Seeking advice on finding various equipment for project

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Horsetuna
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Seeking advice on finding various equipment for project

Post by Horsetuna » Sun Jan 13, 2013 6:18 pm

I am doing a special photo-book project inspired by Richard Dawkins' Unweaving the rainbow and other peices. I have about 15 images in mind so far - basically it will be a combination of photo-art and short explanations of what it is representing/what is happening, etc... kind of like APOD. I will spare the details as it is a Seeeekrit project for now.

I am however, having some troubles finding certain things we will need for the photo shoot. Some I am sure can be found on google, but I also have questions about them so I included them here:

A Prism: Probably can buy anywhere online. But how do you, or can you, adjust the spread of the colors? So you can have the entire rainbow being a rough specific width?

Wave-machine: We had one of these in high school: basically you took your old school high school overhead projector, put a dish of water on it, and put this thing in it and it would make waves. You can adjust the speed. Then you put various blocks in front of the waves to make different patterns and see how they interact.

Double slot experiment: We can probably make do with a strong light and a peice of card, or does it have to be a specific light? My friend is a professional photographer so has access to some lights.

Eclipses: We want to simulate an eclipse, to get a picture of that cool effect (like this: http://www.petapixel.com/assets/uploads ... _mini1.jpg). Is there a simple way to do this? Perhaps with a circular light and an occultation disk with a screen in front of it to break it up into the multiple shadows?

As well, I am open to other sorts of ideas for what we can photograph - we're also doing pictures involving refraction, a sun-glory, relativity, and other things. I'd love to include other sciences other than light in this project book! They will involve photos of a model in each one though, so keep that in mind. we were thinking of having models pose in front of various constellations, but there arent that many that are human.

Feel free to run wild with suggestions!

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Beyond
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Re: Seeking advice on finding various equipment for project

Post by Beyond » Sun Jan 13, 2013 7:32 pm

I'm wondering how you are going to take a picture of -relativity- :?: :?: I don't think you're speaking of aunts, uncles and cousins, are you?
The Abominable Snowman, AKA Chris, should be able to help you greatly.
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Horsetuna
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Re: Seeking advice on finding various equipment for project

Post by Horsetuna » Sun Jan 13, 2013 7:45 pm

as cliche as it sounds, its representative. I was watching Stephen Hawkings' 'The Grand Design' and he gave an example of how it would work. I was going to have a picture of a woman holding a candle, with two images of herself on either side looking at the candle as well. With text something like this:

RELATIVITY: One of the realizations of Albert Einstein, this states that time is not static, but depends on the viewer. Imagine that you are in the middle of a train car, and there is a person at either end of the car. When you turn on your light, both people, to you, see the light arrive at the same time.

But a viewer outside the moving train car will see the light travelling (if you could slow down time enough to see its actual passage of course) first to the person at the rear of the car since the motion of the car brings him towards it sooner, while at the same time it takes longer to catch up to the person at the front of the car, since they are moving away."

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Re: Seeking advice on finding various equipment for project

Post by Beyond » Sun Jan 13, 2013 8:06 pm

Horsetuna wrote:as cliche as it sounds, its representative. I was watching Stephen Hawkings' 'The Grand Design' and he gave an example of how it would work. I was going to have a picture of a woman holding a candle, with two images of herself on either side looking at the candle as well. With text something like this:

RELATIVITY: One of the realizations of Albert Einstein, this states that time is not static, but depends on the viewer. Imagine that you are in the middle of a train car, and there is a person at either end of the car. When you turn on your light, both people, to you, see the light arrive at the same time.

But a viewer outside the moving train car will see the light travelling (if you could slow down time enough to see its actual passage of course) first to the person at the rear of the car since the motion of the car brings him towards it sooner, while at the same time it takes longer to catch up to the person at the front of the car, since they are moving away."
Ah... it's one of those things where the picture needs a 1000 words of explanation, so you'll know what you're seeing. Would it work a bit better if you could get a candle that burns with a red flame?
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Horsetuna
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Re: Seeking advice on finding various equipment for project

Post by Horsetuna » Sun Jan 13, 2013 8:09 pm

Possible. We'll be playing about with a few different scenarios for the imagery. Plus of course a better writing that explains it much better :)

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Re: Seeking advice on finding various equipment for project

Post by Horsetuna » Tue Jan 15, 2013 10:29 pm

So anyone have any idea?

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owlice
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Re: Seeking advice on finding various equipment for project

Post by owlice » Wed Jan 16, 2013 4:42 am

Where have you already looked? I assume you've tried Steve Spangler, Educational Innovations, Indigo Instruments, Edmund Scientifics....?
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Re: Seeking advice on finding various equipment for project

Post by Horsetuna » Thu Jan 17, 2013 2:15 pm

Not yet no. I didnt even know where to start! And I dont know what half the stuff I am looking for is called! :)

I will check those ones out though, at least thank you!

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Re: Seeking advice on finding various equipment for project

Post by Horsetuna » Thu Jan 24, 2013 11:14 pm

Would anyone else have any ideas for more things I could photograph for this project? It has to be able to include a human model. We do have a green screen but I'd prefer to do it all 'live'. Any and all ideas welcome!

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Re: Seeking advice on finding various equipment for project

Post by owlice » Sun Jan 27, 2013 2:05 am

Horsetuna, it seems to me that you are hoping others can divine what is in your mind and design the images for you, and then oh, yes, come up with the perfect items needed to execute the images and where to buy them, too. Not something I can help with, but if you are looking for a specific item or two and haven't found it at any of the places I've already listed, please post what it is you are looking for.
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Re: Seeking advice on finding various equipment for project

Post by Horsetuna » Sun Jan 27, 2013 2:12 am

Well, not really. I was hoping to find general ideas and stuff as well. You never know when one idea may lead to another when it comes to things like this. :)

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