Jesus Albeniz Photography

DIY 39'' Umbrella Soft Box for less than $30

2011-06-12T23:19:00.000-07:00

This is a do it yourself 39 inches (~1 meter) softbox or octa

Materials:

- Extra Large Black totes golf umbrella (~$16)

- White fabric from walmart called: "Static Free White" ($2.57/yr)

- Silver reflective fabric from ebay: "Chrome Silver lame' 61 in wide" (2.99/yr)

- Silver reflective tape, used to install the silver fabric.

- Polyester Elastic (~$2)- Some 1/4"-20 thread bolts and nuts for the mount

- A piece of Steelworks Aluminum Flat I think mine was a 1/4 x 1' for the mount ($?? I had some around)
- Some Free Time

At the bottom are a couple of photos using this DIY softbox, check them up...

So this is the original Umbrella

I took all this appart, spring and center plastic thing are gone. I show that in another pic.

I will twist this later, just wanted to show how it looked.

Some cuts of the fabrics used:

I twisted them (~5 times) to prevent the umbrella from opening all the way, this made it deeper and kind of like a parabol.
You can just pull out the ends, twist and put them back in, check that you can do that before you buy the umbrella.
I used white duck tape on the sides, not very nice looking but didn't have anything better at the time, some black tape on top should make it look a bit better.

Side look:

This is how it looks inside, that ebay silver reflective fabric is very nice. It is kind of like a paper but it doesn't tear off easily.
Look at the hole in the center for the flash, the flash in the next pics is an Nikon SB-600.

I cut the shaft and made a hole for a pin to keep it open, after removing the original spring and all that it doesn't open by itself anymore.

This is the back with my first attempt of a mount for the flash, I think I will do something better later.

Now with the difusion fabric on. The elastic is sewed to easily hold it in place.

Flash on

This was the setup for the next two pictures, it was a 3 light setup, the new DIY softbox used as main light, the umbrella lights her from the side and the white background, also in the floor you see another bare flash for the white background.

These are two of the images from that day, I think it worked pretty well... Enjoy making your own.

Thanks for reading...

ufraw post procesing tui

2010-03-31T21:20:00.000-07:00

I've been using ufraw and ufraw-batch in Linux for some time, the thing is that when I had different sets of conditions in a group of pictures (or session) I had to run too many commands to deal with procesing them (as I couldn't just do *.NEF), so I had the idea of creating a simple script to at least give me the options to select the RAW files I wanted and the ID file I wanted to use to process the images.

Well here is the first result from that idea. It is a simple bash script that will give you the list of RAW files and ID (.ufraw) files to select from and then it processes them, I didn't put much time on it to try to make it more efficient or anything, but I think it works pretty well.

You will have to fist create your ID (.ufraw) files put them in the same folder you have the RAW files and then run the ufraw-tui script.

The script is set for Nikon RAW files (.NEF) but you can easily change that to your camera RAW file extension.

At the top of the script you can change these variables to what you need.

RAW_EXT="NEF" (Change NEF to your camera RAW extension)
ID_EXT="ufraw" (no change needed here unless ufraw changes the ID extension)
UFRAWBATCH_PATH="/usr/bin/ufraw-batch" (don't think you need to change this one, but run "which ufraw-batch" to find out)

Also at the very end of the script you'll find the actual commands that does the processing, you can change the command that is executed if you'd like to:

- If you want confirmation before overwriting

    ${UFRAWBATCH_PATH} --conf="${ID_FILE_LIST[$ID_FILE]}" --out-type=jpg --create-id=no --out-path="$OUT_PATH" "${RAW_FILE_LIST[$X]}"

- Or if you don't want confirmation before overwriting

    ${UFRAWBATCH_PATH} --conf="${ID_FILE_LIST[$ID_FILE]}" --out-type=jpg --create-id=no --overwrite --out-path="$OUT_PATH" "${RAW_FILE_LIST[$X]}"

Yeah, this is not as nice as the real GUI workflow/Post processing tools like Bibble Pro, RawTherapee, Darkroom, etc... but at least is something for those that don't want, don't need or can't spend the money. I'm a Linux/UNIX admin in the real life so I'm very comfortable using command line tools.

