Scroungers Guide To "The Stealth Cabinet" - Lots of Pics

Hey SS. Your setup and ladies are looking great!! There's a thread around on the right time to harvest. The basis was waiting until the hairs start to wither and not so much the color of the trichs. Most people chop too early and miss getting the full potential from their buds. I think the thread is a sticky somewhere.

keep it up!!

jsgamber said:

Hey SS. Your setup and ladies are looking great!! There's a thread around on the right time to harvest. The basis was waiting until the hairs start to wither and not so much the color of the trichs. Most people chop too early and miss getting the full potential from their buds. I think the thread is a sticky somewhere.

keep it up!!

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Brilliant, mine are withering aswell, im gna be reading alot in the next week but i'm 99.9% sure they will be perfect next week

post a good macro bud shot and we'll tell ya

trying to get a good camera , mines just crap my mate says his is broken but i'll be able to fix it when he hurrys up. luckily i work practically next door to his house

Hey SS. Regarding taking good bud shots. It's all about getting proper focus (no matter what distance you have to be from the plant) and then use an image editor to "pre-crop" and "pre-resize" your pics before uploading. Make sure the camera is set on the "Best Image Quality" setting, move the camera back and get proper focus (even if you are in macro mode) and take two shots, one with flash on and one without flash to see which gives you the best lighting (depending on if your lights are on or not. By cropping your pics in advance, you in essense are zooming in on them and letting the resolution give you clarity.

I use a program called IrfanView (tiny, tiny program and it has all sorts of plug-ins) and my camera is about 4 years old and my max image size is 2800x2100 resolution. I bring up each pic, select the area I want to crop, press Ctrl-Y to crop, then press Ctrl-R to resize to something 800x600 or smaller (but the highest you can get away with), then press Shift-S to save in a different directory where I upload from.

This program has a batch function that you can do functions on groups of pics (resize, convert to jpg, gif, etc) and it has a good basic picture editor to put in arrows and text.

It makes me into a better photog than I really am!

HTH, peace

gamber is right here! use a stand if you got one to focus, or just scrounge something up to use as a stand. see if you camera has the timer shot where it takes the shot so many seconds after you press the timer, most cameras do. this eliminates you as the problem with focus. i know I am normally the problems with my pictures, regardless of camera quality. i always jerk or stumble. give me a camera and I turn into a drunk.

All the pics I take were taken from much further back than the pic let's on. My camera has a 'Portrait' setting and a 'Macro' setting that I switch between (most $200 cameras from 4 years ago had this). But even the Macro setting mostly auto focuses when the camera is 3 ft away. Portrait mode is for my shot's 4 ft and beyond. Even at my measly 2.4 megapixels, and after cropping all of my pics, I still have to resize them down to 800x600 before uploading. This goes for the close up leaf shots!

The mistake many people make with digital cameras is that they try to crop the picture in the viewfinder like they used to do when using film, even at the cost of the pic going out of focus. Like I said earlier, always get the camera as close as possible but maintain perfect focus (even if it means you have to be 10 feet away), bring the picture into your editor of choice, crop away the crap you don't want (the more you get rid of the better for pic clarity), then resize it down to 800x600 (if your crop is below 800x600 then leave it be). When taking pics where I want true color (leaf or root shots) I'll take one with and without flash to see which gives the best color since the flash can sometimes wash out the subject matter (I'll delete the one which looks worse).

Using my touchpad I can crop, resize and save a pic in under 15 seconds and faster if using a regular mouse. It takes only a few minutes more if I edit in text or boxes or arrow.

If your camera takes pics at a higher resolution than 800x600 (what this website allows) then you can take advantage of this technique. The higher the resolution means the more you can crop away and get a nice clear shot, with detail, of your subject.

My cam is like from the first generation of digital cameras, it is a very poor specimen lol. im not particularly worried about it anymore, and heres why :

I took them out from under the HPS today and had a good look at them in natural light.Wow they do look different when theyre out the cab.Theyre very near harvest day, and to be honest my estimate was almost perfect (i seem to be having good luck with these estimates). My plants WILL be ready for harvest on the 17th no question about it that is the day, its happening , this is now a fact

I am confident in my decision , i have studied enough to know what i'm talking about (to any who dont know i have been researching growing for the last 4-5 years but this is my first actual grow, and i am very pleased with how it has come out).

I have gotten much more than i ever expected from these plants, and there will be other grows which will outshine this one tenfold in my future, this was just me seeing if i could actually do it with no materials and a tiny budget.

I gave them their last dose of nutes today, now its all up to them , they will be in darkness from 8PM Thursday night until 8AM saturday morning and then chop chop choppin up my girls, i might actually shed a tear. Its damn wierd i almost dont want to kill them ROFL

Another sidenote to my reasoning.

Remember everybody, when i say i am harvesting on the 17th (7.5 weeks of 12/12), what we all need to remember was i lowered my light cycle by one hour every day from 18/6 to 12/12. My Second day of 12/12 i could see pistils forming. I think that experiment was a success and that factor will remain constant for all my future grows. Another reason why i think a few more days til choppin time

I like that experiment and think its a great way to grow! I did mine at 30 minutes a day. A good way to do it is start your light at like 20/4, then do half an hour a day until you get to 12/12. So like 8 real good veg days with more than 16 hours of light, then 8 more days of extended light leading to 12/12. Wonder if you would see pistils any sooner this way...

gumball said:

I like that experiment and think its a great way to grow! I did mine at 30 minutes a day. A good way to do it is start your light at like 20/4, then do half an hour a day until you get to 12/12. So like 8 real good veg days with more than 16 hours of light, then 8 more days of extended light leading to 12/12. Wonder if you would see pistils any sooner this way...

