Heipei

Just like the post on the Streulichtblende (sorry, german only) I thought I’d build my own Softbox before actually buying one (and the flash that goes with it ;). What’s a Softbox? Well, put simple it’s a device to distribute light/the flash evenly over a big surface, so that the resulting light and especially the shadows are “soft”. You can buy those for external flashes, or use the similar umbrellas, but I opted to try it with my builtin flash first :P

Construction

This is not a detailed guide how to build it (you should figure that out yourself, depending on the materials available to you), but just a summary of my results.

As you can see I used the cheapest materials I could find: an empty amazon.de-box, using the lashes to create an inner curvature, then covering everything inside the box with tin foil. Finally the diffusor is made from two Din A4 sheet of white paper, where you’ll have to be careful with the thickness and the color. I can’t say it’s comfortable to use or durable, but the time spent making it is minimal, so who cares.

Results

When are the effects of a softbox most obvious? Probably when there is absolutely no other light-source around (see my Black/White collage). It becomes even more obvious if you photograph something in front a background where it casts shadows. One thing I had to do was to increase my flash exposure compensation (i.e. make it brighter), and in a few cases I had to manually set the white balance, though that’s something I do very often anyway. And using the P-mode seems like the only usable way to incorporate the flash easily. I guess I’ll have to read up on the difference between “Green Square” and “P” again. If you can I’d try to build a bigger box and of course the flash should be close to the center (which can’t be done with the internal flash).

Bottom line

After quite a few shots (photographing people is probably the most rewarding) with my selfbuilt softbox and I know now that the money for a professional one will be well spent ;) If anyone knows of good brands for a) flashes (for Canon) b) softboxes c) remote flash triggers (wireless), let me know!

This is just a reminder that Aachen Open, a German speedcubing competition, will take place again next year. More precisely on January 16/17, 2010. What’s even better is the huge number of registered participants and the new venue for the competition. Since the last place became quite crowded (and began to smell after about 2 hours) the management secured a larger spot in RWTHs Computer-Science building (Aula II, Ahornstraße 55). The downside for visitors is the distance to downtown Aachen, but on the bright side we’ll be equipped with internet throughout the competition.

Rest assured, I’ll be there, but probably less cubing and more photographing. So be sure to come by, even if just to get a glimpse of hardcore-nerds in a different area than your own profession. In case you missed the last Aachen Open, be sure to check out last years website for impressions.

Manchmal muss man, trotz eduroam, noch das alte Cisco-VPN benutzen um sich ins Uni-Netz einzuwählen. Z.B. wenn man von Zuhause auf Dinge wie Springerlink oder andere Online-Bibliotheken zugreifen will, oder um auf bestimmte Hosts per SSH zu kommen die (sinnvollerweise) von aussen nicht erreichbar sind.

In Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard kann man Cisco-Verbindungen glücklicherweise direkt mit dem Betriebssystem machen und ist endlich frei von dem nervigen Cisco-Client. Allerdings hat das ganze noch einen kleinen Bug, nämlich dass man sein Passwort bei jedem Verbindungsversuch neu eingeben muss. Wie man das vermeidet steht hier: 10.6: Save Cisco IPSec password in the keychain

When you start using a small and slow laptop over an unreliable GPRS connection (say while travelling in an ICE at 300km/h) you start noticing certain things that are missing from your current shell-setup. One of these problems manifests itself when you want to send the mail you just typed in mutt. Fortunately there is an easy and elegant fix (if you use mutt with msmtp): msmtpqueue. This gives you three little scripts to enqueue, list and send messages which would otherwise have gone directly into msmtp. Just put them somewhere and then add this to your .muttrc:set sendmail="$HOME/local/bin/msmtp-enqueue -i"<br /> macro index \Cy "!$HOME/local/bin/msmtp-runqueue<enter>"Now “sending” mail from mutt happens instantly and you can manually push the batch of mails out to your smtp once the train has stopped in a station and your reception is stable ;). msmtp-listqueue shows you the queued mails while msmtp-runqueue mails them (using msmtp of course!). For the downstream-direction of offline mutt-usage there’s offlineimap, but I feel like this deserves an extra post ;)