Another instant photo taken with the Instax Wide 300. More monochrome film (why don’t they just say “black and white”?). No flash, and no flash cover. Instead I judiciously placed the center of the lens – there is a circle you can use to set up your image – on the bright left corner of the couch. Here it is, straight from the camera’s whatever. This one I like.
If you use the Instax Wide 300 by Fuji, you know that it has a flash that won’t be turned off. As a result, flash goes off when you don’t want it and can over expose your picture and waste film. Instax film doesn’t cost an arm and a leg like the Polaroid film does, but it still is annoying to not have control over that darned flash.
Enter Thingiverse, the world of free patterns for 3D printers. My husband has one and makes some really cool things. I looked, sought, and found a cover for the 300 Wide’s flash. You can find it here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2788611 – and it works really well! From the site, this is what things look like – screen dump of the cover. Notice it has sticky foam tape or something to help keep it on the camera itself. It helps to keep the cover from sliding away from the flash as you move the camera. I don’t have any foam tape, but made sure the flash was covered, and it worked out nicely, as you will see below.
This is how it looks on the camera itself – again, pictures are from the Thingiverse site – click on the picture to enlarge it.
Notes from the Thingiverse site for the flash cover mention that if you make one in black, it shuts out a lot of light; a white one works more as a diffuser. My husband had hot pink set up on his printer, I had black and white film in the Instax, and I think the pink could have acted as a sort of red filter. Dunno. As we have a lot of different colors for the 3D printer, guess who is going to try them all out once they are printed?
Here are the two pictures taken a couple of minutes apart to check out the flash cover. The first one is without the flash cover. I shot this out the studio window around 8:30 this morning, facing east, where the sun comes up. (I always have to say to myself, “And the sun sank slowly in the west” to remember which direction it rises – oh, well!) Pow! The flash went off.
And now, with my hot pink, newly printed flash cover, here is approximately the same image with the diffuser on.
Once more, the flash flashed, but was not flashing all over things. And it produced a rather pleasantly darker picture. Because the film is black and white, I expect the picture is not picking up the finer gradations of color it could. The window is blown out. But does it matter? I don’t think so. I am curious to see what will happen with color film, which I will load up when I finish this black and white.
I cannot say enough good things about Thingiverse. If you have a 3D printer or know someone who will print for you, not only can you find this flash cover, but also other cool photography stuff, like film uptake spools, pinhole cameras for 35mm and 120 (I have one yet to be tested out), 35-to-120 adapters, and who knows what else. Totally cool stuff if you like to play around, which I do, and certainly does Mr. D.
Toys! Toys! Toys!
Water and sky are the major themes these days. I really like them anyway, but have to work on reflections in particular. For instance, along the banks, the reflection of reeds is very important, as in the distant water / tree line. I try to be simple in my approach and perhaps a bit less dramatic or intense in my colors, but that seems to be really hard for me to achieve! I had a lot of fun with this painting, though, and am rather pleased with its outcome despite the fact it is not quite what I envisioned. But, it does catch that peculiar storm light, I think.
Springtime – moving into summer – and after finishing up a sweater I just had to cut loose. The watercolors were out, a piece of paper that wasn’t too warped from another painting, and I just went to work. This wasn’t really planned, but I did use resist to keep areas white, as well as decided to throw in a building, flowers, and a tree. A transitional world – sweater to watercolor portending hot weather next week.
This is one of the most stunning images I have seen on Pixabay, which has a lot of wonderful royalty-free photos; here is the direct link to it: https://pixabay.com/photos/fog-moor-moorland-birch-tree-mood-1717410/
This photo is moody and mysterious, and you can certainly imagine how spooky it could be to come upon suddenly, lost in a whirl of fog on a lonely moorland. I tried to capture it in my own watercolor.
This painting is significantly different than some of my other paintings. I used the wet-in-wet technique throughout the painting, creating several layers of glazes before adding the details of grasses. These I did using negative painting over the washes. Then, more solid brushwork for the tree, branches, and scrub in the lower corners.
16 x 20 Arches 140# cold press paper.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 