Hackszine.com: Photography Archives

Archive: Photography

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September 28, 2008

Controlling a Nikon or Canon camera with a Nintendo DS

Louise - Paisley wrote in to tell us about a very cool project from Steve of PanoCamera:

In my day-to-day routine I often find myself having to do extensive photographic documentation of objects or locations, only there is often someone waiting to turn off the lights, or move objects, or any myriad of possible interruptions. This is one reason why using a camera tethered to a laptop can be a pain. The computer is a burden to travel with, takes five minutes to boot, the batteries run low, the ten minutes you had to get the job done just became five... It occurred to me that if I could somehow tether a DSLR to an instant-on device like an Arduino microcontroller I would have less weight to carry around and could get more work done. After mentally spec'ing out what I would need, I realized the solution was right in front of me - because I bring it with me for Mario Kart wireless races on long night jobs - (In the manner of John Lasseter's slow epiphany voice): "Use-the-Nintendo-D-S." Duh.

Check out the author's blog for more information: this will be available soon as a combined hardware/software package for about $100. Panocamera DSLR Control

September 13, 2008

Removing tourists from your travel photos

Sometimes it's nearly impossible to get the perfect photograph in a popular tourist location, without having gobs of people crossing into view. Wired's how-to wiki has a useful entry on removing these bipedal obstructions from your travel photos.

The trick is to use a tripod to take a number of duplicate photos. Each photo should have some portion of the subject unobstructed, and if you take enough of them, you should have every portion of the subject represented in at least on of the files. If you use the same settings and frame all of the shots exactly alike (hence the tripod), it's then just a simple matter of stacking all of the versions on top of each other and cutting out the tourist portion of each layer. All that will remain is the intended subject, and assuming you were careful to capture enough images, there won't be any gaps left behind.

There are a lot of things that can make it easier to achieve good results with this method. Simply, the closer each of the images are to each other, the less visual artifacts you'll have to deal with in post processing. Using a tripod to keep the framing stable, enabling manual focus, fixing the exposure settings, and taking the photos as close to the same time of day as possible will go a long way in making your post-travel photo reconstruction efforts less of a chore.

Remove Tourists From Travel Photos

September 7, 2008

DIY photography speed strap

To obtain certain lighting effects, you sometimes need to attach things to your flash head, such as gel filters or bounce cards. Normally, this involves fussing around trying to strap things down with a rubber band or opting to gum up your equipment with sticky-backed velcro or tape. Instead you can create a cheap speed strap that's both easily removable and simple to attach things to.

There are commercial solutions for this that can be a bit pricey, but Jake O'Connell found a way to make one on the cheap for about $3. Velcro came out with something called a "Design Strap", which is basically a zip-tie with Velcro on one side. Put a rubber band around your flash and then wrap a couple Design Straps over that and you have an attachment system that stays put, comes off easy, and is simple to attach things to. Just add velcro to your gels, bounce cards or whatever and you can quickly affix them to the flash however you like.

DIY 3 Dollar 10 Second Speed Strap

August 30, 2008

Pringles can macro photography

With an empty Pringles can and some lens and body covers, Photocritic devised a way to make a reliable extension tube for taking macro photos. You can make the tube for a few bucks worth of materials - unless you have spares, in which case it's free. Once it's made, you just wrap a standard lens in fabric, shove it backwards in the tube, and slide it in and out of the tube to adjust focus, similar to how a bellows would function. The photo above, which he took of a match head, really illustrates how cool this is, especially when you consider the cost.

Extreme Macro Photography on a budget

August 28, 2008

iPhone macro focus

Daniel Forsythe put together a walkthrough that shows you how to disassemble your iPhone (original or 3G) and adjust the lens for taking close-up photography. The image above is from his Flickr account, demonstrating the camera focused at about 4 inches - perfect for taking project photos. You can adjust the lens to focus anywhere from infinity (the default) to less than an inch, but you'll need to take apart your phone to adjust it. If you take a lot of close up photos of projects, notes, or bugs, now you can tweak your phone and find a setting that works well for your needs.

Close-focus your iPhone 3G [via Gadget Lab]

August 2, 2008

Film canister flash diffuser

When you take pictures with the built-in flash on your digital camera, it's common to get a washed-out, deer-in-headlights result from your subject. This is particularly noticeable with portraits and close-range photography. To obtain a softer, more natural look from your photographs and eliminate the glare, you need a flash diffuser to help disperse and soften the light.

If you have an old white film canister and an x-acto knife, you can make a clever little flash diffuser that will slip over the flash on your typical SLR camera. Photojojo has a guide for making one. It should really take you about 5 minutes (assuming you have a canister on hand), so give it a shot. Your photographs—and your photo subjects—will thank you for it.