Have Ideas? drop me a line, also write comments if you find it useful, I'd like to know if someone is using it out there.

Thanks and Enjoy.

This software is licensed under the CC-GNU GPL version 2.0 or later.

Download here: ufraw-tui

If you cannot download it Copy & Paste the yellow text into a new file.

vi ufraw-tui    (or your preferred text editor)

- paste the yellow text -

chmod +x ufraw-tui

==================================

#!/bin/bash
#
# This software is licensed under the CC-GNU GPL version 2.0 or later
#
# Jesus Albeniz email:jealbeniz@gmail.com
# http://jealbeniz.blogspot.com/
#
# Please send me any comments, questions or ideas if you'd like
#
# History
# 2010-03-30 First Version by Jesus Albeniz
#
#
RAW_EXT="NEF"
ID_EXT="ufraw"
UFRAWBATCH_PATH="/usr/bin/ufraw-batch"

PWD=`pwd`

#Color variables
ESC_SEQ="\x1b["
COL_RESET=$ESC_SEQ"39;49;00m"
COL_RED=$ESC_SEQ"31;01m"
COL_GREEN=$ESC_SEQ"32;01m"
COL_YELLOW=$ESC_SEQ"33;01m"
COL_BLUE=$ESC_SEQ"34;01m"
COL_MAGENTA=$ESC_SEQ"35;01m"
COL_CYAN=$ESC_SEQ"36;01m"

# Check if there are RAW files
T=`ls -1 *.${RAW_EXT} 2> /dev/null|wc -l`
   if [[ $T -eq 0 ]];then
    echo -e $COL_RED"ERROR:"$COL_RESET" No RAW (*.$RAW_EXT) files found in $PWD"
       exit 1
   fi
# Check if there are ID files
T=`ls -1 *.${ID_EXT} 2> /dev/null|wc -l`
   if [[ $T -eq 0 ]];then
    echo -e $COL_RED"ERROR:"$COL_RESET" No ID (*.$ID_EXT) files found in $PWD"
       exit 1
   fi

# Gather the list of RAW files
I=0
echo -e "###########################"
echo -e "##    RAW (${RAW_EXT}) Files    ##"
echo -e "###########################"
for RAW_FILE in `ls -1 *.${RAW_EXT}|sort` ;do
    ((I++))
    RAW_FILE_LIST[$I]=${RAW_FILE}
    echo -e $COL_BLUE"${I}:"$COL_RESET" ${RAW_FILE_LIST[$I]}"
done
   echo " "
# Prompts and tests for the fist file
   while true;do
    echo -ne "Select "$COL_GREEN"START"$COL_RESET" RAW file (1 to $I) [1]: ";read START_FILE
    #sets the default if null
    if [ -z $START_FILE ];then START_FILE=1;fi
        if [[ $START_FILE -lt 1 || $START_FILE -gt $I ]];then
                echo -e $COL_RED"ALERT:"$COL_RESET" Choose a number in the range (1 to $I)"
        else
                break
        fi
   done

# Prompts and tests for the last file
   while true;do
       echo -ne "Select   "$COL_RED"END"$COL_RESET" RAW file ($START_FILE to $I) [$I]: ";read END_FILE
    #sets the default if null
    if [ -z $END_FILE ];then END_FILE=$I;fi
        if [[ $END_FILE -lt $START_FILE || $END_FILE -gt $I ]];then
                echo -e $COL_RED"ALERT:"$COL_RESET" Choose a number in the range ($START_FILE to $I)"
        else
                break
        fi
   done

# Gather the list of ID files
J=0
echo " "
echo -e "###########################"
echo -e "##   ID (${ID_EXT}) Files   ##"
echo -e "###########################"
for ID_FILE in `ls -1 *.${ID_EXT}|sort` ;do
    ((J++))
    ID_FILE_LIST[$J]=${ID_FILE}
    echo -e $COL_BLUE"${J}:"$COL_RESET" ${ID_FILE_LIST[$J]}"
done
   echo " "

# Prompts and tests for the ID file
   while true;do
       echo -ne "Select ID File (1 to $J): ";read ID_FILE
        if [[ $ID_FILE -lt 1 || $ID_FILE -gt $J ]];then
                echo -e $COL_RED"ALERT:"$COL_RESET" Choose a number in the range (1 to $J)"
        else
                break
        fi
   done

