On sunday, I did a lil’ trip to the lab… Nothing very surprising here. But this time, I didn’t go there for my research work!
I went there because we have thousands of potential photomodels there: mice. We have different strains of mice including so called C57BL/6, Swiss and FVB/NJ, all belonging to the genus mus musculus: mice that are classically used throughout the world for different research applications. In our academic lab, we focus mostly on deciphering neurodegenerative disorders.

Let me use the opportunity to talk a little bit about animal testing:
No matter what they tell you, it IS actually absolutely essential to work with animal models if we want any chance of understanding and curing diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, AIDS etc. Please do not confuse this vital work with animal testing for cosmetics which seems to be somehow less important. But let me tell you this: It is very expensive, inconvenient, time consuming and difficult to work with animals in research. Anyone who does this has a good reason to do so, and nobody is happy seeing sick mice, or even sacrificing them to work with tissues (brain, muscle, liver…). Which is why “we” do it as humanly (lol?) as possible and only when necessary.

OK, finally, here are the images I came up with:

Click below for two sweeeet videos of the mice and technical information.

(more…)

Get Tilt/Shift and Macro-style photos without special lenses or post production. Sounds interesting.

A while ago I found a blog post about “freelensing” by Luke Roberts. He tells us how to achieve a Tilt / Shift effect with a regular lens or at least how to give your photos a unusual look by tilting the depth of field. He calls it “freelensing” because you detach the lens from the camera body and hold it “free” in place. Okay, it’s an experimental method, but it looks promising.

How?

Select the widest aperture (widest open), either in manual or by selecting “Av” mode, then detach the lens. Your camera will display oo, which only indicates, that the camera is not able to read the aperture from the lens. Not surprising since we just detached the lens.

(more…)

Shocking things… They can happen!

(Of course the following images are purely intended as fun, for the sake of taking pictures)

Barbie and her friend (Teresa? Stacy? – Help me here, girls!) were suddenly here for a shooting. Unfortunately, Ken was sick. Wait, not true. Actually, nobody could find him! So the girls were on their own… There is not much to say. They were a bit rigid and cold at the beginning. Emotionless. But as time went by, they became easyer to handle. I think they had a lot of fun. That is very important.

Let’s imagine Barbie ist 1,78m tall. Perfectly reasonable. She then would have measurements of 93cm (bust) / 47cm (waist) / 85cm (hips).
So in comparison, todays international top models like Doutzen Kroes or Adriana Lima boast measurements of around  87cm/61cm/91cm (for about 1,78m). Hm. So Barbie has big boobs, a VERY small waist, and modest hips. What a surprise…

Judge by yourself!

Technical details

The pictures were shot with the EOS 7D, the 100mm macro and a 430EXII speedlite flash. A small softbox was mounted on the speedlite and placed next to the dolls, resulting in very smooth light. A Tungsten light was placed near to the setting to provide enough light for focusing.

It’s (almost) Christmas! I hope you bought all the presents yet and don’t engage in the last minute shopping spree… well, Christmas surely comes surprisingly fast every year :-) To get you in the mood, I have uploaded three Christmas images. Also, as a small Christmas present from our side, we have created a preset for Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw, which simulates an “old picture” look seen below on the angel and Santa photo. Scroll down to find the download link. The third image shows a cinnamon stick.

Technical Details

(more…)

As promised in the last entry, here are some more close- and very close-up images!
Let me guide you through the pictures:

• In the first picture you’ll see the “fly amanita/agaric” (Amanita muscaria). I found it this october in a forest in the french Vosges. Despite the warning red color (it is toxic and hallucinogenic), some animal is now probably high, very sick or dead.
• The second image depicts the common honeybee (Apis melifera) sipping nectar from a forget-me-not (Mysotis sp.). It was taken last spring in a park in Kehl/Germany.
• The third image is just the crater formed by a falling waterdrop (highspeed photography… uuuuh).
• Next, in vivid green, there is a “Day Gecko” (Phelsuma sp.) living in the Wilhelma Zoo in Stuttgart/Germany.
• In red, two Damselflies (Pyrrhosoma nymphula) doing the nasty thing next to a flooded gravel pit
• And finally, a species of Dandelion (Taraxacum sp.) from some park somewhere in Europe;).

Technical info: (Remember to check the “about” section at the top of the page for more information regarding our equipment.)
Some pictures were taken with the normal-zoom, others with a macro lens.  As some images are older, they were taken either with the 7D or a 450D.