Make Your Own Flash Diffuser from an Old Film Container

June 25, 2008

Image Fulgurator - subverting other people's photos

Berlin hacker Julius von Bismarck invented and patented the Image Fulgurator, a device so awesome that it can remotely insert images into other people's photos.

You aim the device at the same subject that another person is photographing, and when they snap a photo the resulting image will be manipulated with a separate, overlayed photo. The person taking the photo will have no idea anything happened until they examine their photo.

The result is pure magic. Here's a clip of the first public "image fulguration".

The device uses a standard 35mm camera body and lens as a projector. Instead of undeveloped film, the camera is loaded with exposed, developed slide film. A flash is built into the back of the camera, sending light backwards through the body, past the the slide and out the telephoto lens. A light sensor is used to trigger the flash when another camera's flash goes off. Thus, when someone else takes a photo, the Fulgurator zaps its slide's image onto the object for a few milliseconds.

In you want to make something like this, you can use some of the techniques that folks typically use to photograph lightning. Below is a link to a simple Arduino project that will give your SLR a light activated shutter release.

While you're at it, take a crack at making your own Fulgurator with a bit more stealth factor. I'm pretty sure I'd get tazed walking around downtown waving this thing around.

It'd almost be worth it.

Image Fulgurator by Julius von Bismarck [via The Future is Awesome]
Lightning Trigger for a Camera

June 9, 2008

Time lapse movies using a graphing caclulator

If you want to shoot time lapse movies with your DSLR, you need an intervalometer, a simple device which sends a signal to your camera to trigger the shutter at a timed interval. You can buy one for around $100, or you can write a few lines of basic and have your trusty TI calculator take timed photos for you, resulting in nifty movies like this:

Yonderknight has an Instructable for doing exactly this with a standard TI 83. You can connect a Canon EOS Rebel to the calculator with the standard 2.5mm data link socket, and the software just sends a 1 down the line once a second. Matt Coneybeare tool this a step further with his code for the TI-89, allowing the user to specify a duration and interval period.

Both howtos walk you through the whole process, including a couple of recommendations for importing and converting the image frames into a video. It should be pretty straightforward to adapt either of these methods to your specific TI platform and video needs.

Turn a TI-83 into an intervalometer
Time-lapse code for the TI-89

May 31, 2008

Create a macro lens from an old 50mm

Lambert Smith has a great howto for converting a standard 50mm lens from an old SLR camera into a dedicated macro lens for your digital camera. By reversing the 50mm lens and using a number of extension tubes. The photo above is his conversion hack on a Canon Powershot G3, which has a non-interchangeable zoom lens. Custom adapters can be made by gluing filter rings back to back, so you can do this with a normal digital, a DSLR, or even a traditional film camera.

Once set up in this manner, your camera will have a fixed point of focus (unless you use a bellows). When taking a photo, you simply move the whole camera toward or away from the subject until it is in focus.

Reversed 50mm - A Dedicated Macro Lens

May 25, 2008

Polaroid emulsion lift

There's a technique called the Polaroid emulsion lift that allows you to transfer a Polaroid print to different materials, such as glass, rock, or watercolor paper. Essentially, you soak a completely dry photo (one that has set for at least 24 hours) in hot water and carefully peel the emulsion layer from the photo backing. The thin layer of film can then be carefully removed, spread over a new surface and allowed to dry.

The video above shows how the process works, and there's a link to more specific details below. This is supposed to work best with type 669 film due to it's really think emulsion layer. That said, people have had great results with other types of film, and a thinner emulsion layer will produce cool crinkly effects and tears, which can also be desirable.

Polaroid emulsion lifts
Emulsion lift example on YouTube

May 10, 2008

Reading EXIF data from images in Javascript

Jacob Seidelin figured out a way to obtain EXIF data from images in Javascript, allowing AJAX applications to pull information about the make and model of camera used, as well as any aperture, focal length, or description information that may have been tagged to an image by the camera or a photo editor.

The exif.js javascript library scans through all IMG tags in your HTML document, looking for the custom exif="true" parameter to be set. The DOM image object doesn't contain the necessary raw image data, so XMLHttpRequest is used to fetch the image data. In Safari and Firefox, the responseText property contains the binary image data. This isn't available in IE, however, but Jacob was able to put together a VBScript alternative that is still able to pull the data from the response.

From your code, pulling the EXIF data for an image becomes as simple as this:

var theimg = document.getElementById("imageid");
alert("Image Make: " + EXIF.getTag(theimg, "Make") + "\nImage Model: " + EXIF.getTag(theimg, "Model"));

How cool is that? I expect we'll see this in every ajax photo gallery soon.