# Prompts and tests for output Path
echo " "
echo -e "###########################"
echo -e "##     Output Path       ##"
echo -e "###########################"
OUT_PATH=$PWD
while true;do
   echo -ne "Output Path for JPGs [$PWD]: ";read OUT_PATH

    if [ ! -d $OUT_PATH ];then
             echo "$OUT_PATH "$COL_RED"Not Found"$COL_RESET", try again"
    else
        if [[ $OUT_PATH == "" ]];then
            OUT_PATH=$PWD
        fi
        break
    fi
done

# Executes the defined UFRAW_BATCH command
echo " "
echo -e "###########################"
echo -e "##      Executing        ##"
echo -e "###########################"
for (( X=$START_FILE; X<=$END_FILE; X++ ))
do
    # Executes ufraw (pick the one you'd like, with overwrite confirmation or not)
         # This one asks for confirmation before overwriting
    ${UFRAWBATCH_PATH} --conf="${ID_FILE_LIST[$ID_FILE]}" --out-type=jpg --create-id=no --out-path="$OUT_PATH" "${RAW_FILE_LIST[$X]}"
         # This one will not ask for confirmation before overwriting
         #${UFRAWBATCH_PATH} --conf="${ID_FILE_LIST[$ID_FILE]}" --out-type=jpg --create-id=no --overwrite --out-path="$OUT_PATH" "${RAW_FILE_LIST[$X]}"
done

==================================

The Keyboard

2009-12-02T18:58:00.001-08:00

The Keyboard
Originally uploaded by jesusscc
This was a friend's laptop, I was helping him setup some software on it.
HP Pavilion dv3510nr dv3000 Entretaiment Notebook PC

Why: Don't really know but I liked the fact that the keys were highlighted and that gave that laptop potential for a photograph.
How: Tripod mounted the camera (Nikon D40x) and focused on the letter "J", the purplish colour is from what I was displaying on the screen.
Notes: Too bad I had to give it back to the owner

Golden Birds

2009-12-02T18:57:00.001-08:00

Golden Birds
Originally uploaded by jesusscc
There is so many ways to photograph the Golden Gate Bridge, I was looking for a different one and here it is.

Why: Looking for a different view of the golden gate
How: From Pier 39, small aperture so birds and bridge are sharper, and patience to wait for the right birds...
Notes: I'm satisfied with this picture, I did change levels a little bit.

Speaking of many ways to shot the Golden Gate Bridge, here are a few other ones:

This one is from Mount Diablo

Rafael Urdaneta

2009-12-02T18:56:00.001-08:00

Rafael Urdaneta
Originally uploaded by jesusscc

This one is from my Home Town (Maracaibo, Venezuela), this is the Bridge Rafael Urdaneta over Maracaibo Lake, it is pretty cool, all made of concrete.
More: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Rafael_Urdaneta_Bridge

Why: The Bridge is pretty cool and long, wanted to capture a nice picture of it
How: This is an older picture, It was taken with a point and shot Sony Cybershot P90 30sec exposure
Notes: It was kind of hard as it was windy, I was on a restaurant and put the camera in one pole that was there.

Who wants to Party

2009-12-02T18:55:00.001-08:00

Who wants to Party
Originally uploaded by jesusscc
ahh, I remember that day. This was in Coco Bongo Club in Cancun and it was just crazy, yeah, the crowd gets crazy, it is fun to be there.

Why: Well having fun
How: This was taken with a point and shot, it is a Sony Cybershot P90 (I still have it, I use it when diving or on the beach)
Notes: I like the backlight a lot and the silhouettes while keeping some of the colors. I think the hand top left helps the image.

Lonely Place

2009-12-01T21:52:00.001-08:00

Lonely Place
Originally uploaded by jesusscc
Using my 50mm made this shot, love the colours and lines.

Why: I kind of liked the bench and the colour of the trees
How: got a little down, low aperture to generate some Bokeh from the sun light on the leaves and narrow depth of field
Notes: one of my fist shots with the 50mm and Nikon D90