Here are the next two hi-res, 500fps fly casting videos (sequence a1 this time) from my friend and physicist, Grunde Løvoll. These particular videos were used to generate some of the data for 2006 article, “The Rod & The Cast,” (first published in the Japanese “FlyFisher” magazine).

As before, these videos are not directly viewable here at FF&W, instead they are provided as zipped (.zip) downloads (any modern Mac or Windows PC should be able to unzip once the files are downloaded). This way, you can watch them on your own computer (and save me a potential pile of bandwidth due to replays).

These videos each present something interesting to the viewer, including things such as a virtual “broomstick” that really shows the advantages of a flexible rod, and a tip-path trace, which makes it easy to see how the tip path affects loop structure. If you dig this kind of thing (and better yet, if you have the software to mess around with it), enjoy. If you don’t care much for 22.4MB worth of slo-mo casting, just skip the downloads.

So here they are:

ma1_2p_broom.mpg.zip (8.9MB)

a1_forward_with_smooth_tipline.mpg.zip (13.5MB)

NOTES: Copyright 2010 Grunde Løvoll (grunde (at) fiskekroken (dot) org)
The caster is Andreas Fismen.
The rod is a T&T PA905-3.
The video is recorded while false casting 10 meters (outside the rod tip) of a AFTMA 5 line + a regular trout leader.
The videos are released under the CC Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/)

Drawing Flies 52 Crazy Charlie. Went the retro pop-art route for this one (did Warhol ever do a fly?). Knew well ahead of time where I was going with it, and just took my time getting there. Beat the 30 minute mark, and didn’t have to rush to do it.

Notes: This began as a hand-drawn Charlie (a two-minute endeavor), followed by a scan into Photoshop for a little clean-up, and then an export into Illustrator where I did the colorization. I had almost this exact picture in my head when I started and only added the half-tone dots as I went (are the dots too much? Perhaps, but this is where I ended up, so they will have to do). Any reader who has ever had much to do with printing will immediately recognize my pure CMYK color scheme (and the dots are two-color mixes). Hey, at least Jeff and I will have a built-in CMYK reference for the DF52 book printing!

Tech info: Pen on paper. Scanned into Photoshop and then built in Illustrator.

Jeff’s Crazy Charlie is here. Ha! He went all digital again. And a really nice grayscale piece, too (I love grayscale). Jeff’s has some special gear attached to that computer of his (and a good brush library, too), and it’s cool to see what he comes up with in the 30-minute time limit (liking that metal work). Really nice effort, Jeff!

This is the last week to order a copy of the first edition of  Nature of Fly Casting directly from me. After September 1, 2010, the book will no longer be available through FF&W (though there will still be some copies lurking out there on Amazon and in shops and so forth). The book will not be re-printed, but it will have a second, updated edition in the future.

A sincere thanks to all who have supported the book for the last nine years.

More FCI-based motion-capture goodness (and there will be a new post of Grunde’s 500fps videos soon, too). Like the previous mo-cap video, the file linked to here is based on the original 200fps capture. The file shows a standard, overhead cast sequence made by me using a 5-weight, weight-forward line on a Sage XP590-4 rod. The cast was captured back in 2008, and has been used to generate some study data related to hauling speed and timing.

In the video, you can see me (the small collection of wire-framed dots just to left of the lower-middle) making both a hauled backcast and a hauled forward cast coupled with a shoot. The line that is hauled and then shot can be seen as the two white dots immediately in front of my (wired) body. You can see the haul on the forward cast pull downward, and then the line begin to move up and forward again with increasing speed as the rod tip passes the straight position (or RSP, in casting-geek lingo) and into counterflex. That’s the shoot.

Note that the line in this capture was “flagged” at certain points with special reflective tape (necessary for the mo-cap cameras to “see” the line). This caused some additional air drag which may have had a small effect on both my haul timing/speed and the shoot process.

