Let's Find a Mother! Hiking Through a Field of Mary Jane

[Hiker]

Some people have little history with plants of any kind. Many make an overly complicated production of growing medicine. Your 'papers' are obviously current, Hiker

looks up from rolling a joint

What was that about papers?

Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate the kind words.

 

[DocDee]

Love your detailed updates hiker thanks for taking the time to share! I have a question for you about posting pictures I noticed you say you strip some type of data what exactly does that consist of and how do you do it?? I wanna start a journal but am a little nervous honestly but if I knew nothing could be traced then maybe I would get one started.

 

[Lurch Farmer]

Love your detailed updates hiker thanks for taking the time to share! I have a question for you about posting pictures I noticed you say you strip some type of data what exactly does that consist of and how do you do it?? I wanna start a journal but am a little nervous honestly but if I knew nothing could be traced then maybe I would get one started.

Yo docdee,
If we all did the go along to get along thing, 420mag would not be here,
Get your grow on then post the journal.

Just my 2 bowls worth,

 

[Hiker]

Love your detailed updates hiker thanks for taking the time to share! I have a question for you about posting pictures I noticed you say you strip some type of data what exactly does that consist of and how do you do it?? I wanna start a journal but am a little nervous honestly but if I knew nothing could be traced then maybe I would get one started.

Hi Doc

In many types of computer files, there is what's called Metadata. This is the "data about the data". For example, an MP3 file contains music, but it also contains information about that music, such as artist, album, year, etc. Digital photographs have metadata as well, called EXIF data. It contains information about when the picture was taken and the camera that took the picture such as shutter speed, focal length, or f-stop. With the advent of GPS enabled cameras and smart phones, now the metadata can also includes the GPS location where the picture was taken. This is great when you're on vacation and want to figure out the location of a picture when you return, but it's not so good when you're posting pictures of an MJ grow room.

I strip out this data before I upload the pictures. I also carefully review EVERY picture to make sure there is no personally identifiable information in the pictures. To remove the metadata, I use a program called Irfanview. It allows for batch conversions, so I can select multiple files at a time.

You don't have to use Ifranview. Windows can manage the metadata on an image file without any extra software. Just open the properties of the file. I've just used Ifranview as my default image viewer app for at least a decade now, so it was the obvious choice for me.


Thanks so much for following along. I'm glad you enjoy the journal. "Detailed" is a real polite way to describe my ramblings. I appreciate that!

 

[shottafire]

Hey hiker
I gave some info on my room in my journal. Hope it helps you out some

 

[Hiker]

Hey hiker
I gave some info on my room in my journal. Hope it helps you out some

Thanks!
I replied

 

[DocDee]

Thanks hiker ill have to look into that. My only means for pictures currently is my I phone so your absolutely right don't want any GPS coordinates getting into my pictures! Thanks for the help if I need any more I know where to go!

 

[Hiker]

Thanks hiker ill have to look into that. My only means for pictures currently is my I phone so your absolutely right don't want any GPS coordinates getting into my pictures! Thanks for the help if I need any more I know where to go!

That's kinda funny. I was just thinking about how to get another camera since I only have my phone too right now. I lost my D80 kit when I relocated after the PCT, and my P&S I bought for the hike took a little swim with me at one of the creek crossings. So I've been stuck with the cell phone, but I was just wondering where my older P&S went? I know my wife was using it for something since we moved up here. I'll have to go see what kind of pictures I can take with it. hmmm come to think of it. I bet I could make those iPhone pictures look a lot better with a little post processing in Lightroom. Some white balance adjustment would be huge!

 

[Propa Gator]

I have to get a new camera, Hiker... you da man. When I look at specs on Amazon, I'm baffled and confused. When I get ready I'll tell you what I want to do, and then do as you recommend. Probably. Even if I get my old Kodak to work, its yellow HPS pix are... distracting.

