SomaKun

I had posted some photos in earlier posts of some photos I took with my phone through my Canon AE-1, well here's what I did...

Last night I was playing with the idea of attaching my phone to my SLR. Why? Why not? lol. I had a LG Dare awhile back that I played with this same idea. I was just sitting around at work waiting for the guests to arrive to get their photos taken when I butted by camera phone to the viewfinder of the DSLR I was using and snapped a few pics. They weren't the best but I just thought it interesting.

 Some years later today (rather last night) I thought, "Hey, I should glue the detachable eyepiece on the viewfinder to my cellphone." And so I did last night. I actually hot-glued the eyepiece to the hard shell protective case for my phone. It took awhile to get it centered just right so the phone camera is in line with the viewfinder. I rushed it last night but I tweaked it out again earlier today. It doesn't fill the frame %100 and I had to zoom in on the phone camera so that at least most of the screen is filled then I'd tweak some of the camera settings on the phone and snapped a pic.

It's a pretty rough modification for the purpose and the photo quality can be questionable but I like how the photos turn out anyway. As I mentioned in earlier posts, some drawbacks are that you can see the focusing circle in the middle and anything else that you can see when you look through the viewfinder.

Focusing can be tricky because you need to first focus the SLR then hope your camera phone can focus the viewfinder. It also looks like a giant digital viewfinder for analog cameras haha. I'll put some samples below and some in my flicker account so you can see what kind of photos I'm able to take with this set up.

The eye-piece hot-glued to the phone cover:

Attached to the camera:

Photo taken with camera phone through SLR camera:

As you can see, there can be black borders around the photo since the whole frame isn't filled. Not saying I couldn't fill the frame, I can zoom in even more to do so but then a lot of the image gets cut out.

Raw photo straight from the phone:

Cropped and tweaked out some of the settings through photoshop:

I was browsing the Tomopop today and they had a post about Clutter Magazine hosting the first Designer Toy Awards which will be happening at this year's San Diego Comic Con.

Clutter Magazine is very excited to announce the first annual International Designer Toy Awards (DTA) - Hosted at the Munky King party Friday, July 22nd 2011 in San Diego, California.

The Designer Toy Awards celebrates the creativity, innovation and artistic excellence in the Art Toy market, which after more than a decade has become a prominent and legitimate form of artistic and commercial expression. This awards ceremony will celebrate the best of the scene’s artists, designers, customizers and manufacturers, as well as honoring those involved in championing Art Toys throughout the world.

The awards will take two routes. First, a carefully selected board of professional artists, producers and impresarios will choose group of nominations from the many designs released over the past year.

The second route consists of a group of awards chosen by YOU! The DTA PUBLIC awards feature special categories that are open to the general public for popular voting. Stay tuned for more details!"

So sign up today and start nominating! Oh by the way, you won’t find the photo of my Floxy Fox toy design on their main page but I just thought you know, maybe… nudge nudge. There’s also a category for “Best Customizer”. I just thought I’d throw it out there too ^_^.

[Photo by myself and photoshopped onto a screen shot of Clutter's DTA web page]

Project Ganbatte/Ganbare is a little photo project I want to do showcasing figures I have on hand cheering on mainly Japan but also people everywhere. As much as I like the "Pray For Japan" campaign I feel that Japan already had a great saying to keep up the spirit…

"GANBATTE!"

Also said as ganbare, ganbatte (ガンバッテ) is translated to "hold out, persevere, and do your best." I like this phrase or saying because I feel it has more of a connection between people and can boost one's morale significantly. Knowing, seeing a physical being cheering me on makes me want to work harder. As much as I wouldn't want to disappoint myself, I wouldn't want to disappoint the person rooting me on. So then what I'll do is push forward as hard as I can knowing that whether I succeed or fail, I'll be a better person at the end. Another way to think of ganbatte is like someone cheering for their favorite player or team. Or even a personal trainer pushing me to do my best.

The philosophy of ganbatte to me is "I believe in you! You have the strength. I know you can do it but if you need me, here I am."  I think Kamina said it best:

"Believe in me, who believes in you!"

Think of me what you will, but this is my resolve.

GANBATTE NIHON! GANBATTE WORLD!!!

I talked about Bokeh in an earlier post and did a little more experimenting. This time I took one of Diana's ball joint dolls, Chihiro, out in the back yard for a little photo shoot.

Bokeh is the blur in the photo and there are ways of manipulating that through the lens. What I came to understand through a little reading and experience, the quality of the blur depends mostly on the lens. My theory was that the shape of the Bokeh takes after the quality/shape of the aperture. It's easier to see what shape the aperture takes when you photograph spaced out tiny specs of light. A theory I've yet to put into practice is if you were to get those photographs that have "orbs" and have a custom made aperture attached to the lens, then those orbs in a way will take shape of the custom aperture.

I had a little difficulty focusing when I did these photos since the lens I was using was my home-made tilt-shift lens. It was the closest thing I can get to having a fixed distance lens with a wide aperture which is best for manipulating Bokeh. I used this tutorial to fit my custom apertures on my lens. Next time I'll post some videos playing with custom Bokeh. It might be a little easier to understand how it works ^_^. This all works best when your subject is a good distance away from the light source you want to manipulate. Just keep in mind of how depth of field works and you should be fine. Now On to the photos...

Here is my custom Bokeh tool set. I used glue instead of tape like the guy used in his tutorial. I bought black card stock from Michaels to use for my custom apertures or "slides".

Here are photos using the heart aperture

This one was with the star aperture

The swirl aperture

And finally the Soma aperture lol

I know it's weird huh? Most of you are probably thinking how is this possible. How is it that the cut out isn't blocking out the image? The best way I can explain this is try cutting out or finding a small cut-out of something and put it as close to one of your eyes as possible and focus on something distant. You don't really see the cut out shape do you and to a point you are still able to see the full scene or object you are looking at in the distance or close by.

And now here's my cat Jiji ^_^

Here are some other links to help as you venture into the land of Bokeh:

www.diyphotography.net/diy_cre…: A DIY page on making your own Bokeh with suggestions of lens best suited for this at the bottom of the page

www.alienskin.com/bokeh/index.…: Prefer post processing? Here is a plug-in from alienskin

Come check it out or spread the word ^_^: cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?…

Thanks everyone! Happy New Year!!!