• The amanita-mushroom was taken handheld in the shade. Higher sensivity (ISO400), a longer exposure (1/25 s) and an image stabilizer (or a tripod) were necessary. The colors are original! The thing is THAT red.
• The bee was “captured” with the help of the on-camera flash. The warmer it is, the more (flying)  insects move quick (and randomly!). Using a flash and smaller apertures (f/8), to widen the depth-of-field, increased the odds to get a sharp image. Doing all this in the morning when the insects aarree sssllloooowww is better. But you have to wake up early! I preferred afternoon ;)
  The same applies to the damselflies…
• The drop was shot by dripping water into a black container. The light came from a softbox in the back, facing downwards towards the water and camera. I used the 430EXII hotshoe flash to get the necessary short flashes that freeze the motion. To increase depth of field, I used an f/13 aperture.
• Mr. Gecko didn’t move much in his enclosure in the zoo.  Dealing with distortions and reflections of the glass was however a bit trickier and partly dictated the framing and viewangle.
• The dandelion was shot in sunlight with a moderate aperture of f/8, lying on the floor. Nothing fancy here.

We have created a small collection of wallpapers from our photos for your mobile. The following pictures are all optimized for the iPhone 4 high res retina display but can be used for all other iPhone versions or even other mobiles of course (although the layout might be different because of varying display sizes and resolutions).

There are two ways how you can set our photos as wallpaper:

1. iPhone Users: Navigate onto our website with your iPhone. Once you have chosen an image, touch the respective link below (not the gallery). The image will pop up in a new window. Once you see the desired image, touch it and hold for a second. A dialog will appear that will let you “save the image”. The photo will be saved under photos. Open it in “photos”, touch the symbol on the bottom left and choose “set as background”.

2. All others: Download the zip-archive below containing all wallpapers and use your mobile-to-pc cable to get the images on your phone. (iPhone users can use iTunes)

<< Download wallpaper zip-archive >>

Here are the links to the wallpapers:

1. Xmas candle
2. Small shack in snowy mountains
3. Las Vegas @ night
4. Boat on the beach (Sylt)
5. Lighthouse (Sylt)
6. Sunny beach (Sylt)
7. Red chillies

For your enjoyment, Yannick added some wallpapers as well that can be used e.g. for your home screen. Here are the links:

1. Pink Waterdrop
2. Dark Waterspray
3. Blue Bubbles
4. Red Smoke
5. Swimming Lemon
6. Sparkling Fireworks

Today I’ll show you some of my older pictures. A few of you may already know them, but they weren’t on this site, so…
You’ll see a mix of flowers, insects and water. Except the water drop, everything was shot “on location” in the Orangerie park in Strasbourg.
It is all so-called “macro” work.

Expect to see more pictures like these in the next few weeks.

Technical Details

Let’s see what I can tell the photogeeks ;) Remember to check the “about” section at the top of the page for more information regarding our equipment.
Obviously, everything was shot with a macro lens (here: 100mm). I used a Canon 450D on some of the images, the rest was shot with the 7D.

• The drop was shot by dripping water in a black container. The light came from a softbox in the back, facing downwards towards the camera. I used the 430EXII hotshoe flash to get the necessary short flashes that freeze the motion. To increase the depth of field (having a bigger “sharp” zone), I used an f/10 aperture.
• The mauve “kraken-flower” and the brown “little fella” were shot using flash and relatively small apertures (f/10 and f/14 respectively). The flash came from the 430EXII triggered by a cable from the right hand side of the camera. The flash provided enough light despite the smaller apertures. It was thus increasing the depth of field, which was still small enough to blur the background.
• As for the picture of a… tulip (? – help me there!), there is not much to say… Available light, big aperture (f/3.2), nicely blurred image.
• The “insect on a red flower” (NOT frozen fingers!) was shot at avaible light, with again a big aperture (f/3.2). The problem arising here is the extreeeeemly shallow depth of field which keeps on getting smaller the more you approach the subject. You can actually see this tiny zone running just above/across the head of the insect, something like a millimeter large area. With a moving insect and no tripod it is very hard to capture a perfect image. So… the head (the most important part) is out of focus. I still like this picture, especially the vivid colors.
  How to easily perfect this last shot: Close the aperture, say to f/5.6 or a bit more, to retain the overall smooth look. Use a flash to keep the shutterspeed fast so that the movement of the bug isn’t a problem. To further increase the appreance, diffuse your flash, ans move it away from the camera axis. Try to simulate sunlight. The nearer you approch the subject with the flash, the smoother the light will be.

I have recently realized, that I have proudly announced the acquisition of the Canon EF 100mm 2.8L Macro Lens but have yet missed to provide some sample images. Until today. I have been shooting with this lens for a couple of weeks now and I have to say that I like it more and more.

Technical Details

The image quality in terms of bokeh and sharpness is superb. Since it is a 2.8 (aperture) lens you can start shooting at low light levels. Of course, wide apertures generate less depth of field then closed apertures. However, if you ask me, shallow depth of field and nice smooth bokeh is what good looking macro shot are all about. So here are my sample images. Beyond what I have mentioned, there is really not much technical detail to disclose about the images. I shot them handheld with my 500D (and the macro lens apparently) at 1/60s @ f4. For all images I used a camera mounted flash – the Canon Speedlite 199A – which was set to manual and to a 90 degrees angle firing against a white wall to get some softer, bounced light.

