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The wide lens was alright, but often found it too wide for a lot of situations.

I find that my Tamron 10-24mm is too wide for landscapes. It really does much better for urban architecture and interiors. It was the main lens I used at FarkCon since most of the activities were indoors crowded around bar and game tables. (The Canon 55-250 make have made an appearance poolside for some fan-service shots.)

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I tried exporting to Solidworks, but that bit isn’t included with the free license. 🙁 Furthermore, I suck at making drawings. I did step up my game and go for the ANSI thread profile for the filter screw 58 x 0.75.

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I went with equilateral triangle threads for the filter connection, and I should probably chop the points off and fill the roots of them for the standard profile, but I was lazy when I modeled it. For the focus adjust threads, I went with a square profile, since they can be printed w/o need for a relief on a cutting tool. I suppose that I should switch to a trapezoidal profile just to give more strength to the roots.

Now about clearances. I’ve got zero clearance on all the mating surfaces currently. I hope this gives enough stickiness for the tilt/shift/alignment bits. The material should be elastic enough to withstand stretching the female bits over their corresponding male bits. On the focus threads, I’m a bit more worried. They’ve got more mating surfaces, so should be stickier, hence the possible need for some clearance.

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After some poking around with the helical sweeps, I’ve decided to redesign the front two bits so the threads end differently.

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We got a bite on the Shapeways page. I’ve also made the model purchasable.

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Argh!!!! Why can’t voting be enabled by default?!?

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I’ve been known to cram all 6 of my lenses and body into my camera bag (which has space for exactly that amount), and then pack that inside my duffle bag. This past 5 week road trip however just found everything dumped into my car. Camera in front seat, tripod in backseat, and backpack with accessories in the trunk.

For daylight landscapes, I got great results from the Canon EF-S 18-55/3.5-5.6 IS II. It sharpens up fine by f/8, and even then I could easily overexpose the sky. The views are so long range, I rarely felt the need for anything wider than 18mm. The only time I needed a fast lens was getting twilight shots of beavers, and the 85/1.8 was a perfect choice, so I would recommend packing the 50/1.4, and leaving 100 macro at home. The 55-250 came in handy for the wildlife.

Regarding accessories, I did pick up a spare battery before Yellowstone, since Glacier really demanded a lot of picture taking. It went like this: stop the car, take battery off charger, install battery in camera, take some pictures, remove battery, place battery on charger, swear I’m not going to stop again along Going To The Sun road, drive around the next corner and do it all again. And today, after exposure bracketing most landscape shots I picked up a 2 stop graduated-neutral-density filter.

Chatting with the shop owner in Albuquerque, he confirmed my suspicion that New Mexico has much clearer skies and less haze, even without Idaho burning and smoking out Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado.

Finally, if you haven’t been to the Chinese garden in downtown Portland, then I recommend it.

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Exactly what sort of folk are these? I don’t recognize their costumes from the usual traditional garb.

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Eh, I looked at my old macro filters and they are +1, +2 and +3 so I would be buying a cheap set. Count me in for buying one. I can proof if A***cad will read the format. Is there a file to download somewhere on that shapeways site?

You will definitely need more than +6 (less than 133mm focal length). The Adorama house label +10 is about $24, and you can get a name brand for around $40, but maybe the cheap one is better for the Holga-esque feel.

The data files have ad_prt and ad_asm extensions. I exported a stl for upload to Shapeways (dims are mm). I have no idea what formats you can read. I uploaded the relevant files to Skydrive http://sdrv.ms/No6KEx . Part export options for me include IGES, Solidworks part, and Parasolid part. If you can’t import one of those, then the name brand is slipping.

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October 15. That’s funny. At least it gives Canon a few weeks to miss their release date by and still be in stores by X-mas.

I like the fact that there will be an EF and EF-S optic free adapter so Canonites already well invested in gear won’t feel obsolete. And on Canon’s side, it allows them to reach an entire new market segment with products they already have. Give the market a few months, and you’ll see cheap useful fair-to-good quality EF-M to EF adapters available. (I could reverse engineer the thing myself.) And with the new mount, I suspect Canon will offer an eye-level digital view finder in a subsequent model.

On a related note, the new 40mm stepper motor lens looks interesting as well. It would be a nice addition to my 28/1.8 and 50/1.4. I’m not loving the f/2.8, but the $200 price is awesome. I shot a lot (for me) of video at Yellowstone and Grand Teton.

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Proofing the model should reveal things like I forgot to include like the recessed groove around the front end to make it easier to paint on a red stripe. 🙂 I get loopy when I’m low on sleep.

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You could get a step-down coupler from 58 to 55, or I could change the parameters to 55 for you.
As for price, I could have a 0% markup for Farktographers, it’d be the $94 list price.
Alibre is cheap and you get what you pay for. Unfortunately, I never learned Autocad, always some off-brand solid modelling package.

Proofing would just be looking over the individual bits to ensure that their design makes sense, and there’s not some obviously better design that I’ve got a blind spot for. As it is, each component is on the second white-page model, and they could probably stand to have a 3rd go round for half of them. There’s some inelegant kludges that I sort of slapped on at the end to make corrections. Also, I’m not entirely happy with the focus adjust threads, as Alibre doesn’t do helical sweep cuts very well, IMO. Anyway, I’ll be back on the road tomorrow until about Sunday.

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Is there a draftsman in the house? Does anyone want to volunteer to proof the model first? It’s in Alibre which is free to try for a month (or as long as you keep adjusting your system date). And if you’re willing to be the first sucker, er, I mean, adopter, I could make it available for purchase when ever you like. Have you got a +10 diopter already?

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http://shpws.me/dpN7
Here’s the current model uploaded to the 3d printing company site.

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Well, I’m now done with Grand Teton and on the way to Rocky Mountain N.P. Now when interviewers ask me what I’ve been doing since February, I can say visiting National Parks. (Might not go over so well.)

Regarding the chart above, on the time axis, I’m past “first tripod,” even though that’s the one I brought on this trip. Yes, the 055XB(?) with geared head would have been better, but my first one was purchased with travel in mind, and it’s highly portable. I’ve still got my 35mm film camera from 19 years ago, and I understand most of the technical bits of photography, so on the red line, I’m about 78%. Quality is subjective, and I’m certainly not an artist regarding photography, but I think I’ve got more than one keeper SOOC from this trip.

Anyway, my desire for HDR skillz is the fact that glaciers are really bright in direct sun and get blown out very easily. The sky and clouds also over-expose when you’re at 10,000 feet where the air is thin. Furthermore, compared to Grand Staircase and the Painted Desert, these mountains might as well be made of grayscale with some olive drab thrown in for the trees and sagebrush. Then I’ll print some 3D slides of my travels. Think of it as HDDDR?

Any comments?

[Author]

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