Another 10 Second Flash Clamp

 This one is sturdier than the the original 10 Second Flash Clamp.  The inspiration came to me when I saw an old curtain rod laying around the house.  It has a channel which will nicely house a t-bolt, and it's also extendable.  For this 'build'  (more of an assembly) you will need a 1/4-20 x 1" t-bolt, some kind of 1/4-20 knob, and some form of "L" bracket.  You will also need some more bolts or something to mount your flash to the "L" bracket.  You can see from the picture that I make my own knobs out of plugs left over after using my hole saw, but you can buy nice knurled knobs for a buck or two at your hardware store.

Slide the t-bolt into the drapery rod's channel and place the bracket overtop.

Screw your knob onto the t-bolt and tighten it down.  If you need to move the flash up or down then loosen the knob, move, re-tighten.  Did I mention that this build takes 10 seconds?

In the final setup I fasten the rod to whatever I'm using as a light stand with a couple of plastic clamps.  I added a 1/4-20 bolt and another knob to the bracket to hold the flash/umbrellas swivel mount.  It's a pretty sturdy setup.

10 Second Flash Clamp

Here's a quick and cheap clamp setup for attaching a flash to a stand.  Equipment: 50 cent plastic clamp from a dollar store.  1/4-20 x 1" bolt,  1/4-20 nut, 1/4-20 wingnut, drill with 1/4" bit.

The clamp I used already had about a 1/8" hold in the base of the handles. Drill out the hole to 1/4" in size.

Insert the bolt from the inside of the handle so the thread comes out the outside. Use the 1/4" nut to tighten the bolt to the handle. Put on the wingnut in what would probably be considered an upside-down orientation. You use the wingnut to tighten the connection to the flash.

This is the end result.  To the clamp I've attached my flash swivel bracket, then my RF-602 remote flash trigger, then finally my Canon 188 speedlite.  This seems to work fine but it can't handle much more weight.  I put my umbrella into the swivel mount and the extra weight caused the plastic handle of the clamp to twist.  It's not a bad solution if you just need to hang a light flash somewhere.

Nexus One Macro Lens

I dismantled an old DVD drive a couple years ago with the plan of using the lens to build a microscope.  That project was abandoned before it began.  Last week I came across a post where someone had put a DVD lens directly onto their cell phone camera and turned it into a macro lens.  All they did was tape it on.  Hey, that's a project even I can complete.  The hardest part was getting the tape to stick to the body of my Nexus One.  The plastic HTC used on the Nexus feels good in the hand, but it seems to do a fine job of repelling the unwanted advances of amorous painters tape.   I only took a couple pics and the results were pretty neat.  This picture is of some newsprint with a red number 5 on it.  You can see the texture of the fibers in the paper.

Cheese Making: Ricotta

After my Feta making attempt last weekend I was left with about 2.5 litres of whey to use up.  You can make ricotta from whey by heating it to 95 degrees C and then leaving it to cool.  As it cools the curd precipitates out of the whey.

I strained the whey, then as carefully as I could I did the same to the curds. What was my great reward for slowly heating up stinky whey for what seemed an eternity? About 1 tablespoon of cheese. Yup, 1 tablespoon. If I mix that with an equal amount of sugar I'll have enough to stuff a cannoli fit for a smurf. I don't think I'll be repeating that exercise again.

Review: GPE 58mm Circular Polarizer from Deal Extreme

I bought a 58mm GPE Circular Polarizer from DealExtreme.  I wanted to use it with my current CPL to try and make a variable Neutral Density (ND) filter.  You may notice that the picture here doesn't match the one on the website.  The brand name is different.  It looks like I ordered a Massa but got a GPL.  I'm not going to quibble about an $8 filter with DX, I'll just assume that they are equivalent.   Build quality is fair.  My lens cap doesn't fit as solid on the GPL filter as it does on my more expensive Hoya.  I haven't done any side-by-side photo comparisons between the two filters, but through the viewfinder they appear to perform the same with no visible colour cast.  At least when used alone there is no colour cast.  When the two filters are mounted on the lens to fake out a ND filter the colours tint from blue to orange.  There is drop of about 3 stops but it's an awkward combo to use.  It will be nice to have the extra CPL kicking around so I don't have to swap it around every time I want to change lenses, but I think I'll invest some money in a real ND filter.

Cheese Making: Feta - Attempt 1

I was perusing Fankhauser's Cheese Page on the weekend and got the cheese making bug.  I've made yogurt before with some success.  What could be difficult about cheese?   I love feta, and it looked straight forward enough.  But like all things of this nature, details are important.

Mistake #1:  4 litres of milk is NOT the same as 1 U.S. gallon.  It's close but those extra two cups of liquid may have been too much.  My curds didn't become very thick, and they didn't hold together.  It looked more like lumpy milk soup than anything else.

From Cheese Making

I continued on anyway, not much to lose now. I tried draining the whey through some sterilized cloth but it was too slow. In the end I used the bags I use to strain juice for jelly and that worked quite well.

From Cheese making

From Cheese making

I let the curds drain in the fridge overnight. Mistake #2: This morning I hurriedly mixed in the salt and shove the curds into a tin-can cheese press. Around 3 this afternoon as I stared at my monitor at work I realized that I didn't line the press with cloth and it was likely that all I had done was squish the curds out the bottom of the can. Thankfully I didn't have much pressure happening in the press and not much had happened. I fixed things up proper, put some more pressure into the contraption and everything is now at work in the fridge. I even see some more whey coming out.

From Cheese making

From Cheese making

I haven't given up on this yet. If it's not firm enough after pressing then I'll have a mountain of thick cottage cheese.


Update: August 17, 2010: The press managed to squish the cheese down by 1 1/2 inches. I cut the resulting cylinder of feta into two, then into 1/8th's, and I put it all into the brine. It's still pretty soft, but it is somewhat cheesy. Maybe it will firm up after a couple of days of pickling.

Water Balloons

Tried some photos of bursting water balloons.   Kudos to anyone that can take a decent picture of one.  I won't critique myself too harshly since it's my first time.  But the word 'suck' does come to mind. 

Also tried some video which is of course going to have a higher success rate.  Shot at 60 fps with the shutter set at 1/4000s.   Here's a still and a video.