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Macro Inverter: DIY, Non-Destructive, Complete With Electric Contacts

There are plenty of guys out there discovering the wonders of an 18-55mm mounted inverted on the body, with the help of inverter rings. It can yield great results, for it’s money. The main drawback, though, is that the lack of electric communication between the body and the lens means that everything becomes full manual.

More recently, I’ve begun noticing guys choosing to ruin a (maybe deffective) lens, to detach its back side, to glue it on the front of the lens and to join the contacts between the back side and the inner workings of the lens. It works fine (you get diafragm control back), but it’s destructive.

So I’ve taken the challenge of building myself a set of rings, complete with electric contacts, that could be attached to both ends of a lens, providing the best of all worlds: inverted lens, complete with all contacts, but detachable, without ruining the lens.

Here’s a gallery of what resulted (and yes, it works!)

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf” height=”582″ width=”728″ fvars=”host=picasaweb.google.com&RGB=0×000000&feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Feros.nicolau.2010%2Falbumid%2F5567946463581091441%3Fkind%3Dphoto%26alt%3Drss” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer”/]

Enjoy and feel free to comment or ask questions!

Canon Lenses Comparison Chart

I was looking around for my next lens (yeah, I wish) when I felt the need for a tool able to allow me to dynamically search through their entire collection / lenses lineup. Ofcourse, this kind of tool doesn’t exist. So I set up to create one, in spreadsheet form.

You can check it out here.

Note: you may use it without any limitation beyond the one that you should not modyfy it in any way.

Screenshot:
Canon Lenses Comparison Chart Screenshot

google image search: Extra Large images

In dimineata asta am avut surpriza sa descopar un nou feature in cautarea de imagini de pe google: optiunea de a cauta numai “imagini foarte mari” (pe langa deja clasicele imagini mari, medii si mici). Fotografia digitala – megapixelii – incepe sa-si psuna cuvantul…

I had the pleasant surprise to discover, this morning, a new feature in the gooogle image search: the option to filter results for “Extra Large images” (along with the already classic large, medium and small images). Digital photography – the megapixels – begis to leave marks…

Summer pool

I’ve been hanging for a few minutes downtown today and happened to have my camera with me. The heat inspired me to go see the fountain in front of the Intercontinental (central Bucharest) where I took this simple yet so fresh snapshot:

Note: you can find the image to download as a wallpaper here.
(800×600, 1024×768, 1280×720, 1280×768, 1280×1024, 1280×1200, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1280×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200)

05 06 07

for those of you “lifers” like me (with not much of a life beyond the pc scren) here’s an earth-shattering news:

tomorrow will be 05.06.07

now go shoot yourself.

easy image contour extraction

Yep, I know – yet another tutorial on how to extract an image from its background.

Only this time, It’s about extracting images with sensitive areas (such as shadows, hair etc.) from relatively uniform backgrounds. We’re going to use for this example a human face, taken, with thanks, from imageafter.com.

OK, let’s get to it.

1. Open the image
tiffetz_01.jpg

Continue Reading >>

Expandable Menu – JS + CSS

tutorial_10.gif…or “Building An Expanding DHTML Menu With CSS and JavaScript – revisited”.

What’s this all about: a vertical menu with submenus which are hidden initially and show on rollover.

Requests:

1. On roll-over over a zero-level element, the corresponding sub-menu must appear
2. On roll-over over another zero-level element, besides the effect from point 1. any other secondary menu must hide, only the the submenu corresponding to the active roll-over must remain visible

The most elegant solution I found is in the page linked at the beginning of the article, but it was a bit too long for what I needed, so I took it, adapted it, and I got exactly what I need (see here a functioning example, with all it needs to understand it, if you look in the source).

Later edit: for a more elegant menu version (in terms of coding and approach), but less functional and without JS, read here (in Romanian).

Versiunea in Romana a acestui articol aici.

modi v2 (MouseOver DOM Inspector)

For those using Firefoxe’s Firebug, inspecting DOM elements is already a breeze. But what about Internet Explorer? The guys at slayeroffice have created a new DOM inspector that works on any browser, which is easy to install, by simply bookmarking it. It’s not as advanced as the Firebug, but it can prove extremely useful sometimes. See here

Versiunea in Romana a acestui articol aici.

CSS Hexagons

For the sleepless… a page built exclusively with CSS… even though it doesn’t look like html… guess how they did it.

Versiunea in Romana a acestui articol aici.

ACID Test

Alex shows me a mighty fine job: a test meant to show just how well implemented is the CSS support in a browser. The test starts from a rendering considered corect (reference) and you get to compare that render with the test-page as viewed in your browser. Extremely interesting for a CSS geek like me… 😀

Acid Test 2

Versiunea in Romana a acestui articol aici.