A New Diffuser, Photographing Coins, & Catching Snakes

Hi everyone!

Even though I won’t be talking about this in either of this week’s streams, I want to show you something that I invented this weekend - a new and improved diffusion framework that fixes all of the problems of the last iteration. I will show you the device and the Fusion360 model right after these program notes.

Last week was an important week for the channel as Thursday's Macro Talk Too was the 300th livestream I have done since I started doing two streams a week. There were a few occasional streams before that, including a couple of months with only a single weekly stream, so the number is closer to 320 - either way, it is a lot.

Last week I asked you to give me some feedback on the current livestream programming and I am probably going to be tweaking the  weekly schedule ever so slightly to accommodate  your requests. A huge thanks to Alasdair for providing me with a summary of the feedback from both meetings! I will let you know as soon as I decide on a course forward.

Any changes will begin upon my return to the studio following a short upcoming break, in the first week of August.  I will be leaving on Wednesday, July 23 and returning a little over a week later on August 2nd. I will still be here for this week’s Pzoom meeting, on the 19th of July, but I will not be back in time for the Pzoom following that on August 2nd.

In summary - I will be out from July 23 through August 2, 2025, during which time I will not be hosting my usual weekly programming.

Saturday’s AfterStack, episode 27 - a fascinating discussion of the new Depth Map Blur feature in Photoshop, was a big success. - here is the YouTube link to the video - https://youtu.be/waw52kfVOJgt

There is yet another new spinoff live event, starting in August. It is called “Chemical Art”. The program will be a guided discussion on Birefringent Crystal Photography, at 2PM central time on the second Friday of the month. Our first meeting will be at 2PM on Friday August 8th, 2025 - here is the link to the inaugural meeting -

Topic: Allan Walls’ Chemical Art #1

Time: Aug 8, 2025 02:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6916802815?pwd=TS9tZi9ZL1NXeVUvOUF4eTg5YjdlZz09&omn=89704985512

Meeting ID: 691 680 2815

Passcode: 678122

My Co-host for this series of live events is none other than our own Harold Hall and I am very much looking forward to a lively and visually exciting discussion of all things crystal related. Hope you will be able to join us. Stay tuned for more details!

As for the coming week, I have a couple of interesting talks planned:

Tuesday July 15, 2025 - Macro Talk - “My approach to the photography of reptiles and amphibians in the wild” - a topic that will hopefully be useful to anyone struggling with this month’s competition. Here is your link - https://youtube.com/live/MfIXwPp1-Pw?feature=share

Thursday, July 17, 2025 (2PM) - Macro Talk Too - “Numismatography 101” the first in a series of discussions about coin photography.  Note that “Numismatography” is not really a word, though it should be (I just made it up a few a minutes ago). Here is your link to that stream - https://youtube.com/live/jJXlp2s-IlY?feature=share

This month’s photography competition, “Reptiles and Amphibians” is going to be guest judged by the talented and delightful British frog photographer (she is British, not the frogs), Angi Wallace - always a popular guest and a very accomplished photography judge. I can’t wait to have her back for such an interesting theme!

Those of you who have watched some of Kelly Bosch’s incredible AI-based video content and are patiently waiting for me to release the interview, please remain patient! I have missed Kelly twice over the last few weeks. Her dog had been in surgery during our first meeting and we rescheduled for the following Thursday. This time it was Kelly who was in the hospital. We are looking at times for another crack at the interview, but I just don’t know if I will have time to fit it in before leaving on my trip. I will keep you posted.

Lester is back! I have asked Lester Lefkowitz to join our Pzoom meeting on September 13 to talk with us about his Lightroom Organization Workflow. He tells me it is a superb system that all but guarantees  you will never lose another image again. I don’t believe that for one second - I will continue to lose images in some of the most creative ways possible. Anyway, I will record this section of our meeting for wider distribution at a later date.

I think that is all the announcements that I have for now, so let’s get to the new diffusion frame.

Diffuser housing in section

This new iteration of a frame that is flexible, versatile, scaleable, sturdy, inexpensive, positionable, and with much less interference when lighting from below, came to me while trying to improve on the last version, which I found a little cumbersome and restrictive.

This version consists of a slim, vertically oriented body with a female 1/4” 20tpi socket in the base - making it universally mountable. It is made up of three sections which lock into one another around 2-pairs of flexible arms terminating in a pair of alligator clips. For stability the arms are 90º out of phase and lock rigidly into the body when it is tightened from below.

The base of the assembled frame with Small Rig miniclamp attached

The frame minus the arms

Opening and closing the arm-holder body is accomplished by means of a hidden 3mm bolt that can only be accessed by placing an Allen key through the brass insert in the base. This hides the structural components while holding them captive and preventing misalignment of the parts when changing arms. The lower arm set are almost 9” long and allow for a larger external diffuser sheet to be held further out from the specimen while allowing the user to modify its exact position with ease. The upper arms are only 4” long, keeping the inner diffusion layer much closer to the subject and guaranteeing excellent separation of the diffusers (velum or mylar).

The top section with a bass shaft standing in for the specimen holder

The specimen holder replaces the brass shaft in the drawing and can be a mini ball head, and alligator clamp or any other pin holder that works for you. I am waiting on a smaller set of bendy arms to replace the heavy duty ones shown in the fusion model, though the drawings do give you the basic idea, I think.

As soon as I have a couple of working prototypes to demonstrate I will do so. After that I will probably manufacture a limited number of the devices for sale, and may also release the G-code for anyone wanting to make their own.

exploded view of the device

If you are interested in getting one of these cool gadgets, let me know via a message in the Walls-app - I will let you know the price as soon as I figure out the cost of the parts - which will be about the same time that I demo the thing.

The colors are just for show - the device is black

That is it for this week! See you in a stream!

Allan