Hope that the casting-centric readers here at FF&W enjoy this one, too (note that this is a bigger file—approximately 6.7MB).

Download jborger_haul-shoot_1_fs.avi.zip (6.7MB)

After posting the first set of 500fps videos from my friend, Grunde Løvoll, I promised some motion-capture (mo-cap) video, as well. So, here it is (download link below).

This video isn’t really video in the traditional sense, it’s data points captured in three dimensions and then output as a video-based file. The file linked to here is based on the original 200fps capture, but running at more like 100fps. The file shows a backcast made by me using a standard 5-weight, weight-forward line on a Sage XP590-4 rod. The cast was captured back in 2006, and it’s about time it showed up here.

In the video, you can see me (the small collection of wire-framed dots in the middle-left) making a strong backcast. You can also see me hauling (watch the dot that travels quickly to the left and then off the camera stage). The first part of the backcast is not visible due to restrictions in the stage area, but the key aspects of rod unload (check out the “S” bend at one point) can be seen clearly.

One of the slick things about this mo-cap system is that it also exports velocity tracks (the lines through the dots), which make it easy to see the amount each marker on the rod and caster moves in a given time. This allows quick visual identification of which part(s) of the rod and caster are moving the most—or least—at any given time. You can see, for example, the speed (and bend) in the mid and tip sections of the rod even as the butt section is slowing through the stop (which is actually not a dead-stop, but a rapid slowing as the rod continues to rotate—or turnover—from one position to another). On “normal” video, this effect can be harder to see and understand, but at 200fps (or 500fps), it’s pretty clear.

Enjoy!

Download jborger_maxrot_3_fs.avi.zip (126 KB)

Drawing Flies 52 Hornberg (this isn’t your daddy’s Hornberg). I know: When one envisions a Hornberg (I grew up not far from where it was created), once tends to see this lovely dry/wet fly with jungle cock cheeks and flowing, mallard-flank wings. A nostalgic fly from a nostalgic era, perhaps. With my current state of mind being what it is, I ended up about 180 degrees from there.

Notes: This is a fragmented, roughly drawn piece that borders on etching-style line application. I wanted the fly to feel unsettled, vibrating, perhaps even jarring in its demeanor. I also wanted the fly to be an opposite of what was likely expected, so realized that I would ultimately have to use the computer to achieve the right effect.

This was drawn using a rather chaotic and strong hand, then painted with slabs of watercolor. I used a longer. softer brush than usual to get the sloppy wash around the fly. I didn’t want precision and flow; I got the alternate textures that I was after.

Once done, I scanned the image into Photoshop, popped the saturation on the colors and then deepened the blacks. For the final result I wanted, I just hit Command+I to invert the image totally. That gave me carved, electric, vibrating neon all bent and scattered, with yellow-orange heat smoldering and wafting from the structure. It’s a Hornberg for sure, but it’s not the kind of Hornberg you’ll see in an old Weber tackle catalog.

I don’t expect that this DF52 drawing will garner the same appreciation as, say, the Sofa Pillow, but I don’t see this project as being about cookie-cutter drawings every week. Sometimes you have to go where you have no map and see what happens, even if the journey is just for yourself.

Tech info: Pencil, pen and watercolor on Pentalic paper. Scanned and then manipulated in Photoshop.

Jeff’s Hornberg is here. Interesting that he chose to go all-digital, I think. While Jeff did do a more traditional take on the pattern, he certainly didn’t go traditional with the media. Pretty cool to see how successful Jeff was with the complexity of the textures and patterns within our time limit. I especially like the Jungle Cock eye and sense of “depth-of-field” dimensionality on the hackle.

A shot from a few years ago on a little river—some of you may know this exact spot—in Rocky Mountain National Park (for me, basically the whole Park qualifies as a “favorite place”). Had planned on three days in the Park in September after the IFTD show, but a change in schedule means I won’t be able to fish/hike it this year. Must plan some uninterrupted time for 2011….

