Watches/ Horology – Ming Thein

POTD: Breguet La Tradition, part 2

February 25, 2012 by Ming Thein

Another take on the same watch shot a few days ago with the Nikon D700. Leica M9-P, Visoflex III, Bellows II, Zeiss ZM 2/50 Planar. And one Nikon SB700, two SB900s.

A very different view to the D700, right? The transparent trapezoid is a pallet jewel, which controls the locking and unlocking (tick and tock) of the escapement, along with transferring rotation impulses to the balance. It’s barely visible to the naked eye, and no more than a millimeter long, which makes the whole frame around 8x12mm, or about 3:1 magnification. Lighting is normally tricky, but I got lucky with this watch – it has a transparent cutout around the back precisely where the pallet fork and jewels are, which allowed me to light it from behind, with just a little fill from the front to provide definition to the gears. MT

Filed Under: Leica, POTD, Watches/ Horology Tagged With: breguet, escapement, la tradition, leica, macro, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photo, photography, potd, thein, watch

POTD: Breguet La Tradition

February 23, 2012 by Ming Thein

Breguet La Tradition. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G + 2xSB900s

So how did I do this? It’s not that hard: watch your lighting, and watch your backgrounds. With a sufficiently dark background and perpendicular lighting (the key here is not too diffuse, else your background will also be lit) the reflective surface of the watch with shoot the light right back at the camera. Since the watch is several orders of magnitude more reflective than the background, exposing properly for the watch will completely dial out the background, or at least reduce its luminance to a level where it’s negligible. I could have burned it down to zero, but a hint of texture and delineation for the strap worked best. MT

Filed Under: POTD, Watches/ Horology Tagged With: breguet la tradition, horology, macro, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, nikon, photography, potd, thein, watch

POTD: Vintage Tudor Submariner

February 21, 2012 by Ming Thein

Vintage Tudor Submariner. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G Micro + 2xSB900s

Yes, that’s a Rolex crown. Rolex is the parent company of Tudor; or, Tudor is the ‘entry level’ Rolex model. There weren’t really that many differences back then, but these days the main difference is in the movement – all of the Rolexes have in-house movements but the Tudors have Swatch Group-derived ETAs. If you’ve ever wondered how I get lighting like this, the trick is all in the diffusers; the better your lighting control, the less aggressive your specular highlights will be. I use a system of movable translucent but semi-opaque perspex panels to diffuse my flashes. (It’s custom built, so don’t bother looking for one). The other trick is that although the perspective appears to be one way, it doesn’t mean that the subject has to be shot in that orientation, only lit in that orientation and rotated later. MT

See the full series and writeup here on fratellowatches

Filed Under: POTD, Watches/ Horology Tagged With: macro, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, nikon, photo, photography, potd, submariner, thein, tudor, watch

POTD: Jaeger Le-Coultre Gyrotourbillon 1 escapement

February 13, 2012 by Ming Thein

Escapement
Technical info: Nikon D700, AFS 60/2.8 G Micro with 72mm of extension tubes. Watch inside diffuser box. Lit by three Nikon SB900s, triggered by the built-in flash on the D700 in commander mode.

Images are aways clickable for larger versions.

First thought: what on earth is it? The pallet fork and escape wheel of the Jaeger Le-Coultre Gyrotourbillon 1 perpetual calendar. The escapement sits within two rotating cages, which move in different axes to counter the effects of gravity. What you’re looking at is the unlocked escapement fork, now allowing the escape wheel to advance by one tooth and transmit its impulse to the oscillating balance. The pinkish synthetic ruby jewel (oblong object at center, in plane of focus) is about a millimeter in length.

One last thing – the watch in question does’t hack, so the cage is constantly in motion. Photographing this thing in the desired orientation is next to impossible because it never stops, can’t be stopped, and by design doesn’t cover the same orientation twice for several hours! MT

The full set and writeup is here on Fratellowatches.

Filed Under: POTD, Watches/ Horology Tagged With: gyrotourbillon 1, jlc, macro, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, nikon, photography, thein, watches

Macrophotography and the Leica M: seriously?

February 12, 2012 by Ming Thein

I’m a watch photographer first, and a photojournalist second. My collaboration deal with Leica requires me to use their equipment where possible; since horological photography is my speciality, this would be a focal point (no pun intended) of the arrangement. Except there’s one problem: everybody know the M system isn’t suitable for macrophotography, with the highest possible magnification being 1:3 – which is about 90x60cm on the M9, and nowhere near close enough for the kind of work I do. And let’s not even mention parallax and accurate framing issues. The S2 and 120 macro were suggested – 1:2 on 45x30mm, which is again 90x60mm. What about the compacts? They get close, but only at the wide end – meaning low magnification and high distortion.

So what does one do to get a pure Leica solution but still deliver magnification in the ranges I need – 1:1 and greater?

After a long time trawling the web and pestering my handler about exactly what was available and what wasn’t, I finally decided the M system was the platform to begin with. Not as crazy as you think; in the early SLR era, Leica made a series of attachments called the Visoflex that permitted TTL/ SLR viewing on a rangefinder body. The Visoflex III fits the digital Ms; I happened to find one for sale on a recent trip to Prague. Coupled to a 50mm lens, that would act as a natural extension tube and deliver 1:1 magnification. But what about lighting? The Visoflex prism housing sits very close to the top plate and of course blocks the hot shoe, so a flash or cable was out of the option. Early experiments involved using a large array (120!) of LED lights – normally for video use. Even then, limited stopping down was possible due to light loss from the magnification factor. The resultant images were different – but more of an impression of a watch, rather than a clear depiction. And there was still the low magnification issue to contend with.

Impressions of a watch; Girard-Perregaux F1-047. M9-P and Noctilux 0.95

Fast forward a bit. A Bellows II was located, together with the Bellows to M adaptor; this solved the magnification issue. Some creative modification (read: cutting, filing, drilling and knots) involving a hot shoe cover, a flash stand and some speaker wire allowed primitive PC sync connection between the M9-P’s hotshoe and a Nikon SB700 slave flash, which would in turn trigger my primary SB900s. The cable is nice and slim and still leaves sufficient clearance for the Visoflex.

Der Frankenkamera

So what can we achieve with this combination? See for yourself. I haven’t had a chance to test it out on a full blown shoot yet, but the early results are very encouraging.

Ignore the watch, it’s nothing exciting. What IS exciting is that the right hand side gear is 5mm across; this is the full, uncropped frame.
M9-P and 35/1.4 FLE