Comments

17-09-2009 Sylfest Muldal
E-mail: (hidden)

Re your ringlight 4.0 (and others):
I'm inspired to use 1mm optical fibres to make the most of the onboard flash on my FZ28 for macro nature photography. While I'm waiting for everything to arrive (the camera, the fibres...), I'm thinking - why make just a ring light? That lighting is unnaturally flat. You've shown how to channel the flash into 120 fibres. Why not keep the setup flexible, and bundle and point groups of fibres as required to get whatever lighting you want? I'd just need to find a handy way of tethering and pointing the various bundles (clips and bendy wires on a collar at the front of my camera?). Do you think this would work?
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Fuzzcraft's reply: That's a great idea. But there's a drawback. As you may have read, a bundle of 120 fibers is very stiff, and I had to preform it with a heat gun to make it work. That's why it only works with 1 camera body and 1 lens. So if you plan to have several fiber spot lights, you'll have to put them in fixed places and preform the fiber bundles. If you can't live with that, you will have to build a very strong fixture to overcome the spring tension of the bundles.

The very flexible traffic sign fiber bundle I used for ringlight 4.1 would be perfect for this, but it's probably very hard to find.

17-09-2009 Hans Smits
E-mail: (hidden)

Joris,

Ik las een wat ouder bericht over de Canon Powershot S1 IS. Ik zag dat je aardig wat energie gestoken had om het stroomverbruik van deze camera in kaart te brengen. Ik zou je daar nog graag een vraag over stellen.

Je stelt dat de camera bij 5V nog werkt maar wordt dit lager dan stop de camera er mee. Nu zal dit vermoedelijk gebaseerd zijn een externe voeding maar de vraag blijft hoe deze camera dan zou kunnen werken op 4 Ni-MH batterijen die in principe maar 1,2V elk leveren. Ik heb deze batterijen geprobeerd maar de camera werkt hooguit 10 minuten op zo'n set en dan is het over. Bij aanvang was de spanning per batterij ongeveer 1,48V. Na 30 minuten in de camera zakte dit naar 1,44V per batterij en weigerde de camera aan te gaan.

Je zegt ook ergens dat "Record, auto power saving: 205 mA " is. Is dit hetzelfde als de "UIT" stand? Zoniet, weet je dan misschien nog wat de consumptie is als de camera "uit" staat?

Bij voorbaat dank voor je reactie,
Hans

21-06-2009 John
E-mail: (hidden)

Hi, First of all, I love my watch, I use it extensively, and don't know what I'll do when it finally breaks for good.

Just wanted to ask if anyone knows where I can get a replacement band for my 5B111 watch, which is the same shown on this site. It broke, and Timex doesn't make the watch, nor sell the bands anymore.

It's hard to find a nice band. I did rig another band onto it finally so I can again wear it, but I'd really like to get the original if at all possible. I've searched online extensively with no success. I'd appreciate your help.

Best Regards,
John

12-05-2009 Mike Jenkins
E-mail: (hidden)

Well, I got the hair-thickness glass fibers and they are indeed quite thin. I am planning on making a mount for my external flash that would also incorporate colored filters so I could color the ring flash light. My only concern is that the fibers are so thin it might be difficult to spread them out around the lens on some sort of hood/ring attachment. I'd also like to make some sort of ring that I could mount to different parts, like if I wanted to reverse my 50mm f/1.7 on my kit 18-70mm f/3.5-5.6 I would want the ring to go around the hollowed out end cap I have, but for other uses I would want it to go on over the lens hood, most likely. How exactly did you make your fuzzmount, and how do you attach it to other things? I also have a Sony Alpha, mine is an a200 but we probably have the same types of lens mounts and filter diameters.

Thanks for creating this inspiring website.
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Fuzzcraft's reply: For the mount, you could order a large, adjustable bass port tube from a loudspeaker parts shop. Those adjustable ports have two tubes that slide into each other. The inner tube is glued to a filter step ring (I took a 72 to 77 mm ring), and the outer tube is attached to the fiber ring. For the tube I used a Monacor MBR-85. But really, the ringlight 4.0 page clearly shows how it's done in the first few photos.

13-04-2009 Mike Jenkins
E-mail: (hidden)

Would something like this be suitable of would the "hair thickness" fibers be too small for decent illumination?

http://www.surplusshed.com/pages/item/m2204.html
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Fuzzcraft's reply: I don't think it's suited, but not because of the thickness, but those fibers are probably cut too rough. You need polished ends for the light to enter the fiber. But I think you hit a bit of a jackpot with that website, they appear to have lotsa other stuff, *with* polished ends, and prebundled as well. I'd look into those.

13-04-2009 Mike Jenkins
E-mail: (hidden)

Does the optical fiber bundle you used in 4.1 have a product name or some sort of identifier that we could use to locate the product elsewhere? I'm at a loss as to where to find that sort of item at any price let alone dirt cheap. I would love to make a ring flash for my Sony a200 but if I am going to do it I'd like to do it right the first time around. Keep up the great work!

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Fuzzcraft's reply: Hmm, the only advice I can offer is to scavenge for old dot matrix traffic signs on municipality scrapyards or surplus sale websites or something. You're very unlikely to find them new. A lot of the older fiber signs are being replaced by LED signs, ever since white leds became commonplace. You could use "fiber traffic sign" as a keyword.

07-04-2009 Stewart H
E-mail: (hidden) http://www.flickr.com/photos/34899317@N07/3419796121/in/set-72157614468994827/

My Blacklight ringlight is done, and working great! I posted a few test shots on flickr.. first link is seen above. I still need to focus the led's and sand them to diffuse the light a bit (since the black light led's are all 15-20 degrees)... but this thing is going to be SO much fun when it's set up perfectly.

Thanks !

04-04-2009 Stewar t H.
E-mail: (hidden)

Yes, that what I ended up doing. I think the RC car battery I was using was actually drained, because the light seems to be working again, but I'll grab a 100kR resistor today and throw it on the default for the LED power.

I also just got my 30x 10mm 10,000mcd UV LED's ... they arrived in the mail. I'll create the new housing and send you some blacklight macro's hopefully soon !

Thanks again for all the help.
--Stu

04-04-2009 Stewart H.

Bah, I think I did exactly what you said and fried the circuit... the light worked for a day, but when I flicked it on today nothing, and when I test the LED power line it looks to be putting out only 5.8v instead of the expected 35.8. *sigh* time to start testing and see what 'sploded.
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Fuzzcraft's reply: Ouch, that sucks. If the converter only sees a crackle from a slightly bad connector it will ramp up, you know. Your earlier idea of short circuiting the output will of course not work. You'll have a short circuit and it will heat things up at the very least, probably melting stuff, too.

If you get it fixed, I'd recommend putting a 100 kohm resistor from output to feedback on the power supply side. If the feedback floats, then it will be pulled to the output, crashing the output voltage to safe levels. I can't test this, but in theory it should work.

02-04-2009 Stewart H
E-mail: (hidden)

Hmm, I didnt realize there\'s no protection if I unplug the jack... but my jack housing is a 5-pin, meaning it has pins for the 3 stereo wires, plus 2 as \"defaults\" for 2 of the wires when unplugged. Couldn\'t I just default the LED Power jack to connect to ground when it\'s unplugged? this would let the power run through the LED\'s when plugged in, OR straight into ground for the capacitor to discharge when unplugged. Would this work?

Let me know, Thanks !

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