
Removing a Stuck Lens Filter… with a Bandsaw
Adam Savage, one of the guys you'll recognize from MythBusters, recently had a friend come to him in need bearing a $1,800 lens with a filter stuck tightly to the threads.
Adam Savage, one of the guys you'll recognize from MythBusters, recently had a friend come to him in need bearing a $1,800 lens with a filter stuck tightly to the threads.
We don't usually recommend taking a band saw to your $2,000 lens... in fact, we still don't recommend it. But that's what it took for nerd hero of Mythbusters fame Adam Savage to get a broken filter off of his friend's Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L II lens.
As iconic lenses go, perhaps no lens is quite as iconic as the famed NASA Zeiss f/0.7 glass Stanley Kubrick used to film a candle-lit scene using only natural light. In this video we get to see the lens, find out about the camera Kubrick modified to use it, and discover some of the tricks he employed to shoot that scene.
Tested recently put on a show at the Castro Theater in San Francisco. One of the presentations was by local photographer Michael Shindler, who specializes in wet plate collodion photography.
In the 12-minute video above, Shindler transforms the theater into a studio and darkroom, introducing the live audience to this 19th-century photography process by creating a large-format tintype portrait of Adam Savage (the co-host of Mythbusters).
Want to see what a speeding bullet leaving a handgun looks like at 73,000 frames per second? Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters recently decided to find out by pointing a Phantom v2010 high-speed camera at Hyneman while he fired a pistol. While the price of this camera hasn't been published, its predecessor, the v1610 cost around $100,000.