Friday the 111st

Trinary counting (yes Simon there are three types of people in the world...)

If we were tulips, we would probably count like this: 1, 2, 10, 11, 12, 20, 21, 22, 100, 101, 102, 110, 111... because our system would be based on 3. As humans, our system is based on 10, most likely because we have 10 fingers. It would have been great if we had 12, because fractions would have been easier. Some early numbering systems actually used 60 as a base, very handy for division and fractions, but hard to remember all those individual digits: numbers like thirteen and forty-six would all have their own names.

Computer programmers use base 16 (hexadecimal) because it ties in with the hardware so nicely. The extra digits are called A, B, C, D, E, and F. So 1F is the equivalent of 31 in decimal. Hex 400 is decimal 1024, aka 1K (as in memory).

Back to photography:

This shot was taken using an inverted 70-200mm lens (set to close focus and 70mm). You remove the lens from the camera, and invert it so the objective (big end) lens is next to the sensor cavity. You have to hand-hold it because it doesn't attach, but there exist adapters for this purpose. Anyway you end up with a great close-up lens. Try it! (Caveat: you might get dust on your sensor, so if you are not comfortable with cleaning your sensor, this might be a good excuse to learn how. Cleaning a sensors is not hard - just be careful not to scratch it. Lots of online instruction how to do that.)

For a master of this technique visit Thomas Shahan's amazing website.