-1970-catweazle
 
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This is a chip from the paleolithic era: a circa-1968 RCA CD4012 (dual 4-input NAND gate) device.

http://imageshack.us/a/img835/803/dsc05788i.jpg

I've found a stash of TTL devices (and a lot more) dating from 1962 (!), I will be posting images of these on my lab blog as they become available.
 
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