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I like the 30 min a day even more than the 1 hour a day idea, i will try it on my next grow. But i can tell you at day 2 of 12/12 i was seein pistils. Remember when we grow we are trying to synthesize mother nature so this has just gotta be the way forward

yeppers did this with matilda

riddleme said:

yeppers did this with matilda

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Haha Sweet i know im right if u agree did you notice the change from girl to woman any quicker ?

SensiStan said:

Haha Sweet i know im right if u agree did you notice the change from girl to woman any quicker ?

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did not do it for flower, rather went up in 15 min increments for re-veg, but same principal. Just did not think of doing it till then, but will be doing it on this grow in fact will start at 14 hours and work up for veg, then back down to flower

plus gonna do the new monster cropping thing they are talking about in the advanced forum

riddleme said:

did not do it for flower, rather went up in 15 min increments for re-veg, but same principal. Just did not think of doing it till then, but will be doing it on this grow in fact will start at 14 hours and work up for veg, then back down to flower

plus gonna do the new monster cropping thing they are talking about in the advanced forum

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Monster Cropping you say hmm? sounds like it requires a lot of space will make for a good read. i've had some wierd and wonderful ideas for boosting yield per plant with lst ,topping, fimming and a scrog all being used at the same time with making it rain and the above lighting ideas (also root stimulants and boosting agents [all organic of course] ). My next grow is going to be super professional

SensiStan said:

Another sidenote to my reasoning.

Remember everybody, when i say i am harvesting on the 17th (7.5 weeks of 12/12), what we all need to remember was i lowered my light cycle by one hour every day from 18/6 to 12/12. My Second day of 12/12 i could see pistils forming. I think that experiment was a success and that factor will remain constant for all my future grows. Another reason why i think a few more days til choppin time

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After harvest you should maybe go out and invest in a new camera!! We want to see what you've been growing! hahahahaha

Seriously though, great job with the grow. I like the idea of reducing down the clock. I'm not sure I'll be able to do that in a perpetual environment.

So while I have your attention, what do you guys think about that CMH bulb (400W) that OldGoat is trying to get me to try. Honestly it looks great but I'm one of those "too good to be true" kind of guys. I did a bit of research and will do a bit more. But my thinking is, pay $60 for a 400W CMB bulb (I already bought a 430W HPS) instead of spending $100 on a new portable AC unit. Have you guys heard/have any experience with CMH bulbs? I'm supposed to be able to use it in my magnetic 400W HPS ballast so that's a good thing. But it's supposed to be more lumens, better flowering spectrum all with reduced heat signature.

jsgamber said:

After harvest you should maybe go out and invest in a new camera!! We want to see what you've been growing! hahahahaha

Seriously though, great job with the grow. I like the idea of reducing down the clock. I'm not sure I'll be able to do that in a perpetual environment.

So while I have your attention, what do you guys think about that CMH bulb (400W) that OldGoat is trying to get me to try. Honestly it looks great but I'm one of those "too good to be true" kind of guys. I did a bit of research and will do a bit more. But my thinking is, pay $60 for a 400W CMB bulb (I already bought a 430W HPS) instead of spending $100 on a new portable AC unit. Have you guys heard/have any experience with CMH bulbs? I'm supposed to be able to use it in my magnetic 400W HPS ballast so that's a good thing. But it's supposed to be more lumens, better flowering spectrum all with reduced heat signature.

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well of course riddleme is about to use one. but IAm5toned has a perpetual grow with a 400 watt cmh in it. i am sure he will give you his take, and I think he has MH and HPS too. heres the link - https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/311480-perpetual-dual-cab-400x250w-mh.html I think since you have a multi-stage grow system, you should try to incorporate it, if nothing else a lower wattage in your veg or cloning cab. i have a 100watt i am putting in a pc this week, wish me luck!!!

I use a 250w HPS in a very enclosed space, but these days all the rage is around the CMH Bulbs which also create less heat , when i've done my AF's i'll probably use a CMH for veg But Sunmaster Bulbs for flowering are in their own class

thanks for stoppin by gamber, i'd let u help smoke it but ur a bit far away

HEhehehe.... Now i'm even more sure my plants are ready as they are now emitting their trademark odour. anybody who has ever handled, smoked or smelt blue cheese will know that its called blue cheese for a reason . It STINKS of stilton cheese its the very best way to describe it, i am sooo chopping these girls on saturday there are many brown hairs. Tomorrow will be my last photo update before they are thrown into darkness for 36 hours

SensiStan said:

HEhehehe.... Now i'm even more sure my plants are ready as they are now emitting their trademark odour. anybody who has ever handled, smoked or smelt blue cheese will know that its called blue cheese for a reason . It STINKS of stilton cheese its the very best way to describe it, i am sooo chopping these girls on saturday there are many brown hairs. Tomorrow will be my last photo update before they are thrown into darkness for 36 hours

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I don't think you should. It's only day 49 according to your last update. I wouldn't even think about till next week at the earliest.