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Stefan_W's 2013 Pods A-Ripenin'! Glog

I am going to start the new glog for my upcoming growing season on a bit of a personal note. One year ago tomorrow (January 3rd) is the one year anniversary of the day that my daughter was diagnosed with a tumour that is lodged in the middle of her brain. The past year has involved treatments and hospital stays, and there were at least three different points when we were pretty sure she was not going to make it. But she is a fighter, and nothing could keep her down for long.

Sofia has personally planted every pepper and tomato seed that I have started in the past three growing seasons. She beat the odds last year to help me, and once again she is defying what medicine has to say to help me out this year.

We started a jalapeno plant about a week ago just for the sake of watching it grow, because we both love it so much. One of the jalapenos grew to the point that it had its firt couple of leaves, so we transplanted him into a bigger pot. While we were at it I decided to put in some aji lemondrops, partly because they take a long time to fruit up and I wanted to give them a huge head start.

This is the jalapeno plant. I pulled the second one out because we did not need it, and discovered that the roots had grown all of the way down to the bottom of the cell.
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My daughter personally doing the transplant.
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Her aim is better than mine, and so it turned out perfectly.
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Next up was taking out the lemondrop seeds from peppermania.
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I need a few extras of this type, so I asked Sofia to plant two seeds in each of the four cells. Two plants will be for us, and whatever else grows will be given away to good friends.
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Two of the three tiers in my lighting stand are currently being used as toy shelves, which is cool for now. The lights are adjustable, and moved down to get close to the seedling.
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The heating pad works extremely well, and once the cells are covered the top clouds up in no time.
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A happy early jalapeno seedling in his new home. I thought I heard "feeeeeed meeeeee" coming from that direction, but I'm not sure.
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That's it for today, folks! Welcome to my new glog :welcome:
 
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The main issue is that the interesting part of the bulbs is the type of light they give off, which is not really possible for me to capture on camera.

From the Lee Valley web site in Canada: "Verilux® full-spectrum fluorescent lights have a high color-rendering index (94.5) and a color temperature of 6280 Kelvin, making them the closest match to natural sunlight of any fluorescent lights. The 48" tube is rated at 26,000 hours (which is about 10 years for the average gardener); the 24" tube is rated at 14,000 hours."

I bought 6 of the 48 inch bulbs, and two are mounted on each of the three tiers of my light stand. I bought the stand second hand, and the lady I bought it from told me that she took out the Verilux bulbs because her plants were growing way too fast. My thought was "I gotta get me some of that", but it took me three years to do it because regular lights work perfectly fine. I am just trying to up my game a bit this year and experiment with different things.
 
I’m guessing you are getting a greenish-blue tint from the fluorescent lights, am I correct? If so, check your camera settings to see if it has "White Balance" option in the menu. If it does, your in luck and it might even have a fluorescent option (many p&s cams do) and test some shots with it on. If not an option to do that, check what white balance options you do have, there might be good info on it in the manual and if you don’t have it, there’s probably one on the net. BTW what cam are you using?
 
I have a base model Canon EOS SLR.

Here is a new pic with the same plant under the new grow lights I bought yesterday, please let me know if you see a difference in the white:
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This second picture has some of the fourescent lighting from the kitch light creeping in to the corner:
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I tried buying and testing out a cheap 50mm lens for close shots, but I found the base lens I already have does a slightly better, or at least on par, job so I'm going to return it. I played with the idea of getting a cool macro but I just can't bring myself to justify the cost of those things. Good ones would drift into the 500-600 dollar range, and the one I really want is over a thousand.

Anyway, any feedback is appreciated. It is better to refine my mad picture taking skills now than have sub par shots later when the growing really starts.
 
Please correct me if I'm wrong cause I don't have the time to google the basic EOS but AFAIK all the EOS cams shoot RAW and if I'm right, you can correct the white balance being off in cam raw. That said, I don't use the canon software and have never tried it but with CS5 or over and even before with CS3 the RAW editor is great to fix that off color stuff.

I'll have a little more time to discuss later but you should check that out if you're on a budget ... Soon back mon :)
 
Stefan_W said:
That is the exact one that the guy at the store recommended, and that I am about to return! I'm not sure what makes it special, because the closeups I took with it (playing with the F Stop), were not as good as the ones with my regular lens. Maybe I am missing some of the finer points.
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It is a fixed lens therefore it is not ideal for close up photos. It is awesome for portrait or where you need a super fast lens due to lowlight since it shoots at F 1.8. Here is a picture I look with the 50mm.



WalkGood,

You are correct, they can shoot in JPEG or RAW or both at same time. I use Adobe Camera RAW to make tweaks if needed working through Adobe Bridge and into Photoshop.
 
That is an absolutely beautiful portrait! I figured I was using it wrong, but it sort of ticks me off because I was very clear that I wanted something for closeups. I don't tend to do a lot of portraits style photos, but I guess if they turn out that well I could always change things up.
 
Stefan_W said:
That is an absolutely beautiful portrait! I figured I was using it wrong, but it sort of ticks me off because I was very clear that I wanted something for closeups. I don't tend to do a lot of portraits style photos, but I guess if they turn out that well I could always change things up.
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The lens that Chris spoke about is awesome because of the low f-stop & optics but it's not for close ups. Try some out with your included lens, some times it helps not to use the auto-focus IMHO. I'd get comfy with what you have and what it can do before runnin out and spendin mo $$$ ... I'd also start looking into shooting in RAW so you can make the adjustments that started this whole conversation about "fluorescent lights." Like Chris said photoshop is the best, that's what I use ... I just call dem CS3, CS4 and now I'm using CS5, don't see the need to up to CS6 yet. There is some type of RAW editor included with the EOS models but I've never tried it, so I can't comment on it. Once you read up on this a little and do some testing, I think you'll be impressed on how much control it can give you. Once comfy, then look into the upgradeous moves, lol. BTW if you can get a free copy of CS5 or one of the other photoshop releases, I think you'll like the editor. As far as I'm concerned it's the best available and blows the free stuff like GIMP and all the others away ...

