Condensation patterns

click photo to enlarge

Every time I've had a cup of tea recently I've examined the inside of the teapot lid fifteen minutes or so later. Why? Well, shortly after we started using our new stainless steel teapot I noticed that the brewing tea caused condensation to form on the underside of the lid in radial patterns. Unfortunately, this pattern was often disrupted when I took the lid off and turned it upside down to view it. So I determined that I would look at it regularly until I found and saved a good enough condensation pattern for a photograph. It took just over a week but I finally got one as you can see above.

The underside of the lid has fine, concentric grooves as though it has been turned, milled or finished in some way. I assume that the radial pattern of condensation that forms is due to the nature of the surface of the metal. Whatever the reason, I liked it and thought it worthy of a macro shot. Perhaps I can consider it a further addition to my "kitchen sink" collection. For more in that vein, see here.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/5 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Soup, condensation and home-cooking

click photo to enlarge
There was a time, during my childhood in the 1950s and 1960s, when I sampled a range of the tinned soups that manufacturers placed before us. Some of them tasted fine, but others were pretty gruesome. I had a liking for pea and ham, and some cream of mushroom soups were quite palatable. Chicken soup was usually pretty dire, I recall, and oxtail soup wasn't far behind. However, the worst was probably tomato soup. The recipe in those days included quite a bit of salt and sugar, and it was this combination hitting the back of your throat that you remembered from a bowl of tomato soup, rather than the flavour of the fruit.

These days the only soup that I eat is prepared at home, and it surpasses shop-bought soups in the way that home-made bread eclipses the industrial flour-based product of the superstores. Quite a few of our soups are made with produce from our vegetable garden. They are prepared in batches, some of which is eaten at the time of preparation, and the rest frozen for future consumption. Yesterday a batch of tomato soup was made using fruit we'd grown that had been frozen. Today's photograph shows the condensation clinging to the underside of a plastic lid resting over the container of that soup as it cooled down before it was closed and placed in the freezer. The rounded shape is a small, shallow dome moulded into the centre of the lid.

I've said elsewhere in this blog that one of the pleasures of macro photography is its capacity to reveal the interest that is all around us and is so frequently overlooked. The condensation on this plastic lid on the work-surface of the kitchen, illuminated by the wall cupboard under-lighters, is not an obvious photographic subject. However, for one such as myself, a fully-paid up member of the "kitchen sink" school of photography it is bread and butter!

For more "kitchen sink" subjects see here, here, and here.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro, (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/5
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off