Equipment: Old Canon SLR
-Kristina Swanson
I wasn’t really sure where to start with this, so I decided to head down to the local garden shop. When I saw this glass sphere, I thought it was perfect. It seemed flawless under normal light. But when I put a candle behind it, every little flaw and imperfection both inside and on the surface was lit up. At first, I was disappointed, but then I realized that the flaws were what made it unique, and that in turn made it perfect. I guess I just had to see it in the right light to realize that.
Rebel T1i
15 second exposure
F/29.0
116 mm
ISO 100
Lit entirely by the candle.
-Matt Brown
This isn’t really “refraction,” but the effect is so neat I had to submit it anyway. This is a picture of a mineral my mother got me on a trip to Nevada, unfortunately I don’t recall what it’s name is. Evidently there is only one other mine for this particular mineral and it’s located in China. What makes the quartz(?) so unique is that it has striations in it which seem to bring whatever images are behind it to its surface. So if you run it across newspaper print, it seems that the print is actually printed on the top of the mineral. Hopefully someone in the comments will be able to shed more light on the subject…
Anyway, I put an old film negative behind the rock with a light shining through to get the image you’re seeing in the center. It didn’t come out as defined as I would have liked but you can still kinda make out the image (our kid in a cowboy hat.) This was set up on a stack of HDD platters and illuminated from the side with a MacBook Pro…
Canon 7D in AE mode
Aperture: f/4
ISO: 200
Shutter: 5 Seconds
Lens: Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM with the Canon EF 25 II Extension Tube
-Joshua Winkelmann
I used the timer set at ten seconds and had time to line myself up by looking through the glass. I had several different styles for this photo, this one seemed odd, so what the heck. I couldn’t find my crystal ball. Maybe a nice flawless 5 inch quartz one would be nice. There were two ideas that I would have loved to have done, required more people than I had. I still might try it.
Canon 7D
f/18
1/40 sec
ISO 400
56mm
-David Lantz
Used a crystal globe paperweight set in front of a stone inlayed globe.
Nikon D60, ISO 1600, 1/15ths exposure.
-Nolan White
I used a Canon Rebel XSi with the kit lens at ISO 200.
The blue sphere is actually an acryllic refrigerator magnet. I had bought a set of these colorful magnets and always wanted to find a reason to photograph them. Here’s my opportunity! The setting is just outside an apartment building surrounded by lots of plants. I set the magnet on a cement bench and began shooting, framing the building inside the sphere. I had fun taking something so ordinary and usnig it to make an interesting photo.
-Joanna Collins
Took one of my chemical bottles filled with water and placed my kids ping pong ball lights behind it. Took a couple of tries to get this one.
F-stop 7
Iso 200
Pentax k-x /w kit lens
-Jason Burke
This is a view outside my apartment window. It was pretty crappy in NYC today, so I chose black and white to help portray the mood.
Rebel XS
200mm
f 6.3
1/320
-Joseph LaBate
-Sally Reece
Canon 7D
50mm, f/8, 1/60s
Went to three stores but could not find any clear marbles. I could only find this kind with the color ribbon inside. This shot is of my husband’s Harley. I tried to make it look like the bike is riding the cloud.
-Lin Dunsmore
After spending the better part of the week searching for a crystal ball I finally located one and took off to the local botanical garden to do some shooting. This specific shot was taken in an area which is very popular for wedding photography in my area. I took the shot by hand with my Canon 7D with a Canon 15-85 lens. My settings were ISO 200, 1/250, F/9. Special credit for the shot location goes out to my wonderful girlfriend, Jen.
-Branden Kerr
The only usable sphere I could find laying around the house was a marble. The background consists mainly of colored lights my wife taped to the wall in the kids’ playroom. I like how the shape of the lights kind of echos the streak of color in the marble.
Canon PowerShot S90, Shutter 1.6, Aperture 2.0, ISO 100
-Philip Levy
A focus stacked composition, all shots f/5.6, 1/500 sec, iso 100, 50mm focal length. I thought it would be nice if a refraction image could have both the real image and the reversed, spherical image at the same time, and decided to manually focus stack three images to accomplish this goal.
-John Grover
I drilled a small hole through the glass of an incandescent bulb and filled it with water. Image was shot with a Sony a700 camera. 1/30 sec at f/13, 200 ISO and lens at 105mm. Viewing newer technology through old.
-Logan Buell
Olympus E-510
40-150mm telephoto lens + 1x macro magnifier
f/5.6 1/640th ISO-100 +0ev
Seattle, WA
The United States flag proudly displayed outside my house made for a great subject for this challenge. The inverse image of it, visible in the “bubbly” glass sphere, is in clear focus while the flag itself fills the background. Depth is established thanks to the brick siding of the house, and the brilliant blue Seattle sky is peeking through the bottom of the sphere. The bubbles in the glass make for some great inner refraction of the light but contain a surprise—within each one is a “copy” of the sphere itself, including all of the bubbles visible from that point and the flag. Check out the full-size image to see what I’m talking about!
