Show everyone the latest shots which make you feel dead chuffed with your camera choice
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A friend finished one of his machines and asked me to take a few shots before it's shipped to the customer.. This is a little diferent than i'm used to shooting and helped me understand how to shoot one of my own machines thats about this size.. I had to pick up a lumiquest mini softbox to help mitigate some shadows from the camera mounted flash. Well I felt I might need it so I picked one up before I went over, turned out it was a good choice and worked really well. We built a similar machine to this and it's used to spray (Plasma deposition) an adhesion coating onto bearing surfaces for GE wind turbines. if you have GE turbines in your area. the bearings under the nacelle and at the blade roots were processed on this machines sister. Comments and suggestions are very welcome.
This unit came with a sound proof room. The window darkens when the plasma torch lights
Programs for diferent parts are loaded and set in motion from this panel, which is a touch screen PC.
This particular machine is made for coating parts from a jet engine. It shows a torch on an articulated arm. The part is a ring spinning and the arm is pretending to apply a coating with the torch. The grate in the back is the receiving side of an air extractor (the torch isn't hooked up). I tried to capture some motion in this shot.
This looks like a very interesting machine Javelin.
As for the photo; I like the way light is distributed along the metal parts and the image quality is fine.
I have nothing now I can show since my time in this type of industrial product photography was over 20 years ago. However, I learned the use of portable flash from Don Fraser and other high profile industrial and commercial shooters back in the 1970s (initially using large flashbulbs and cabling places up with wires to fire them). By 1983 I was using Minolta Auto ElectroFlash 320X, Vivitar 283 and Mecablitz 45 with Quantum batteries and slave cells, gels and diffusers. In a shoot like this we would certainly have got a dramatic flash outside the spray chamber, and a slaved flash concealed inside the spray chamber, to create very strong lighting. Also, we would always have included an operator - very few corporate reports (annual reports) just showed plant, people were important. The operator would typically be in silhouette or rimlit definitely not a plain face-on kind of pose.
About that time I did an annual report involving three locations in the USA - New Hampshire, New Jersey and Florida - and took the opportunity to buy a Norman two-head flash kit in Boston before the week of travelling and shooting. But I still ended up using the Minolta/mixed kit most of the time. I didn't like the Norman kit much and sold it when I got back, which made a good additional profit (they were twice the price in the UK). Today I guess the set up would have to be two or three HVL-F58AM guns, but not using the wireless system. Flash heads had to be concealed inside cabinets, behind walls etc and there would have been insufficient line of sight for the wireless to work. I have just bought a Seagull SYK-6 slave cell with tripod mount and Alpha hot shoe, which works the old way, and this will fire manual single burst flash in places wireless can not reach.
Thanks David. I actually ordered the wireless setup I posted about once before and hope to be able to use a flock of 360PX flashes for this. all I had this time was the 36AM but I think I got the shots I wanted. I took about a 100 detail shots around the machine that would look pretty confusing to anyone who doesn't knwo what it is, the flash and diffuser is highly portable and the results seem fine...
Flashbulbs: when I was 7 or 8 I grabbed a flash bulb from my fathers Poloroid land camera kit and set in off with a battery in my hand, got the scars to prove it I learned to use them as detonators in the military reserves I have the land camera and a box of bulbs still.
Thanks. The light wqas a lot of fun :/ there were 2 kinds of flourescent one metal halide and skylights that let in some sunlight. everywhere you looked got a diferent white ballance. I used a Douglas grey card for the tripod shots and that thing is great. I could put in on it's side and folded say at a 45 and instantly see how the light is falling on the scene. it was more complex walking around the machine I resorted to just using night portrait and flash as it was taking to long in each place trying to discover the right settings.
KevinBarrett wrote:Wow, you have an awesome job! The pictures are nice, especially considering the challenging light.
Javelin wrote: I learned to use them as detonators in the military reserves I have the land camera and a box of bulbs still.
IDIOT! Never admit to such things in a public forum! Now Janet is going to put you on her Terrorist Watch List and you won't be allowed to ever come into the US! It's even worse that you admit that you still have the offending bulbs!
When I was in the Marine Corps I ONLY learned how to follow orders and be obedient to the powers that be. I spent my time there taking hiking and camping trips and enjoying the beauty of nature, no need to worry about me!
2 of our guy are on the watch list. and hey both have names like bob smith (not their name but just as comon)
they have to carry RCMP affidavids that say they are not that particular bob smith. The thing is they only get stopped by the list 1 out of 10 trips if they are really unlucky.. so I don't really see the point. Besides I just made her job easier. all she has to do is investigate people looking for flash bulbs! they must be really scarce now. But I get your point. in the US now you have to be carefull of such things so from now on if I have to mention flash bulbs I'll call them jam jars! it'll be a new code.
I can see it now "Sir I'm denying you entry to the US on the basis that you might have illegal knowledge in the use of Jam jars as a weapon, please wait here"
Dusty wrote:
Javelin wrote: I learned to use them as detonators in the military reserves I have the land camera and a box of bulbs still.
IDIOT! Never admit to such things in a public forum! Now Janet is going to put you on her Terrorist Watch List and you won't be allowed to ever come into the US! It's even worse that you admit that you still have the offending bulbs!
When I was in the Marine Corps I ONLY learned how to follow orders and be obedient to the powers that be. I spent my time there taking hiking and camping trips and enjoying the beauty of nature, no need to worry about me!
I learned to use them as detonators in the military reserves 
