Incandescent tungsten filament.
There are no limits to my foolishness. Or so I concluded after three-quarters of an hour with this idea.
A bright idea it was. And that, at least, was part of the problem.
Brilliant! Yey! Wire. Tungsten filament. Show the coiled-coils...
Yeah...right.
Tungsten has the highest melting point of any element. Which is why it is used as a bulb filament. It’s a brittle metal though so its uses are quite specific.
And bulb filaments are usually coils or coils of coils. Why? Well, the problem with filaments is that they evapourate.
Then… poof.
A coiled-coil has a long length of the metal wire (about 58 centimetres in a bulb filament, would you believe?) compressed by the coiling into a few centimetres of coil. But the main reason is the coil dramatically reduces the metal evaporation.
I have no idea how they make the coiled coils. Does anyone know? I assume it’s not an old lady sitting at a spinning wheel…
This turned out to be at the very limit of what I could achieve without much forethought on a Monday evening. 40w bulb; macro lens; three extension tubes (a first!); polarising filter acting as an ND2 light block; lowest ISO, fastest shutter, small aperture (not too small to avoid diffraction blurring); 5 second delayed-release to stop the shaking (normally 2 seconds is sufficient); lens and camera image stabilisation; manual focussing using LiveView at maximum magnification; very delicate sharpening job in post… Kudos to the photos of filaments we’ve all seen in textbooks!
At least you can see the coil here when viewed large. I’m not even sure that it is a coiled-coil. Let’s pretend not for my sake.
It’s a single exposure and not much of a composition. Only a bit of it is in focus. Frankly, if you want me to do focus-stacking with three extension tubes you’ll need to pay me more.
Of course it would have been easier to have captured a cold filament. But then I would have had to worry about the lighting, wouldn’t I?
Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy this image of a bit of wire for the Macro Mondays theme. Happy Macro Mondays!!
(It’s less than 2cm across the frame.)
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