Ever hear a fossil complain that 'things aren't what they used to be'? They're not

 

[NorCaliwood]

Just driving thru to see how the girls are doing. And they are looking great. It's so hard to get good pictures under the HPS. I about gave up on even trying myself. But if those pic are sign of whats up and coming it's going to be nice. Hey fuctional idea with the cloner. What Gator isn't a layman around here anymore? I guess congrad's on the promotion? Well Hiker they let me rep ya and those last pictures do deserve it. Keepem Green

 

[wildbill38]

Maybe you can try this. When taking a pix use something to block the light
while snapping the pix. Use something like a piece of cardboard or something
big enough to block the light.
When taking pix of buds use a dark background behind the buds
for something like a glammor shot. Here are some examples.
Blogs
Hope someone finds this usefull.

 

[Propa Gator]

Wildbill if I turn off HPS and run CFL houselights, the white-balance has a good chance to be set right. I can't lock in the setting even if I get it fairly good, it changes when I aim at foliage with only yellow light. If you don't block the hot bulb it's like shooting a shot of the sun. I grow vertical and the bulb is right there, in my eye.

Cheap camera for $100? Auto settings are like nanny controls on a hot car.

 

[Hiker]

I have to get a new camera, Hiker... you da man. When I look at specs on Amazon, I'm baffled and confused. When I get ready I'll tell you what I want to do, and then do as you recommend. Probably. Even if I get my old Kodak to work, its yellow HPS pix are... distracting.

Ever hear a fossil complain that 'things aren't what they used to be'? They're not

I responded to your PM, but I'll reiterate a couple points here.

First, feel free to talk photography in my journal. I don't mind. Hopefully we don't run afoul of the mods so let's discuss the brands Nik0n and Can0n.

Don't get too hung up on the specs. You mentioned you wanted the ability to shoot video. What other requirements do you have? Are you only using it to take pictures of plants, or do you want to take other pictures? If so, what other kinds of pictures? landscapes? wildlife/birds? portraits/people? archetectural? indoor photos? wanna take pics of the kids playing sports? All of these have different requirements. Once you have a list of requirements, you can narrow down the list of cameras to look at.

Like I said in the PM, I prefer Nikon, but I have 100% respect for Canon. My preference is almost entirely due to the direction each brands' zooms spin. They are opposite, ie spin a lens from each company the same way, and one zooms in, the other zooms out. When I borrowed a Rebel, I got the zoom direction wrong frustratingly often. Hence I went with Nikon since it was more intuitive for me.

One last comment on taking bud pictures. You don't necessarily need a new camera to fix the yellowing. That can be corrected in post processing. I like Lightroom to do those adjustments, but there are lots of options. A camera with the ability to adjust white balance an be handy, but honestly, I never adjust the balance at the camera. If I know I have an issue with color shift, I will shoot a picture of something white at the start of a group of photos. Then I can use that white picture to adjust the rest of the pictures, this assumes the lighting stayed mostly the same for the rest of the pictures. This isn't something I came up with. It's a pretty standard practice. A lot of photographers will carry a gray card for this purpose as the white cards can get "blown out" sometimes and affect how accurate the white balance is, but an 8% or 15% gray card doesn't have that issue as bad.

So why do my pictures still suck? Well because I'm lazy! The new job came with a new comptuer, and it doesn't have Lightroom yet. Maybe I'll get it installed and see if I can make my iPhone pictures look any better.

Just driving thru to see how the girls are doing. And they are looking great. It's so hard to get good pictures under the HPS. I about gave up on even trying myself. But if those pic are sign of whats up and coming it's going to be nice. Hey fuctional idea with the cloner. What Gator isn't a layman around here anymore? I guess congrad's on the promotion? Well Hiker they let me rep ya and those last pictures do deserve it. Keepem Green

Thanks for catching up I'm pretty happy with how the cloner v2.0 came out. Let's hope it works too!

The RQ Critical is starting to look close to finished. I should go lookup the breeder's info on that one. I have no idea how fast it's supposed to finish! I really should get some way to see the trichomes to be really sure. In the old days, I just went by the orange hairs. Using that method isn't real accurate though. It won't work at all on the plants that were affected by the bad elbow fitting. They all have tons of orange hairs now, but they are all throwing out lots of new white hairs, so hopefully they continue to pack on weight.

Maybe you can try this. When taking a pix use something to block the light
while snapping the pix. Use something like a piece of cardboard or something
big enough to block the light.
When taking pix of buds use a dark background behind the buds
for something like a glammor shot. Here are some examples.
420 Magazine ® - wildbill38 - Blogs
Hope someone finds this usefull.

