Edwin van Nuil

Work in progress

Nothing is happening here at the moment, I'm working hard on my new site. It will be a combined website, blog and portfolio site. Now I have multiple sites but I want to bring it back to 1. Sneak peek: beta.vannuil.com.

Picture of the day "Treetop Maze"

My "Treetop Maze" photo was chosen as picture of the day in the ClanFlickr group

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Soap Galaxy

When my son got his vaccination shot he got a soap bubble blower as a gift. And when he finished playing with it a they were sleeping I tried a little experiment with it. Playing with a selfmade black backdrop, two speedlights this is one of the results:
See it on Flickr : Soap Galaxy

Strobist test

Marit, originally uploaded by Edwin van Nuil.

Last week I bought a Strobist starters set. And on Saterday Marit wanted to play as model. So this is one of the resulting shots. Also a diagram of the lighting setup I used.

Smoke

Smoke, part 2, originally uploaded by Edwin van Nuil.

Another photo of yesterday's smoke shoot.

I used a incense stick, a black backdrop, my Speedlight 580 EX II with a extensioncord, EOS 50D on tripod. My EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro. I also made a snout for the speedlight from thick paper to only light the smoke and not the background. I put the camera on manual mode and set the shutter to 1/160 sec and the aperture to f/13.0.

You can see the smoke photo's in this set on Flickr. There you also find a wallpaper version.

Cliffs at Le Pouldu

Cliffs at Le Pouldu, originally uploaded by Edwin van Nuil.

Taken late in the evening on the Cliffs at Le Pouldu, Breatgne, France. (I posted this one again on Flickr because I did some extra PP for a print that I framed and put on the Wall. I liked this one better so I posted it again).

I used a Tripod and a remote to make the photo.

Camera: Canon EOS 50D
Exposure: 2
Aperture: f/11.0
Focal Length: 28 mm
Exposure: +0.50
ISO Speed: 100
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire

Strawberry Away; how I took it.

This week I took this shot of a strawberry falling into water. In this post I will give a description of how I took this shot.

First I started with some fresh strawberries ofcourse. I also used a small aquarium which I filled with water. My camera, the Canon EOS 50D was mounted on the tripod which stood before the table on which the aquarium stood. The camera was about 50 cm from the aquarium and I used the lenshood as a extra protection against splashing water. After 40 takes or so there were a few drops on the hood, but none on the lens or camera.

I used a remote trigger cord to take the pictures so I could drop the strawberry and take the shot when it hit the water. This took some practice but after a while I got the hang of it.

Behind the aquarium I put up a blue towel to get the background I wanted.
I also used a Wireless flash solution from Gadget Infinity called the Cactus V2. On both sides of the aquarium I placed a Flash which froze the action in the aquarium. I used my two Canon speedlights. The Canon Speedlight 430 EX was in manual mode and was on 1/16st power and the Canon Speedlight 580 EX II was on 1/8st power. On both the flashes I used a difuser, these also gave some protection against drops of water; and the body of the flashes I wrapped in plastic.

Most of the splashing water stayed in the aquarium, yesterday I took some pictures of falling strawberries into a glass of water and milk and that gave a whole mess and I had to mop the floor.

These are the settings I used when I took the shot at the top of the page:

Camera:Canon EOS 50D
Exposure:0.013 sec (1/80)
Aperture:f/11.0
Focal Length:100 mm
Exposure:+0.17
ISO Speed:100
Flash:Off (not really, but manual)
Lens:EF100mm f/2.8 Macro USM

Sunflower

Yesterday I took some shot of sunflowers. These are small sunflowers, we have them standing on our table.

I place the flower on our kitchensink and closed the white curtains behind it. This gave a kind of softbox effect.
Click here to see the slideshow/bigger

New Site

Lately I haven't been writing very much on this blog, been busy with Photography and the family. I did make a new site that is the starting point to all the other online activities I maintain. The new site: www.vannuil.com.

Most of my pictures I upload to Flickr, but I also us SmugMug to store my photo's, because here I can also store the RAW files. And I like the slideshows and galleries better than at Flickr. But Flickr has the great community. So I maintain both. But I didn't like the default website of smugmug, so I did a lot of customization and this is the result.

So I will try to write more on this blog, but If you're interested in what I'm also doing, take a look at the new main site and the other blogs.

Backup

Yesterday at work we had a long discussion about backing up important data at home; things like photos and videos.
At this moment I make a copy of my photo's to an external harddisc, this is a manual action that takes place 3 times a month. I also use a timemachine (yeah Apple) backup that is synced multiple times each day.
A few coworkers of my are rsyncing their data to each other each night. In this way they have a offsite backup.
The only offsite backup I have is Flickr. Most of my pictures I post to Flickr.
Right now I'm looking for a practical way to keep current backups offsite. The moment I have a solution I will post it here.
In the mean time I also keep watching Managing Your Digital Life.

The New Macbook Pro on the couch

The New Macbook Pro on the couch, originally uploaded by Edwin van Nuil.

After posting the previous photo my Macbook was spinning the fans at top speed while idle. Put the Macbook to sleep and went to sleep myself. The next morning I opened the lit but there came no picture. Did a hard reset and not even the boot screen. Tried all the things I could think of but even on a external monitor I had no picture. But I could login using Remote Desktop so the Nvidia adapter was the suspect.
Because I had a presentation coming up and a lot of work I decided to get a new Macbook Pro (the unibody) and transfer all the data. After that I send in the old one to get repaired (they are replacing the logic board).
So now I working with my new Macbook Pro on the couch in the evening.