September 2015 – cjdavies.org

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.

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

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.

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

North Uist Panoramas – Leacach An Tigh Chloiche

This was the final site I shot before leaving the island & was by far the most difficult to get to. It’s over an hour’s walk from the nearest road (well, a farmer’s track that turns off the road) & involves walking straight through a bog as there simply isn’t any way to get around. Wellies are a definite necessity & tbh waders wouldn’t go amiss. My boss on the island went out with me & had to physically drag me out when I placed one foot wrong & that leg disappeared up to the thigh O_o

The view from the top of the hill was worth it though, even if I had to squelch all the way up the hill & then all the way back to the car after the bog incident…

This is sort of like the classic cliché standing stone shot that most people that visit North Uist seem to take, except instead of taking it at Pobull Fhinn I took it up here so at least it’s slightly less repetitive.

If you click this Roundme image it will load the space & let you click between the 4x different panoramas & drag them with your mouse/finger to look around. Once it’s loaded you can double click to go fullscreen (highly recommended).

North Uist Panoramas – Caravat Barp

This wasn’t a particularly impressive site as Caravat barp is quite a low one that was also rather overgrown, but I tried a few different positions nonetheless. Click on the Roundme images to load the panoramas so that you can drag them around, double click once they’ve loaded to go fullscreen.

This one is from the top, so look down to see the stones of the barp around you.

This was some sort of wall/remnant of a structure to one side of the barp.

And here I was just drawn to the nice moss over the stones.

If you click this Roundme image it will load the space & let you click between the 3x different panoramas & drag them with your mouse/finger to look around. Once it’s loaded you can double click to go fullscreen (highly recommended).

North Uist Panoramas – Barpa Nam Feannag

As seen in this post where I ran over the PTGui process, these are from Barpa Nam Feannag. This site is a little less well known to tourists, as it’s about an hour’s walk from the nearest road & it isn’t signposted with a footpath or anything. Plenty of sheep along the way to keep you company though.

I took this first one from a nice large flat rock when I first laid eyes on the cairn, partly to show its situation in the wider landscape & partly to give my legs a rest. You can see the cairn to the left of the big body of water.

This one is pretty much the whole project’s money shot, really pleased with how well it came out. It prints quite nicely as well.

One from the base of the stones.

And one from the side to show the length of the cairn (it’s classified as a ‘long’ cairn for reasons that should now be fairly evident).