My basement doesn't have a whole lot of other light in that area though. If I block the HPS light, it would be too dark to get a good picture. The flash on the iPhone is a joke too.

To get good pictures, I have to move the plant over to the veg area. I've done it, but it's pretty time consuming. Oh ya, and I'm lazy

Wildbill if I turn off HPS and run CFL houselights, the white-balance has a good chance to be set right. I can't lock in the setting even if I get it fairly good, it changes when I aim at foliage with only yellow light. If you don't block the hot bulb it's like shooting a shot of the sun. I grow vertical and the bulb is right there, in my eye.

Cheap camera for $100? Auto settings are like nanny controls on a hot car.

I think I covered most of this in the other 2 posts! haha
Try making the adjustments in post. It might work better.

I will definitely get Lightroom going and post the results. I'll post a before and after version of an HPS photo from my iPhone.


I'm still hopeful my DSLR will find it's way back to me. There were a couple items we could not locate after the hike. We've been assuming they were somehow lost in the extended move. We had moved all our stuff from Flagstaff, AZ to Joshua Tree, CA while we were on the trail. Then after the hike, we moved everything up here to WA. We even had a storage for a month in Flagstaff as a staging area while we moved out of our house to go hike. Needless to say, it wasn't exactly a typical move. I still couldn't understand how these items were lost along the way. My mom was our supply person for the hike, ie she was the one shipping things to us as needed. We had a LOT of boxes there as well with extra food and gear and such. During the hike, my wife left the trail for awhile. During that time, she went up to her dad's place in norcal. Recently, he told us she left some boxes there. We were not aware they were there, and now we're hoping the missing items are there. All of the missing items were among those in the group of "things we will need during or immediately following the trail." Most of this stuff was at my mom's. When my wife went to visit her dad, my brother helped her load up the Forerunner, so she has no idea which boxes he thought she might need. Anyway, my father in law said he will be heading up to WA to visit some other family out near Olympia, and he will bring our boxes and come see us too! I'm hoping my DSLR will be among the items he brings us.

 

[Propa Gator]

Hiker, I've no stock in any camera company. To start with, I choose: turned a lot of nuts & bolt in my life, and if a lens goes closer to subject it zooms in I think. Other way would be like my landlords plumbing, I get scalded in the shower regularly. Except a Kodak, I haven't bought a camera since film 25 years ago. I'm not really a visual arts person but I want to time-lapse growth, and mix with music - my preferred art. Daily peeks at growth is frustrating, like trying to see a Mojave rock move. You can see the trail, but without speeding it up a bunch it's planted. Watch a tree grow??
30 seconds a cut roots, grows, blooms & finishes. Just like a Propa construction project. My time scale.
Maybe a simple camera to lock in place for two months, and a utility POS for journal progress reports?

 

[wildbill38]

OK Hiker man I am lazy lol, it took me almost a hour to get up
and take those shots i put in the blog I made.
Get you a 23 watt 65k cfl bulb, and cheapo desk lamp
with a clamp and when you take snaps have the flo on.
Better than the flash.

 

[Propa Gator]

When I used a Philips Retro CMH bulb, I got spoiled by great color from the main light. I copped an attitude when I shifted to HPS, I could see just fine. The CMH needed an ole skool c&c ballast that needed 15 min for a restart. New digi 600s I have now don't seem to care about restarts. Off for a photo op under color kind lights shouldn't be a hardship. I can't run CMHs with them, but am thinking about MH through flower time. Nobody has shown me definite increased production by HPS over MH. I have heard many items of grandfathered bullshit concerning home grows, and look for spiders in corners. Yep, I find 'em

 

[Hiker]

When I used a Philips Retro CMH bulb, I got spoiled by great color from the main light. I copped an attitude when I shifted to HPS, I could see just fine. The CMH needed an ole skool c&c ballast that needed 15 min for a restart. New digi 600s I have now don't seem to care about restarts. Off for a photo op under color kind lights shouldn't be a hardship. I can't run CMHs with them, but am thinking about MH through flower time. Nobody has shown me definite increased production by HPS over MH. I have heard many items of grandfathered bullshit concerning home grows, and look for spiders in corners. Yep, I find 'em

What about the heat in the bulb itself? I always avoided hot starts out of concern for the bulbs more than a concern for the ballasts. Somewhere along the way, I picked up the idea that the bulb could fracture if you restarted it before it cooled. They are HIGH pressure sodium lamps after all. It doesn't take much of a crack to make the bulb pop.

