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    <title>Patti&#39;s random noise</title>
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    <updated>2006-10-20T22:39:41Z</updated> 
    <author>
        <name>Patti</name>
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    <subtitle>I pinch!</subtitle>  
    
    <entry>
        <title>Playing with the new flash</title>   
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        <published>2006-10-20T22:39:40Z</published>
        <updated>2006-10-20T22:39:41Z</updated>
    
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        <p>So as I mentioned earlier, I got a new flash for macrophotography.&#160; It&#39;s pretty cool!&#160; Of course, the first thing I did was stick it on the camera and point it at something on my desk, in this case a stuffed animal.&#160; Here&#39;s the first shot:<br />

 








    

    
    
    
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As you can see, the eye reflects the twin tubes of the ring flash, and they&#39;re firing equally.&#160; One of the typical complaints about ring flashes is that the light they give is extremely flat.&#160; The Sigma allows you to adjust the power, so that one side fires more strongly than the other in order to create shadows.&#160; Here&#39;s an example:<br />

 








    

    
    
    
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<br /><div>Now the tube on the left is firing at 8x the power of the one on the right, and you can see that in the reflection.&#160; You can also see a little bit more of a natural-looking shadow effect in the fur right above the eye.<br /></div></p>   <p style="clear:both;"> 
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    <entry>
        <title>Chain</title>   
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        <published>2006-04-13T20:19:50Z</published>
        <updated>2006-04-13T20:28:53Z</updated>
    
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<br />
 So you&#39;re sitting in the coffee house at a friend&#39;s motorcycle shop, and you happen to have all of your camera gear with you, including a macro lens and the whizzy bend-every-which-way tripod you dropped a kilobuck on recently.
</p><p>
 What do you do? You go into the back room of the shop, where they keep all the works in progress and parts bikes, and start taking pictures.
</p><p>
 This closeup of a motorcycle chain was my favorite of the bunch. If you view the full-size image (which is available <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/whipartist/125845691/">here</a>
), you can even see the lint on the O rings and the sprocket.
</p><p>
 I&#39;m surprisingly happy with the lighting, given that it was nearly dark in the room and I used the camera&#39;s built-in flash. That typically doesn&#39;t work so well when you&#39;re about six inches from the subject, in my experience.<br />
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