-Jeremy Klukan
I looked for a Crystal Sphere in the local second hand shop but all they had were one’s with Snowmen. Not! So I went to the local Drug Store and bought a bottle of Kiddy Bubbles. I sat on the front porch and after several try’s this one adhered to the porch’s vertical Post. With the Wind and all, it struck me as a rather delicate miracle…
I like it…
I used a Canon T1i, with a Tamron SP AF Aspherical XR Di 28 – 75 mm Macro Lens.
at F ; 5:6 and 125th of a Sec. ~
No special processing. just a Crop and Levels, along with a little Brightness and Contrast tweak.
-Charlie Carroll
When I saw this weeks challenge, the first thing I thought of was a snow globe. I had hoped that it was possible to create a scene inside the globe that was a combination of the refracted image and the objects inside the globe.
After thinking of this idea, the biggest challenge was actually finding a snow globe that would work. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had this idea that would work wonderfully — with a snow globe design that they stopped making in 1973. As it was, it took me about 20 miles and 4 or 5 stops to find one that would work. I can only imagine how hard it would have been to track down something like this in an area without a local tourist industry. I found maybe 20 or so globes that wouldn’t work — too small, too oddly shaped, no clear space in the globe, generally hideous, etc.
After all that, actually taking the picture was relatively easy. It was just a matter of heading a mile down the road to the nearest beach and taking pictures.
Fuji S100FS / ISO 100 / 1/320s / 44.6mm fl / F11
GIMP was used to crop and resize the image.
-Mike Case
Nikon D60 with 18-200 VR lens
SB-600 flash
Shutter: 1/20
Aperture: f/14
ISO: 800
I didn’t have a glass ball so I used a large spoon; however, that made it difficult to take a shot without me in it. I decided to just use the spoon to flip the image of me shooting, and put a mirror behind the spoon so you can see the non-refracted image as well.
-John McGrail
Evening sunset across Puget Sound. Shot was taken with a Nikon D90 and
50mm f1.8 lense @ f5.6, 1/200, ISO 100.
– Nick Sprankle
This shot is of a jade plant on our deck, shortly after a thunderstorm rolled through our Baltimore area. Water drops show the stalk of another branch behind it. The blue blurry mass in the background is our baby swing set. Its indiscernible and adds a neat hue shift kind of effect.
300mm 1/15 @ ƒ6.3, ISO 200 on tripod
-Lincoln Tran
F 16 ISO 125 Shutter speed 1/200 auto WB
Taken with a Nikon D5000 stock lens. Took pics of water dripping out of the faucet. Used my work shirt as the back ground. I don’t have a external flash yet so I had to mess around a bit with the kitchen lights…. that was the hardest part! I searched all week for a glass ball….. no where in OKC has one. Very inspired by the linked photos so I orderd one from amazon.com. Can’t wait to play with that!
-Sam Katz
Taken with a D5000
18-55 lens
-Eric Geary
Nikon D80, AF micro nikkor 60mm 1:2.8 D…..sun@ my back,8:00am,F/14(1/1600),iso-1000, no flash. I tried a couple refraction shots and they were no good. taken in the backyard. Camera on tri-pod, both flowers mounted on articulating arms (the kind used for tying fishing flies). This allowed me to play with distance.
-Aaron Veres
Equipment: Sony DSLR-A300
ISO 400 , f/5.6 , shutter 1/1000
Lens Sony 75-300mm
Picture taken outside, in a garden. Direct sunlight. no extra lighting.
This is a shot of a bubble made by the blowing wind.
-Rob Armand
This photograph was taken near the tree line along the Umpqua river. Apparently the refraction concentrated the blue sky into a vivid color more reminiscent of twilight. I tried several different glass mediums over a
hundred or so photographs, I preferred the uniqueness of this one.
Camera: Olympus E-300
F-Stop: f/22
Exposure: 1/100
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 33mm
-Kay Owens
Unfortunately, after days of no rain as forecast predicted, I had to rely on Mr. Spray-Bottle, to capture this “after-a-summer-rain” shot. I took many shots with both my Nikon D70 and Sony DHSC-10 Cyber-Shot. This photo was taken with the simple point-and-shoot Sony. Shot ISO 200 and set exposure to-0.3 with contrast and sharpness set to hard. Used Photoshop for sizing.
-Brenda Sikes
This photo was taken in my backyard with my Olympus FE210 (7.1 MP). Just the day before, I had discovered how to do lens flare with my camera. Therefore, I decided to incorporate a little lens flare into the photo. To get the droplet, I had to wet the leaf, since there wasn’t any rain. Anyway, here is the result!
-Immanuel Smith
Equipment: Nikon D5000, AF-S 18-105 VR
Settings: 62mm, ISO 400, F/5.3, 1/4000
Location: Horjul, Slovenia
I accidentally found a spherical lens in my closet and quickly made some pictures for the contest.
