Abstract Thursday - Kaleidoscope

A couple of weeks ago I blipped a kaleidoscopic effect created in Photoshop.

Yesterday I blipped a picture of a present from one of my brothers for my recent birthday. Well my other brother gave me a rather splendid kaleidoscope, and he challenged me to take some photos through it - so today I'm blipping abstract patterns from a real kaleidoscope.

It took a bit of experimentation to get it right. I wanted to use a small aperture to get plenty of depth of focus, but with the camera right up against the eyepiece of the 'scope I found I got severe vignetting if I stopped the iris down at all. So I had to use full aperture.

I experimented with different light sources and I've shown 4 of the effects here.  I think my favourite is the one on the bottom left, taken with an orange "firelite" bulb right up behind the "window" of the kaleidoscope - this produced multiple images of the filament.

The pictures are best viewed large.

Thanks again to youoregon1 for hosting Abstract Thursday.