I’ve had a few requests on Flickr to document what I’ve been using for bug hunting.
Well, here it is. Nikon 105mm f/2.8 macro, 36mm (and/or sometimes 24mm) Kenko extension tube(s), and Nikon R1 close-up flash system. I’ve been shooting mostly hand-held, 1/200 sec at f/10-f/22. I make up for hand shake by taking three or more pictures for each one I even consider keeping.
So in the middle of taking a set of pictures, I noticed that my D90 was not actually saving the pictures I took. The mirror would flip up, the shutter would click, but the display would show the same older picture again.
I tried the usual suspects. Turning the camera off and on. Changing the directory on the card where files were supposed to save. Swapping out memory cards. Reformatting memory cards. Doing the two-button reset. Doing the menu reset. Pulling out and then replacing the battery.
I could shoot a picture with a blank memory card installed, and the display would say “Folder contains no images.”
I searched on the internet for this symptom, and found no other reports of it.
Here’s what finally cured it:
* switch into LiveView mode
* take a picture – this will fail
* take another picture – this will succeed
* switch out of LiveView mode
Et voila! Now it works. I don’t know if this is reproducible, nor if I’m just heading down a path toward permanent issues, but I figured it would be worth posting just in case anyone else has the same issue.
Seen on the way in to work this morning. Only had my Canon Powershot with me… so, it’s just another reminder to always bring the big camera with big glass at all times.
Semi-aerial combat
I’ve done some more work on the Aperture Importer (background here), and the latest is attached below. It now does some reformatting of keywords that get split (e.g., “San” and “Diego” can be merged to “San Diego” as a keyword.) It’s hacky and ugly. You’ll have to set up your own keywords for this kind of merge.
I’ve found a couple of apparent Aperture bugs.
If I tell Aperture to import an empty directory from Applescript, it’ll stall and lock up Aperture.
Worse, I find that if I do a large import (more than, say, 5,000 images), Aperture grabs a bunch of memory that never gets released. Well, Aperture itself doesn’t grab the memory, but it causes the kernel_task “process” to allocate a big pile of real memory, which it seems to hold on to until reboot.
It’s a cumulative thing: if I import 5,000 images, the memory gets grabbed. Then, if I do another 5,000 image import, the memory usage doubles. Thinking it would be handled by swapping, I didn’t worry, and continued. This was a bad idea. Aperture locked up, but so did the whole OS. The last thing I could see from top was that 100% of my real memory was allocated, that less than 256M of swap was in use. I had at least 50GB of disk free, so that wasn’t the problem.
Anyway, for safety, if you use this import script, I recommend rebooting between import sessions. Yeah, it’s voodoo, but it’s guaranteed to work.
Ever since I saw a “how to” in Popular Photography back in the early 80s, I always thought it would be cool to make my own super-macro lens by mounting an ordinary lens backwards.
So, on Saturday, using 58mm skylight filter, a dremel tool, hot glue gun, and camera body cap, I created a reverse mount. Into this contraption, I inserted the kit lens (28-70mm) that came with my Nikon N-80, and, tried it out on the Nikon D-70. Obviously, autofocus and automatic exposure are out of the question (although it might be interesting to run wires across from the lens’ connector to the camera. Hm… maybe it’s not out of the question!), so it entails a lot of manual twiddling of focus and looking at histograms.
It’s too much magnification (even at 70mm) to hand-hold, and, even with my old tripod, it’s hard to get a sharp image. Also, with this kind of macro, there’s not a lot of depth of field to play with. I started by taping the aperture lever at full open, and didn’t get dramatically different results when I allowed it to stop down somewhat. I tried to figure out the optics of the situation, but quickly realized that with a variable aperture and a collection of lenses, I would need to go back and hit the books to understand the physics.
Here’s the stinger of a wasp, who was found dead on the driveway:
