The wiki thread

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Daniel Beardsmore

24 Aug 2013, 02:03

Depends on the camera — I'm wedged between frustration with mine, and far too much laziness to figure out who makes one that doesn't suck. (I only found what turned out to be an accurate review of mine after I'd ordered it, and I just kept it. Maybe I'll replace it once the LCD panel has completed its disintegration process …)

Indirect sunlight just isn't sufficient for the sensor. Really you need all-round illumination, and ideally ring illumination on a macro lens to deal with switch photos and all that black plastic.

For now, I'll just keep on churning out crap photos and getting angry with the terrible lighting setup :)

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webwit
Wild Duck

24 Aug 2013, 09:07

Or wait for a sunny day. I think where you live that was on June 23, between 11:30 and 12:15. Opportunity missed. Now you have to wait till next year.

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002
Topre Enthusiast

24 Aug 2013, 09:18

Hey don't make fun, they just came out of a devastating heatwave that saw temperatures of up to 33 degrees!

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Muirium
µ

24 Aug 2013, 11:15

Seriously, it's no fun at all when your culture insists on serving beer unchilled.

(Wasn't so much of a problem in Scotland. We had 27 for a few days in June, but mostly just up to 21 since. Still higher than we icy folk are used to, though. Any worse and the whisky goes in the fridge.)

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Daniel Beardsmore

24 Aug 2013, 13:49

webwit wrote:Or wait for a sunny day. I think where you live that was on June 23, between 11:30 and 12:15. Opportunity missed. Now you have to wait till next year.
Direct sunlight is useless — terrible shadows. You need even lighting from all angles, and for that you need either a mini studio or a house with windows on more than one side of a large room. Lots of people in the forum do pull off great photos, but not me.

As for summer — my memory sucks, but I seem to recall summer being hot and sunny every year as a child, but for the past few years it's more likely to be cloudy, with spells of torrential rain. It's more like how summer in England is supposed to be, though :)

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Muirium
µ

24 Aug 2013, 13:56

Indeed, direct sunlight's too hard. You need a softer light to do detail justice (except in true macro, I'd say but only because I haven't the gear for that). Note that soft is different from dim. Bright soft light is the good stuff. Soft means evenly spread, coming from different angles.

A big window will do the trick. That's what I use. I like my desks at windows anyway. Then a nice bright cloudy sky (what we call "sunshine" in Edinburgh) and a steady hand while you explore the reflective angles from the plastic.

I'd suggest shutter priority mode, at one over whatever focal length you're using or faster. So 1/60th and quicker for my 60/2.8 macro lens which also makes a handy sharp medium prime. And NO FLASH, naturally.

Then again, some of my better pictures come from the humble iPad. One or two of those have made it onto the site header…
Last edited by Muirium on 24 Aug 2013, 14:02, edited 1 time in total.

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002
Topre Enthusiast

24 Aug 2013, 14:01

Do you guys muck around with the exposure settings at all? It seems to be the thing I'm tweaking the most when I'm getting shots. It's handy for black items in particular but obviously the whites blow-out. Usually not a problem when all you're trying to get is the inside of a switch or something.

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Daniel Beardsmore

24 Aug 2013, 14:04

My camera can't do cloudy — not remotely sensitive enough. Not unless I want blur and noise. It would work with a big lens, yes. I don't even think a tripod would help the exposure level.

Given the choice, I'd leave it to people who have decent equipment and actually know what they're doing (who, as I said, are entitled to my whole switch collection). Realistically, that won't happen.

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002
Topre Enthusiast

24 Aug 2013, 14:08

I am still learning and I don't practice enough. Seems like Muirium knows his stuff though -- and has a Macro lens :)

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Muirium
µ

24 Aug 2013, 14:13

I'd need two of every switch, Daniel. Because there's not a hope in hell those poor buggers could survive my handicraft. Even popping Cherries in and out of a plate is mighty fiddly by my standards.

Yes, big glass makes life so much easier. (What can I say? You guys have Realforces and I have a £300 lens. Hadn't heard about Topre yet…) Macros are another world entirely. Where even f/11 will bokeh like crazy. I'm still learning the ropes after several years at it.

Exposure is tricky in close ups. I like to meter from a different spot. Basically anything besides the darkest bit of the picture (even if that's the good bit). Over exposure is worse than underexposure. You can boost a picture up more often than you can darken it down.

And when all else fails: manual mode and try again. I do a lot of that on my dozy old Canon 350D. We'll get in a quarrel and I have to pull out the sudo.

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Daniel Beardsmore

24 Aug 2013, 14:21

I have two or more of some of them. It is fiddly, and sometimes I spend as much time trying to find where the spring went to, as taking the photos. I also forget which parts came from which switch, so while all my Taiwan Tai-Hao APC series switches are all safe to photograph, I can't promise that they still feel correct, as the return springs may be mixed up.

I don't care if I botch some of them, as I can just buy more (though, with Electronic Surplus, I got 10–20 of each anyway), but many of them were samples or freebies, and I wouldn't ask for more. I don't have a single intact Futaba simplified linear now, and my Omron B3G-S is shagged internally.

mr_a500

24 Aug 2013, 14:25

002 wrote:I am still learning and I don't practice enough. Seems like Muirium knows his stuff though -- and has a Macro lens :)
Oh those guys with macro lenses... how I hate them.