Edit: BTW Chris is that your baby? ... oh and nice shot :)
 
Thank you very much for all of the help and information.

When I type "raw" and "photography" into google gay porn sites keep popping up. Does anyone have a good link to an online primer for RAW (the photography version)?
 
WalkGood said:
The lens that Chris spoke about is awesome because of the low f-stop & optics but it's not for close ups. Try some out with your included lens, some times it helps not to use the auto-focus IMHO. I'd get comfy with what you have and what it can do before runnin out and spendin mo $$$ ... I'd also start looking into shooting in RAW so you can make the adjustments that started this whole conversation about "fluorescent lights." Like Chris said photoshop is the best, that's what I use ... I just call dem CS3, CS4 and now I'm using CS5, don't see the need to up to CS6 yet. There is some type of RAW editor included with the EOS models but I've never tried it, so I can't comment on it. Once you read up on this a little and do some testing, I think you'll be impressed on how much control it can give you. Once comfy, then look into the upgradeous moves, lol. BTW if you can get a free copy of CS5 or one of the other photoshop releases, I think you'll like the editor. As far as I'm concerned it's the best available and blows the free stuff like GIMP and all the others away ...

Edit: BTW Chris is that your baby? ... oh and nice shot :)
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Yes, that is my youngest girl and thanks!

Stefan_W said:
Thank you very much for all of the help and information.

When I type "raw" and "photography" into google gay porn sites keep popping up. Does anyone have a good link to an online primer for RAW (the photography version)?
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http://improvephotography.com/
http://www.lightstal...-lens-portraits
http://digital-photography-school.com/raw-vs-jpeg
 
I'd go with what Chris is recommending and read up the manual, there's a setting you can shoot both jpg and raw at the same time. This is helpful till you get the nack for quick looks ...
 
Thank you both for all of your help! I'll check out those web pages and spend some time figuring it all out, and then do a few trial runs that I'll post here for feedback

As some of you know, I received an order of powders from Sicman that arrived during the holidays. Due to the fact that I basically ate my own body weight in turkey during regular meals I have not had much of a chance to try them out. Tonight I gave the jalapeno powder a try on some french fries I cooked up.

I chopped up a few russet potatoes.
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I then added some garlic, paprika, and jalapeno powder. I am sad to say that I ran out of my home grown paprika a couple of months ago, so this is store bought. There is a huge difference, but I digress. The mix went in to my ActiFry, which is a wonderful invention. The only drawback is you basically get servings of two in every batch, so when I use it for regular meals I have to make two batches that each take 40 minutes.
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The plus side of the ActiFry is that everything turns out picture perfect.
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The powder was very nice, and was a perfect compliment to the home made fries.

If anyone is interested in seeing some of the things I made with powders bought from Judy at Pepperlover or Chris over at Joyner's just take a peek at my glog from last year. I'll be posting more food pics throughout the year as well, and I'll sure I'll easily make it through the piles of powders I bought.
 
WalkGood said:
Stefan that looks delicious!!! Great job :)
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Thanks! It certainly was delicious.

brownb4 said:
yummy... i'm thinkin french fries for breakfast.

is that actifry an oil-less fryer?

Googled......
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I wouldn't say that it is completely oil-less, but you can cut the amount of oil way back. The back in the photo was cooked with just under a tablespoon of oil for the entire thng, and I actually overloaded it. When I cook wings in it I go pretty close to zero oil because when the fat starts to melt it is plenty.

Thanks for stopping in!
 
As I mentioned before, I am planning on doing some experimenting between now and early March when I get the seed starting going in earnest. I went out to a new hydroponics store this morning and discovered that they are loaded with things that I use at a fraction of the price I am used to paying. The best part is they are very close to where I work, so I can easily run out during my lunch breaks to pick up whatever odds and ends I need.

I decided to try some rock wool to see if that helped germination. The first part of my plan was to put in a pack of tabasco seeds from Candice into the rock wool after soaking them in Supermax B1 for 8 hours.
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The second part was to take another pack of seeds (shown below) and put it in into soilless media without soaking. My plan was to compare the germination rates and overall health of the seedlings.
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My wife thought the rock wool looked and felt weird, so she checked it out online. She was extremely unhappy that it is basically a lot like fibreglass, and had no redeeming features in terms of garden growing. So, it was basically back to the drawing board. I told her about how rapid rooters work, and she was much more into them so I went out to another hydroponics store and bought two flats of 96 each. I cut away a line of 7 and went back to the same basic experiment design. By the time all of the driving around and debating was done, the seeds were finished with their 8 hour soak.
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As always, my daughter planted all of the seeds. I ended up with 11 in the 7 rapid rooter cells and another 11 in 4 cells of soilless medium. They will be kept in the same covered mini greenhouse, which will give them very similar growing conditions.
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I'll keep everyone posted to see how they do, and whether it looks as though spending cash on these funky products appears to make a huge difference.

Edit: By the way, I picked tabasco peppers for this trial because they had the worst germination rate of all of my seeds last year with only one out of 20 seeds planted germinating. I assume that is an issue with the seed seller I used last year, but on the off chance that it is not I wanted to have a lot of extra tabasco seeds on the go.
 
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