Had a bit of a surprise enablement today, so I thought I would share the good news. My employers own three injection molding (plastics) factories and do work for some rather large corporations. The molds for the injection molding machines are often huge and work under high temperatures and pressures. Defects can develop in the mold that require repair via precision machining. Since the customer usually owns the mold, one has to document what needs to be done. Recently, they have been asking me to take documentary photos of the molds and macro images of the small defects, cracks etc. It is a highly reflective surface and lighting can be a pain, particularly when you lens is only a few inches from what you are trying to photograph.
I was told today that my images were VERY helpful in a big meeting they had with an automaker regarding some of their tooling. The Company President heard about that and when we ran into each other today I explained that I thought that a ring light might be helpful in effectively removing shadows and getting even better results. I was willing to try one of the cheap LED ring lights and so when he asked me "how much" I said $50-75. He said "do it" and gave me his AmEx card. Then, as I was walking away, he chased me down and said something like "Is that the one you really want?" I explained that true ring flash units were more powerful, but more money - but that is what I would get if I were spending my own money. I quoted him around $350. He said "get that then". Since I'm using a Sigma EX 28mm f1.8 Macro that has a 77mm filter size, there was really only one unit (that I found) that had that large a hole in the donut: Sigma EM-140 DG for Pentax. So I've got one on the way, along with a 77mm adapter (it only comes with 55mm & 58mm, I believe). The 55mm will work on my Tokina AT-X 90mm f2.5 Macro, and the 77mm will work with the Sigma. He originally bought me my Metz 58 AF-1 also, so all of my on-camera flash enablement has come thanks to him. -- Photographers must learn not to be ashamed to have their photographs look like photographs. ~ Alfred Stieglitz -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
