2017-01-02 – Leaf of my hydroponic coffee plant

My challenge for 2017 is that I’m going to make a macro shot every day and post it here.

2017-01-01 – Peeled clementine skin

Last weekend I could witness a brave male cross spider trying to impress a nice and big female.

Nice opportunity to try the new LED ring ‘flash’ 🙂

Small things have been fascinating me for a long time. I love getting close and try to bring out the details that we normally don’t see or do not really pay attention to. Both under water and on land I have the need to shove a lens right up the nose of little creatures.

It’s quite a challenge to have enough light and to focus on these small things but sometimes, it works and when I look back at the picture on the computer I just think WOW!

I recently bought some Kenko extension tubes and have been wrestling with them together with my Canon 100mm.

Today I found this little jumping spider (Salticidae). It was a lot of fun trying to get him to smile at the camera ( and not jump on it ).

I have been playing a bit with the magic lantern firmware for my camera (canon 60d). I tested the focus stacking on an orchid flower and used the trap focus feature to try to get a macro shot (100mm + Inon ucl 165) of a fly.

Pretty cool stuff! Definitely going to play some more with this.

I had a chance to go for another photography dive trip. Again Indonesia however, this time it was Lembeh. Lembeh is known for its muck diving. I added another strobe to my setup and also bought another macro wet lens. I tried to use them as much as possible ( stacked ).

You can find all the pictures in my gallery.

For my dive trip to Bali I thought it would be cool to give underwater photography a go and decided to buy some equipment. The results you can find in the gallery.

I really enjoyed making pictures underwater, and although it was a bit of a challenge working out the best settings, it was truly relaxing. I’m looking forward to the next trip!

Oops, when I came home after work this week my chili plant looked half dead. The container for the plant was completely empty. Somehow the tube moved and resulted in emptying the plant container in the main container.

I need to find a better solution for this..

Until recently, my aeroponic/hydroponic setups were made according to a simple system. Namely, the water container is also the container where the plant is growing in/on and where the pump to spray/wet the roots and aerate the water is in.

Over time I realized 3 things about this setup.
– You need a pump per plant, meaning adding plants equals adding pumps. This uses more energy and is noisier.
– Roots tend to clog the pump after a while.
– From the outside of the container, you can’t see what the water level is and you need to work with the sound that the pump is making ( unreliable ).

My idea was to experiment with a ‘shared’ reservoir. In this main reservoir I would pump the water to a separate container within this reservoir which would then overflow back into the main reservoir. The plant pots are connected by a small tube ( communicating vessels ) with the main reservoir and because the level in the main reservoir changes by pumping the water into a separate container, I would generate a flow of water and therefore transfer the aerated water to the plant pots.

Findings
– Flow is dependent on functioning communicating vessels. This is also not so reliable.
– Transparent hose got algae grow (eating up my nutrients)

The active USB hub did not do the trick.

Next steps:
– get some fresh batteries for the sensor ( although it reports to have enough battery power )
– try to relocate the Pi + RFXcom to another room