Photography

I like taking pictures. I especially like taking pictures with a good camera. Nowadays I even have a reasonably good camera, like I did in the film era. Here's my setup, which is very heavy and excellent for exercise: Bodies: Canon EOS 1Ds Mark-II, EOS 5D + BG-E4, EOS 3 + PB-E2 Lenses: EF 50 mm f/1.8 Mk-I, EF 24-105 mm f/4 L IS USM, EF 70-200 mm f/2.8 L IS USM (yum!), EF 300 mm f/4 L IS USM, EF 1.4x Mk-II extender, Sigma EX 12-24 f/4-5.6 HSM (yum!), Zenitar 16 mm f/2.8 fisheye, MTO 500 mm f/8 Maksutov, Kenko DG C/AF 12/20/36 mm extension tubes Flashes: Speedlight 580EX-II and a few other manual flashes with Cactus V4 radio triggers Tripod: Triton FGX-1 tripod + Linhof Profi III ballhead + Manfrotto 625 quickrelease + two modified qr-plates No, I don't always carry everything with me...

My EF 24-105 mm f/4 L IS USM broke. Here's an account of the extensive repairs I did on it.

I also have a Canon PowerShot A720 IS, which is a more reasonable package to carry with me when hiking into the wilderness. It supports CHDK, which is good. AA-batteries and CHDK support were my two primary criteria when choosing this camera. It's really very good. Do you want to trade an EF 400 mm f/2.8 L IS USM for it? I'll even throw in a 2 GB SD-card with CHDK preinstalled.

Here is a wireless remote trigger for my EOS SLRs which I made out of a wireless doorbell. Later I modified it to work with the PowerShot also (with CHDK).

I have modified a bunch of cheap Chinese "thumb" video cameras from eBay ("MD80" or "MiniDV" cameras, they were actually very good at the time, for some $20 toys) to fly onboard an amateur rocket, and since then I have repurposed one of those modified cameras for a DIY deep water camera at depths of nearly 50 meters.

I've also started dabbling in time-lapse photography using Raspberry Pies fitted with their native cameras (one older "NoIR" camera with IR LEDs for illumination, and the newer "HQ" camera which I've fitted with a Canon EF lens adapter). For more convenient placement without having to worry about a power supply, I built a passive PoE injector to supply three Pies or similar devices at once.

Since I bought my 1Ds-II, the 5D has mainly been gathering dust. That also means its batteries have long since died due to disuse. I recently found the AA battery holder that came with the BG-E4 battery grip. It's said to be an "emergency only" fall-back, but as a test I filled it with six Sanyo Eneloop low self-discharge NiMH cells that I've already been using in my flashes for several years. I was able to shoot over 400 test shots with it, and still the batteries would not quit (though by now the battery icon was flashing). This makes me want to put the 5D into use again, as I won't even need to invest in new batteries to do so!