-Janez Kos
Took this with my iPhone 3gs camera (OS not updated to 4.0) after getting soaked in a huge storm we finally had in New Jersey after weeks of heat—always wanted to send something in for the contests because I love looking at the photos each week. Almost dropped my phone in puddle as my neighbor stared out the window wondering what I was doing out in storm.
Don’t really think it’s spherical refraction but had fun taking it anyway! Cheers.
-Peter Sorrell
Canon XSI
Canon 70-300mm @ 235mm
f/5.6
1/320 Sec
ISO 640
My boss lent me this globe which has air bubbles for the challenge and of course all I could think of was “OMG DOUBLE RAINBOW!!!” so I set out to have a life altering experience and capture a double refraction where the bubbles were refracting what was already refracted in the globe. Although I managed to capture that using a 100mm macro lens, none of the bubbles were perfectly spherical so the bubbles refractions were distorted (I checked each one…), and also using the macro lens at that close of a shooting distance started to pick up the resin or whatever used to make the globe and also the bubble refractions were not clear enough which was also due to the globes material. So after taking hundreds of macro shots and sorting through them, I accepted the fact that I wasn’t going to get to experience the euphoria of double rainbow guy. I then went through my earlier test shots which I initially dismissed and found that I actually quite like this shot. The moral of the story? Stop forwarding people useless craptastic youtube videos.
-Mark Lee
On a beautiful sunny day, not a very good day for shooting but a nice day for hanging out outdoors, I noticed my 3 years old nephew playing with a glass ball. When I asked him what it was, he said it was the Earth, and he enjoyed looking at the sky through it. I took it in my hand and I tried to capture what he was seeing, thinking of the song “The world is mine.”
Gear: Canon EOS 450D
f/5.6
1/4000sec
ISO 200
105mm
This was taken with a Nikon D3000, fstop 5.6, 3 second exposure with 55 mm lens. I found an old LED display calculator in my basement and set up the shot on the floor of my room, finding something to balance the marble on was the hardest part! All those times trying to spell things in math class finally paid off.
-Hannah Nofsinger
Cool theme this week, wanted to give it a shot. This is with a cool shiny glass apple thing, some harsh sunlight, and a sun wall decoration. The harsh sunlight added a cool effect but literally started to burn my hand! Love the refraction idea, can’t wait to see what kind of cool stuff everyone comes up with.
Camera: Canon EOS 7D
Exposure: 0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture: f/22.0
Focal Length: 25 mm
ISO Speed: 500
-Jim Zielinski
This was shot on the Scott Kelby Worldwide photo walk on July 24, 2010. I confess the technique was the idea of my ex-girlfriend and still photo-buddy. The lens in my hand is a 10X Macro filter.
Canon Digital Rebel XT
ISO 100
1/500 sec @ f/4.5
18-55mm lens @ 18mm
-Tim Stoklas
Hosta plant growing by the side of the house.
I took a lot of shots to try to find something to enter this week. After being displeased with many of them i started trying to stage the effect for a better photo. In the end i chose this image, one of the first i took.
Canon Rebel XSi, 18-55 mm with a Close-up +8 filter.
-Stephen Galpin
Camera: Canon EOS 50D
Exposure: 0.008 sec (1/125)
Aperture: f/6.3
Focal Length: 100 mm
ISO Speed: 400
This year, like last year, I participated in the Scott Kelby Wolrdwide Photowalk. For our city it was at the local zoo. The morning of the photowalk was overcast and rainy, lousy for shooting animals, but great for finding some good water drop photos. I saw this set of waterdrops hanging from a flower petal and had to take the shot, and once I cropped it I knew I was submitting it to Giz.
-Matt Katzenberger
Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T1i
Lens: EF-S18-55mm
F-Stop/11
Shutter Speed: 1/125
Focal Length – 29mm
ISO 6400
Macro Lens converter
I was playing around with dropping water from a bottle of water (as it had the right end to dispense drops slowly) into a clear bowl of water. I spent a few hours tying to capture the precise moment the drops hit the surface of the water. As it was a very dark day I had to whack up the ISO, hence the grainy image (even with flash) so I could keep the shutter speed as fast as possible to freeze the drops.
Once I’d sorted that I wanted to get something nice to refract. In the end the vibrant colours of a magazine worked well and I liked this shot as you can see the blurred faces of 2 women on the front cover with what looks like water melting into it.
An enjoyable task which actually helped to teach me a lot about capturing fast moving objects and using a Macro lens converter.
-Alex Jungius
Canon 70-200mm f/4 L lens
ISO 400
Shutter Speed 1/250
Aperture f/4.0
Wandering around the l’Ile Perrot area in Quebec this past week, and noticed this weird column made of stone with a polished top surface to hold the sphere that was affixed to the column. It was late afternoon and one of the lights that focused on the column/sphere affair was already lit with a green filter on its lens. Some building structures refracted in the sphere along with some trees. The sphere itself was ~1 ft. in diameter. Dunno what its significance is, no info on the structure itself was available.
-ozone pilot