 

[cannasensei]

Indeed. The bulb is the issue on hot starts. Most modern (digital) ballast have a smart chip that doesn't allow hot starts in case of a power outage. Love my digis lol

 

[Hiker]

Gator and Bill, I just noticed the reply I tried to post yesterday apparently didn't take. I can't recall my exact response, but I'm trying again.

Hiker, I've no stock in any camera company. To start with, I choose: turned a lot of nuts & bolt in my life, and if a lens goes closer to subject it zooms in I think. Other way would be like my landlords plumbing, I get scalded in the shower regularly. Except a Kodak, I haven't bought a camera since film 25 years ago. I'm not really a visual arts person but I want to time-lapse growth, and mix with music - my preferred art. Daily peeks at growth is frustrating, like trying to see a Mojave rock move. You can see the trail, but without speeding it up a bunch it's planted. Watch a tree grow??
30 seconds a cut roots, grows, blooms & finishes. Just like a Propa construction project. My time scale.
Maybe a simple camera to lock in place for two months, and a utility POS for journal progress reports?

I wanted to do a time lapse as well, but it's difficult to do well. Ideally, you want the orientation of the plant and the camera to be the same for every picture. One solution would be to make a cardboard template you put on the ground that indicates where to put the plant and the tripod. If you marked the plant's bucket, you could make sure the same side of the plant is also facing the camera each time. This will only work if your grow style allows for moving each plant. It would also be a lot of work, especially if you wanted a daily picture. A less labor intensive option would be to setup the camera in the grow room for the entire grow, and don't move your plants around. Who wants to do that though? I try to spin my plants everyday!

I'd definitely like to see a time lapse of a plant growing through bud. It would be even more fun to watch from a seed, but a clone would be interesting to watch too. I could maybe pull this off when I get my veg area finished. I'm building a couple small chambers to flower small clones for sexing and breeding. I could put a camera in there. Now to figure out how to make a camera take pictures on a timer.

OK Hiker man I am lazy lol, it took me almost a hour to get up
and take those shots i put in the blog I made.
Get you a 23 watt 65k cfl bulb, and cheapo desk lamp
with a clamp and when you take snaps have the flo on.
Better than the flash.

Thanks for taking the time to do that! The lighting in my basement is not very good. I do have a few of those cheap clamp lights that take a standard light bulb. I don't use them for growing though. I did use one during one photo shoot to try and improve my pictures. I wasn't all that happy with the results. The iPhone's camera is a little sensitive I think as the white pistils get blown out real easy with the additional light. To get good lighting for photos, I have to move the plants up into the house to get some natural light. It's a PITA, so it never happens.

I have been doing a lot of reading about induction lamps lately. Right now, I am more inclined to try these rather than LEDs. They are half the price, last twice as long, have power savings similar to LEDs when compared to HPS, and most importantly to the topic of this discussion, gives off a better visual spectrum of light which will improve the quality of the photos.




Income tax refund came in, so I'm ordering my AC and CO2 generator today. I'm also going to try and pick up a couple cycle timers (for cloner and CO2) too. I found some digital ones that look nice and are relatively inexpensive, but it's from an online hydro vendor. I'm not sure I want a package delivered to my house from greentreeshydro I can probably have them sent to my buddy's house. I will probably have to order the CO2 generator as well, so maybe it's not an issue. It's the time of year to be working on gardens, so maybe a garden supply package wouldn't be unusual.

 

[Vick074]

what's up hiker!
Just stopping it for a quickie.
Lot's of camera talk going down up in here!
Gotta come back and see what it's all about.
But for now, I just wanted to invite ya to a new journal I just started today.
Please drop by anytime!

Vick's - OG Kush & Ambrosia Grow - Coco-GH-HPS-Wiw!

hope things are going good buddy, and I'll be back to catch up!
sooooooooooooooooooooooo bizzzzzzzzzzzzy!!!