Outer Hebrides, 2016 edition

I’m off to the Outer Hebrides again tomorrow, to do both photo & audio work, which unfortunately involves carrying quite a bit of equipment… Picked up the wheeled Peli 1510 to try to make it less painful, but the tripod is probably the worst bit. Really need to finally get round to some driving lessons when I get back!

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For anybody googling the odd combination of terms, I can confirm that the ZED-10 does not fit in the 1510 with the dividers in.

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Photogrammetry with a Lightbox

Another first for me, trying my hand at photogrammetry for some artefacts excavated from the Udal wheelhouses on North Uist. Setup was a cheap lightbox from Amazon, a pair of cheapy 125W 5400k lights one on each side (a third on top would’ve been great, but I didn’t have access to a suitable stand) & a cheapy LED panel on top of the camera. There’s a lazy susan underneath the paper so I could rotate each artefact without having to touch it. Haven’t had time to actually put the images through VisualSFM yet, but I think they came out okay.

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I knew the angled head part of my tripod would come in handy one day :)

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Many thanks to Beverley Ballin Smith for bringing the artefacts across & allowing me to photograph them, as well as to the Western Isles Council & the Crawford Archive.

CAM-in cotton wrist straps

I’ve never really been a fan of neck straps. With the exception of waist-level viewfinder cameras I never really find myself putting a neck strap around my neck & instead awkwardly wrap them around my wrist.

The entire time I used my NEX-5N I had the cheapy wrist strap from a Canon S95 (which got stolen) attached to it & that cheapy strap made the transition to my a6000. In the name of consumerism I decided I would try a nicer & comfier wrist strap so after a recommendation from IRC I ended up with one of the CAM-in cotton wrist straps.

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I liked it enough to get one for the Bessa as well :)

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Shooting Spherical Panoramas in the Outer Hebrides

Through a strange set of circumstances I am spending the best part of 3 months this summer (the time between submitting my PhD thesis & having the viva exam) living & working in the Outer Hebrides, specifically the isle of North Uist. I am working with Taigh Chearsabhagh, a museum/arts centre in Lochmaddy (the largest settlement on North Uist) to first of all produce spherical panoramas of archaeological sites around the island for part of an exhibition next year.

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