Just kidding :D . I was screwing around trying to take clear pictures with a $50 camera, but every single shot had to be touched up - blurry, bad colour, lots of noise - and that's when I was being careful with exposure and lighting. Now that I have a half decent (though still relatively "cheap" $700) DSLR, I never have to touch up anything. All I do is resize or crop.

I like to keep everything on manual to experiment with exposure, focal length, shutter speed. All I need now is a macro lens.

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002
Topre Enthusiast

24 Aug 2013, 14:32

My boss is a pretty keen photographer. He showed me his 6 month expenditure report on camera gear and it was something like $14K. Every time a new keyboard arrives at the office he tells me to get my priorities in order and buy a Macro lens.

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webwit
Wild Duck

24 Aug 2013, 14:42

Pah, he should get his priorities right himself and get a Topre and a beamspring keyboard!

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002
Topre Enthusiast

24 Aug 2013, 14:59

Haha yeah tried that line already. He's not completely a lost cause though. He was very impressed with the NOS IBM 5954339 :)

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Muirium
µ

24 Aug 2013, 15:07

Photography is right up there with classic car maintenance as a costly hobby. The long lenses (those bazookas you see pointing at tennis players and the like) are a good ten grand each. And very almost worth it! Mind bendingly fantastic.

In the realm of macros, this is Canon's king:

http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/ ... _macro_usm

I got to try one in one of Edinburgh's fortunately still in business camera shops. Oh my. It's five times the weight of my little 350D, which I attached it to, and you could feel the centre of gravity move while focussing: all that glass inside. Yikes.

Then I bought a second hand holster case for £5. Ah, reality.

Here's my macro. A third as long but a lot less than that in price. I've no complaints. It's one of Canon's highest regarded little lenses. Short but sweet.

http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/ ... _macro_usm

mr_a500

24 Aug 2013, 18:18

Muirium wrote: Here's my macro. A third as long but a lot less than that in price. I've no complaints. It's one of Canon's highest regarded little lenses. Short but sweet.

http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/ ... _macro_usm
I just bookmarked that for my wish list. There was no point in bookmarking the $1500 one.

When I win the lottery, I'll be getting a Leica M9 with f0.95 Noctilux lens. I might also get a classic 50's M3, just for the hell of it.

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Muirium
µ

24 Aug 2013, 18:34

Ah, well keep an eye on this:

http://www.canonpricewatch.com/prices/

The trouble is there's no single magic bullet in photography. Lenses tend to be jacks of all trades or masters of one. So I'd make an armoury, with the legendary 400 mm f/2.8 prime as its top dog (I think they're £7k for the new model), but at least five more pieces of high end glass. Oh and a better camera body. Or two. Etc. etc. €tc.

I've an f/1.4 Sigma for night and fast stuff, and that 60mm Canon macro: both primes. Both well optimised to do one thing very ably indeed. So ends my list of good lenses!

Other than that I mostly rough it with a manual 210 mm Tamron zoom that's as old as I am (more beam spring than Model M!) because it collapses into the holster quite nicely and has an otherworldly quality to its pictures. (Think Instagram filters. They didn't invent that look, it came from quirky old equipment.) That lens has every aberration in the book and you've no choice but to be in direct control of everything. But when a picture does come out well, it's an honest achievement! Compared to that, my other lenses feel so easy.

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7bit

24 Aug 2013, 22:18

When I read all this I'm glad I'm using Nikon gear and don't have to buy cheap, bad, off-brand lenses. As a Tele I've got a 70-210 f/4 AF lens from around 1988, for only 120 EUR.

You can buy the Nikon E-series manual focus pendant of this lens for less than 80 EUR.

If you can't get the 200 f/4 Micro (~1000 EUR used), just get a 105 Ai f/4 Micro plus an extension tube (PN-11) for around 250-280 EUR, or the better 105 Ais f/2.8 along the same extension tube for around 350-400 EUR.

I'm currently searching for the later, but had no luck to find one for the price I'm willing to pay. :o

As a camera, anything like D90 or D5000 will do fine for more than just macro shots (all less than 250 EUR).

For the lighting, 2 flashes should be enough.

You may be able to use something like this:
Image

Or get the Nikon R1 system for ~500 EUR.
Image

Sunlight plus someone who holds a reflector (e.g. an old kitchen sink) is the cheapest solution.

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Halvar

24 Aug 2013, 22:25

Too much photo gear talk, too few photos ... ;)

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7bit

24 Aug 2013, 22:31

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Better?
:roll:

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Muirium
µ

24 Aug 2013, 23:14

Sigma makes some great stuff, you snob! Tamron… not so great, but that old lens has sentimental value as a hand me down.

Extension tubes are the classic hack to make a macro lens. (They're just an empty tube which holds a regular lens out further from the camera body. That monkeys with the optics, letting the lens focus closer up – the key to all macro photography – while sacrificing infinity. The lens gets shortsighted, essentially.) I've not tried one. I assume they have downsides. But worth a shot if you need it.