Reading EXIF data with Javascript

May 6, 2008

Using the Canon Hacker's Development Kit

Lifehacker's Adam Pash put together a nice overview for using CDHK, the firmware enhancement toolkit for consumer-grade Canon point and shoot cameras. With CHDK and a compatible Canon device, you can capture images in RAW format, display live RGB histograms while shooting, and even write custom UBASIC scripts to take time-lapse photos or capture lightning strikes. It does all this while running from an SDCard, so it doesn't require permanent modification to the camera's firmware.

Turn Your Point-and-Shoot into a Super-Camera
Canon Hacker's Development Kit WIki
UBASIC Script Programming

March 18, 2008

Paper cameras - old and new

In 1970's Communist Czechoslovakia, the state-run magazine ABCs for Young Technicians and Natural Scientists published a cut-out paper camera called the Dirkon. Looking very much like an old Nikon, the little camera is essentially a simple pin hole design, dressed up to look like its SLR cousin.

Fast forward to 2000's Capitalist USA and you'll find the ReadyMech Cameras which were recently released by adver-warehouse Corbis. Retaining much of the Dirkon cool factor, but looking nothing like a contemporary SLR or digital, there are a number of bizarrely awesome models to choose from.

Whether you dig the ReadyMechs or the classic Dirkon, making the cameras is as simple as printing out a PDF on heavy-weight paper, and following some simple instructions to cut, fold and tape the camera together. To use the camera, you assemble the package around a standard roll of ISO200 35MM film, wind between shots, and pull a little tab aside to expose the film for 10 seconds or so, depending on how bright the lighting is. Getting a clear photo is all about holding still (or setting the camera on a solid surface during exposure).

The Dirkon Paper Camera
ReadyMech Cameras

March 12, 2008

CNC hologram

I posted earlier this week about abrasion holography, a hologram technique that uses a network of simple arc shaped scratches to encode a visible, 3D hologram into a chunk of plastic. Carl was the first to comment on exactly what was on a number of peoples minds:

This is just crying out for someone to generate complex pictures using CNC.

Like many great ideas, someone has already worked this one out! William Beaty was kind enough to write back with a link:

The scratches need to be be almost perfectly smooth with no jaggies at all. Normal CNC doesn't work, but a couple months ago Evan at homeshopmachinist.net found that "drag engraving" does reduce the jaggies enough.

The photo above is Evan's cube, engraved on blackened copper. The top image is what you see in normal diffuse lighting. The bottom is one perspective of the hologram when viewed head-on under a point-source light. Evan writes:

The way this type of hologram is generated is to start with a 2d representation of the subject (the cube in this case). Then an arc is drawn using a point on the visible vertices and edges of the shape. A set of closely spaced points along all visible edges is then used to provide the anchor points for the radii of the arcs. The reason the image isn't perfect appearing is because of slight inaccuracies in the placement of the arcs (my fault) and some waviness in the copper plate which is only 26 gauge material.

There are a lot of creative possibilities with this one. First person to engrave a HACKS hologram on a copper business card wins a standing ovation.

Synthetic Holograms With a CNC Mill - Link
DIY Hand-Drawn Holograms - Link

March 8, 2008

DIY hand-drawn holograms

Typically the creation of a hologram involves lasers and various other expensive equipment and materials. William J. Beaty figured out a low-tech way to create your own holograms using a simple abrasion technique that requires only a compass and a chunk of plastic. He came across the idea while walking through a parking lot, noticing strange hand prints that seemed to float above or deep inside the surface of polished car hoods.

The images were naturally-occurring holograms. The owner of the car had obviously polished the hood with a dirty mit, and the millions of particles of grit in the mit traced out millions of nearly-parallel scratches in the black paint. The particular hand motion had created a geometry of abrasion patterns which turn out to be nearly identical to the interference patterns which make up those embossed-foil Benton whitelight [holograms].

So how do you make one? All you need is a spanner (compass with 2 needles) and a chunk of hard plastic such as Lexan. For simple flat shapes, you just draw the reference shape below where you want the hologram to appear. Set the diameter of the spanner to an inch or two, put one of the points on the shape and score a small arc across the plastic. You then repeat this process for a bunch of other points on the shape, leaving a number of small arc shaped scratches. When you observe the scratches in the light, you'll see a hologram of the shape that appears to float beneath the surface of the plastic.

The image above, from William's site, is actually a stereo photo of one of his holograms. You can cross your eyes to see the effect. The cube that reflects from the scratches appears different based on the angle you view it.

The depth of the hologram is related to the width of the spanner, so you can actually create three dimensional holograms using the same technique. William's FAQs have more details on doing this, as well as hints for creating opaque shapes that have other objects hidden behind them which are only viewable from certain angles.

Abrasion Holography - Link

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