[bruce norikane]

That is odd.

[bruce norikane]

Greetings Callum,

The late Dave Lewis was a fine rod builder in the states, and his website has many photos of his flyrods.

http://www.performanceflyrods.com/pictures.html

Dave also loved hiking to small streams, so you might also enjoy his “Fine Rods in Beautiful Places” gallery:

http://www.performanceflyrods.com/fineplaces/finerods.html

And he published many fine photo journals:
http://www.performanceflyrods.com/journals.html

[bruce norikane]

Light, Science and Magic is a great book on lighting principals.

http://www.amazon.com/Light-Science-Introduction-Photographic-Lighting/dp/0240808193

The Lighting 101 and the Bootcamp series on Strobist include many tutorials on lighting on a budget:

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101.html

[bruce norikane]

I ran across this Canon white paper on their CMOS sensor today. It’s high level, but there’s some technical information in it:

http://media.the-digital-picture.com/Information/Canon-Full-Frame-CMOS-White-Paper.pdf

Also Emil Martinec wrote a substantial piece on Canon 20D sensor noise.

[bruce norikane]

Hi Tim,

Interesting question.  I’ve never seen much technical data on specific camera sensors.  Some of the sensor vendors publish technical data sheets, but I’ve never seen one.  I think Canon makes the 50D sensor, for Canon’s exclusive use, so they probably don’t publish anything on that sensor.  

Some people have deduced quite a bit from analyzing images, especially raw files.

The best known sensor database is the DXOmark website. DXOmark attempts  to compare different sensors by normalizing raw file data.  DXOmark:
http://www.dxomark.com/

Many of the technical review sites use Norman Koren’s Imatest software to analyze image files:
http://www.imatest.com/home
Imatest analyzes images, so the whole camera – lens, sensor, processing – is tested.  But with careful test setups, it can be used to analyze some sensor information.

Raw file format information is available in the open source for dcraw:
http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/

There are some tools that build ICC profiles for cameras, but I’ve never really followed them.  The camera profiles may provide some detail on color response curves.  The standard ICC profile tools may be useful with these profiles. DDIsoftware (they make the excellent Qimage printing software) sells camera profiles.  They may be dcraw compatible, so you might be able to extract more information from them with modified software.

http://www.ddisoftware.com/shopping/index.html#cameraq

Hope this helps – bnn

[bruce norikane]

Neal Osborne wrote an article on what you can do with a waterproof digicam. It’s on his website:

http://flyartstudio.com/wordpress/?p=323

Imaging Resource (a respected camera review site)

[bruce norikane]

…
Check this out.  One of the most important images I can offer.  It is published by David Briggs http://www.huevaluechroma.com/index.php. I printed this one out and literally taped it to my studio for about three months.  
…

That’s a great link Neal.  I’ll be looking at that cue ball for awhile.

[bruce norikane]

The ant photo is quite good.  You got the detail in the black body and white wing.  

The beadhead is a bit dark.  The abdomen and thorax need more light.

It’s hard to tell from the photos, but your flash is probably overpowering the other lights.  They show up as highlights on the bead, but may not be adding a lot of light.  Try the same setup without the other lights, then turn them on one by one to see which ones are effective.

You are shooting manual, but are you controlling the flash manually or is the flash power on auto?   The manual aperture and shutter speed will change the effect of the constant lamps, but the flash power is another independent variable.

Some general principals on lighting flies. The distance from light to subject makes a huge difference in both intensity and softness.  

Light intensity on the subject decreases with the square of the distance to the light.  So if you move the light twice as close, the intensity will increase 4 times.

Softness of a light depends on the relative size and distance of the light.  

• Bigger is softer
• Big is relative to the subject size
• Closer is softer

Soft light for a head and shoulder shot could require a 50″ softbox, but a 4 inch light modifier could work for a 1 inch fly (if it’s close enough). Even a gigantic light source like the Sun, is totally hard light because the Sun is so far away.  

[bruce norikane]

… My wife is usually pretty cool my purchases but for some reason she is not buying in to this need for flash. …

If money is an issue, for macro photos of flies – subject small and stationary, camera on tripod – you could do just as well with a DIY macro studio.  Good flash gear is more important when you have to light large subjects from far away, or when you are shooting moving subjects.

See Paul Dieter’s fly studio which allows him a tremendous amount of back and front lighting, using one ordinary light bulb and some small reflectors.  Make sure you follow the other links on the page to see the new, improved version and tutorial on how to make one.

http://homepage.mac.com/riverwader/tying/Personal24.html

There are a lot of simple DIY macro studios on the web.  Most can use either continuous or flash lighting.

For the real estate web photos, I think the SB800 has a built in slave that can be triggered by the D50’s flash.  That would give you a great on or off camera flash.  For the real estate photos, you probably want some standard flash accessories like a light stand and umbrellas.  The Strobist site has a lot of good info on those.

[bruce norikane]

Hyperfocal distance is determined by exactly the same parameters as depth or field –

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