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webwit
Wild Duck

24 Aug 2013, 23:17

Halvar wrote:Too much photo gear talk, too few photos ... ;)
Taken with the Samsung Galaxy S4!

Image

Image


Wait. Where am I? Image

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Daniel Beardsmore

24 Aug 2013, 23:23

Wait, does that switch have soft landing pads?

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webwit
Wild Duck

24 Aug 2013, 23:33

I did not notice that before, but thanks to the Galaxy S4 macro extravagance, I now did!
Maybe it's just an anti-contamination shield.

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7bit

24 Aug 2013, 23:41

Here are 2 bad ones with the 70-210 and one with the 20mm.

Next time, someone should bring a ladder or just hold the keyboards such that I can photograph the switches better. Removing of more keycaps could improve this further.

Thanks!
:roll:
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User avatar
Daniel Beardsmore

24 Aug 2013, 23:44

webwit wrote:Maybe it's just an anti-contamination shield.
Under the slider?

The RAFI anti-contamination mechanism is much weirder, involving slider extensions and stuff. That looks like a soft-landing pad to me.

bpiphany

26 Aug 2013, 20:07

There are three secrets to shooting nice pictures. The first, second and third tripod leg. Really. Even fairly low end point-and-shooters take decent photos and are so many mega pixels today that you can crop zoom for the interesting parts. Lots of light helps as well in their case. With better cameras long exposure times does the trick.

A standard white writing paper can be used both as a diffuser and reflector for harsh light condition. It may be hard to cover a while keyboard with an A4 but for smaller stuff like switches they are perfectly fine. Thinner paper let more light through and give shorter exposure times of course, but those papers are not just lying around the same way.

The following series I took on my kitchen table, no fancy equipment, only an old Canon Ixus 50 propped up on a book or something. They are 100% crops from the minimum focus distance. Feel free to add them to the wiki if anyone wants to. They were uploaded to geekhack sometime in the olden days...
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Findecanor

30 Aug 2013, 23:38

I would like to modify the category Macintosh keyboards. It has currently one clone ADB-keyboard and one clone USB-keyboard.

I propose that this category is modified/split:
- Limit to only contemporary keyboards, that talk USB.
- Expand to include keyboards from Apple.
- Expand to include keyboards where the GUI/Command/Windows and Option/Alt keys can be swapped in hardware and the GUI/Command/Windows key does not have a Windows logo. This would include modern Ducky keyboards.

The modified "Macintosh keyboards" category could serve as a guide for people shopping for a mechanical keyboard for Mac.

Also add a category "ADB keyboards" for keyboards that use the ADB protocol. That would include vintage Macintosh ADB-keyboards, the Apple Desktop Bus Keyboard (for the Apple II GS, not for Mac but works on Mac) and clone keyboards for Apple II GS (is there any?) and vintage Macintosh.

What was the original intention behind the category? Would I break anything by imposing this change?
Should the "Macintosh keyboards" category be renamed to something else, such as "Contemporary Macintosh keyboards" or "Macintosh USB keyboards"?

User avatar
Daniel Beardsmore

31 Aug 2013, 00:06

I'm surprised you didn't notice the more confusing problem: look up the category of keyboards with SMK switches, or Alps switches, or any other manufacturer who has made multiple, completely unrelated and incompatible switch types.

The category system supports hierarchy with multiple parents, but you cannot perform Venn operations on them—e.g. Category A := Category B ∩ Category C—without a MediaWiki extension. See Wikipedia:Category_intersection for a discussion on this.

Maybe something like this would allow you to achieve the types of categorisation you desire:

Code: Select all

⋮
+--Keyboards by system
|  |
|  +--Macintosh keyboards
|  |  |
|  |  +--Macintosh ADB keyboards
|  |  |
|  |  +--Macintosh USB keyboards
|  ⋮
|
+--Keyboards by protocol
|  |
|  +--ADB keyboards
|  |  |
|  |  +--Macintosh ADB keyboards
|  |
|  +--USB keyboards
|  |  |
|  |  +--Macintosh USB keyboards
|  |  ⋮
|  ⋮
|
+--Keyboards by brand
⋮  |
   +--Apple keyboards
   ⋮
For example, the 1998 iMac keyboard would be categorised under Apple keyboards and Macintosh USB keyboards. Macintosh ADB keyboards would be a subcategory of both Macintosh keyboards and ADB keyboards. Apple keyboards would be a distinct category, as it is now: it includes any keyboard made by Apple including the integrated keyboards on the Apple ][.

It's a deep rabbit hole though!

I think the existing categories (especially with the given descriptions!) are fairly obvious. Macintosh keyboards are keyboards designed for Macintoshes. Apple keyboards are keyboards sold by Apple — this is the per-brand categorisation that already exists on the wiki. (e.g. Sony BKE keyboards are Sony keyboards, even though the OEM might be Omron or Topre.)

Categorisation of keyboards with hardware alt/win swapping and no Windows logo on the Windows keys — maybe Macintosh keyboards → Mac-adaptable PC keyboards?

Keyboards by system would then include other non-PC systems out there. That's definitely a reader exercise.

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