The Devil's Slide
Sep. 2nd, 2012 04:44 pmA couple of weeks ago we took a road trip to see the Devil's Slide. It's an interesting geological curiosity and a good enough excuse to get out with a destination. Unfortunately lighting wasn't that good and viewing angles are limited I don't think I got very good shots of it. However while out I did come across some really nice train bridges and I had more photographic success with them. I've always liked train bridges with all the interesting girder angles and the play of light and shadow. I pulled out my infrared and got some nice shots.


Family Reunion
Aug. 18th, 2012 11:55 pmToday was the annual family reunion (on my mother's side). We had a good time catching up with each other. everyone brought food and there were some fun events like guess the number of jelly beans in the jar, and auction, and sling-shotting candy for the kids. However there were a lot of people with a lot of loud voices and being the introvert I am, I took a couple of opportunities to slip away from the general chaos and recharge. Of course I had several cameras with me. It was a good bright day for infrared with lots of green vegetation around and interesting textures. My converted casio worked wonderfully after a late night fix-it session yesterday. I am very happy with it and I don't expect to open it up again.


Casio qv-r40 IR fixed
Aug. 11th, 2012 12:10 pm I've fixed the focus on the casio. I was right it was the auto focus. When I removed the hot mirror it threw off the auto focus. Last night I picked up an old frame from a thrift store for a buck and cut the glass roughly to the size of the hot mirror and installed that in my camera. Now everything is very crisp and clear. Unfortunately the zoom no longer functions. This isn't a big concern, I intend to use this mostly for landscapes. Another day I may open it up again and try to fix it.
Tonight I plan to head out to the desert to watch the metor showers. I'm going to try the star trails again while I'm out there. I'm better prepared this time hopefully it will work out better then last time.
A new infrared modification
Aug. 9th, 2012 08:55 pm I recently found a casio qv-r40 camera at a local thrift shop for $5. I turns out it's a pretty good camera and I managed an infrared conversion with it. It was very easy to open and replace the hot mirrir with a piece of 35mm unexposed, developed film that works quite well for an infrared filter. Unfortunatly I've found the majority of the photos I've taken turn out blurry while a few look just fine. As far as I can tell from my notes it's pretty random two shots with nearly identacal setting come out diffrently. All I can figure is it must have something to do with the auto focus, except that setting the focus to infinity seems to have no effect nor does manual focus.