While in the supermarket a few days ago, I noticed some nice lemons and remembered shots I did a while ago – photographing things dropping in water. I didn’t have lemon slices at hand but wanted to experiment with such things. After many months, the motivation was back – you don’t do this every day – and I bought a net of “bio” lemons. I also got a (green) lime, but finally didn’t use it. It will probably do a nice mojito :)
The bonus picture at the end depicts a strobe emitting a flash with very low power.

Technical Details

Technologic: The small fishtank I used was lit by two studio strobes with convenient small softboxes. The colored backgrounds were actually t-shirts of different colors. One strobehead lit the scene from the front and side to illuminate the background and the lemon while the other one fired from the back and other side trough the slice. The power of both units was approximately the same. To enhance color rendition I played with white balance, picture styles and of course saturation.
This time’s bonus picture shows a strobe doing what it does best with very low power through ~6stops of greyfilter and the lens completely stopped down (f32). The colorbalance was set to tungsten and the colors sliiiightly enhanced to show the contrast. What you see is the xenon gas inside the ring tube being ionised by high voltage, subsequently actually resulting in plasma… and light.
As always the camera was a 7D withy my macro lens.

That’s right. I have decided. I bought the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM lens and I must say its brilliant so far. I was a little bit concerned that the lens would throw the camera out of balance but the lens is not as heavy as I had expected. Or, I am already used to the out-of-balance feeling due to the EF-s 15-85mm lens. Here is one of my first shots. I will definitely take many more soon!

Lately I have been thinking a lot about upgrading my photo equipment… and I am in a bit of a puzzle. As you know, I own the Canon EOS 500D (Rebel T1i) and the EFs 15-85 IS USM lens. [I gave the kit lens in an ill-conceived deal to my father, since the new lens covers a broader focal length plus has a by far better image quality.]

On the one hand, I would like to get a new macro lens to shoot – well – macros and portraits. Yannick takes his photos with the Canon 100mm USM lens. I do like the results. However, I am considering getting the pro line (L) …but then I looked at the price tag. Hmpf.

On the other hand, I have been shooting some videos lately (with the Canon 5D of a friend) and I’m likely to keep that up. So, upgrading to a new camera is also an option, the Canon 7D comes to mind.

So, in light of the upcoming trip to Las Vegas, the problem is: I only have the money for either one of them (if any). What to buy?

Anyways, the incident that started it all: I was on Sylt sorting out a pile of old analog lenses we still own from the good old Canon AE1 times (most successful analog SLR camera ever, introduced in the 70ies). I found an old macro lens and an adapter to fit the old FD mount lens on to a Canon EOS 400D. The aperture had to be set on the lens itself and the exposure was set to manual on the camera. I don’t remember the brand name of the lens, but it wasn’t a Canon lens and as far as I can tell nothing overly expensive. The results were quite a bit blurry but it was fun to shoot.

Technical Details

Now the tech stuff: It was a macro lens. That’s all I’ve got. :-) The aperture wasn’t recorded by the camera, since it is an analog lens. The focusing was also done manually. The apple was shot at ISO 100 @ 1/15 sec on a tripod and the lady beetle at ISO 100 @ 1/250 freehand. I had to sharpen the images quite a bit in photoshop and the resizing also helped to hide the original lens blur.

UPDATE 5th September 2010:
I found out: It was a Soligor 100mm F3,5 macro lens

Here we go again! While still in the north of France, but now in the Bretagne, I thought I could share some photographs of a lizard I shot today.
I was on a bike trip on a small island when I saw an interesting… thing… and just next to it, two lizards on their hunting trip. So: picture time! See how exacly I took them in the last image ;)
There were many other pictures of the lizards and the scenery… which I’ll share with you some other time.

Technical Details

Hi techheads: I only had my standard zoom (15-85mm) and my telephoto lens (70-200mm) – not my macro lens (100mm), so I was limited to a minimum distance of 1,2 meters. But: with the lizards being living things with an instinct to run away and hide, I couldn’t get closer anyway. I slowly walked to the “hunting ground”, just next to an ant-hive(?). So fortunately, the lizards kept coming back if I scared them by trying to compensate focal lenght by getting closer…
The shots were taken in the shade with a lens that was not stabilised, so I hat to keep the shuttersped at around 1/300, and so to raise the ISO while keeping the f-stop around 10. Some image are a little blurry and sliiightly misfocused. And because I only had 200mm at hand, I cropped the images. The final touch was done by increasing color saturation and the contrast.

Today I’m back to my real “duty”: Some macro shots. I’m still in Normandy and these images were taken in a park where a little rain just beautifully, well, changed nature and what you can get in a photograph. Enjoy!

For the techheads

I used a Canon EOS 7D with a Canon 100mm USM macro lens. The shots were taken handheld at about 1:1 ratio (not for the last image obviously). Because of the lack in light, I had to shoot with relatively large apertures (F3.5-5.0) and high ISO sensivity (1250-1600). A touch of sharpening and noise reduction were obviously applied.