I promised that I’d post a couple of graphs showing some of the data collected from the high-speed video sequences shown in a previous post (cast m1). So, I have included them below. Keep in mind that these graphs do reflect some “noise” in the data, and that the cast is not oscillating up and down in speed rapidly. You will also note that the first graph includes additional data from a cast named “a1.” You’ll be seeing that cast here soon. If you want to see a smoothed version of some of this data, check out “The Rod & The Cast” article.

The line segments/tracking points refer to the first and second dark marks, respectively, on the line in the video(s). Chord length is the measurement taken from the tip of the rod to the butt of the rod. It has a relationship to “load-shift,” which is a concept that will also show up here at FF&W going forward.

Got an e-mail that this was fresh out of the (digital) cutting room. Someone you might recognize at 0:39 getting what is apparently a much-needed casting lesson from the female lead (Amber Heard)….

For a non-YouTube version, go here.

Drawing Flies 52 Sakasa Kebari (Reverse Hackle) for Tenkara-style fishing. To my eye, a pattern of elegant simplicity and beauty. Was doing some editing in the section on dapping in the upcoming Fishing the Film book, and got to thinking about the Japanese Tenkara angling approach. E-mailed Jeff about doing an “artist’s choice” of a Tenkara pattern and here we are (not familiar with Tenkara? Go here).

Notes: This fly took me less than two minutes to complete (well, I had to mix the red, which took perhaps 30 seconds more). I had started down a different path, one more like the previous Sofa Pillow and Upside-Down Leech, but stopped. I realized that I had something in my head that was much cleaner, much simpler, much more the feel of the fly and its origins. I only took one shot at it, not wanting to get into the “overworking” mode. I like what I got (but then again, I like minimalism, too).

Tech info: Ink mixed in brewed tea water on Canson paper (red spot is watercolor in tea).

Jeff’s Tenkara fly is here. Not only does it have a certain sense of swept movement, but I had actually thought about doing a “royal” style fly myself. Cool to see that Jeff must have had a similar type of idea. I like it.

Just a quick note if you’re a tyer (or a tier, your choice on spelling). My friends over at “Field & Stream” magazine’s FlyTalk blog have posted a short how-to from me on the Interlocking Wing Technique. It’s a simple approach to durable wings that I really like for my own flies. Some of you may know this technique, and if you’ve used it already, you know how it can make slick work of caddises, stoneflies, etc.

Once the story has had a run over at FT, I”ll likely post the technique in some form here, as well.

As promised, here are the first three 500fps fly casting videos (sequence m1) from Grunde Løvoll. These particular videos were used to generate data for “The Rod & The Cast,” which was written back in 2006 (and first published in the Japanese “FlyFisher” magazine).

These videos are not directly viewable here at FF&W, instead they are provided as zipped (.zip) downloads (any modern Mac or Windows PC should be able to unzip without trouble). This way, you can watch them on your own computer (and save me a potential pile of bandwidth due to replays).

These videos each present something interesting to the viewer, including things such as a virtual “broomstick” that really shows the advantages of a flexible rod, a tip-path trace, and numbered tracking dots on the rod and line. If you dig this kind of thing (and better yet, if have the software to mess around with it), enjoy. If you don’t care much for 70MB worth of slo-mo casting, just skip the downloads.

So here they are:

m1_2p_broom.mpg.zip (18.7MB)

- – - – - – - – - -

m1_forward_with_smooth_tipline.mpg.zip (22.5MB)

- – - – - – - – - -

m1_forward_with_tracknumbers.mpg.zip (28.7MB)

NOTES: Copyright 2010 Grunde Løvoll (grunde (at) fiskekroken (dot) org)
The caster is Mathias Lilleheim.
The rod is a T&T PA905-3.
The video is recorded while false casting 10 meters (outside the rod tip) of a AFTMA 5 line + a regular trout leader.
The videos are released under the CC Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/)