TINYenormous – Build it up to break it down again – Page 11

Yeah Sparkfun! Pure WIN.

So this post is a big shout out to Sparkfun Electronics. Not only are they an interesting shop that has tons of stuff I would love to tinker with, but they give really good customer service as well!

Recently I ordered a bunch of stuff from them, including a few temperature sensors, thermistors, and an rf transmitter/receiver pair. I ordered, they shipped, and then fedex delivered it to my front porch where it was promptly stolen. I was super bummed to come home and find nothing. I had the whole afternoon off and I was planning on putting in some serious geek time in the basement. Needless to say, fedex dropped the ball by leaving it at my front door (on a busy street, less that 3 feet away from the sidewalk) and some jerk ended up with an envelope full of stuff they probably promptly threw away.

I left a message on Sparkfun’s site and filed a claim with fedex. Paul Robinson from sparkfun got back to me fairly quickly (he even tried to call(!), but I wasn’t around) and they shipped out a replacement order.

I was initially really down about not having anything to play with over the weekend, but this is honestly the best-case-scenario considering it wasn’t sparkfun’s fault that the package was stolen from my porch.

So thanks, sparkfun. I appreciate it, and keep up the good work!

UPDATE
Two more things for icing on the cake, my package arrived today(YES!), and I asked Paul a question about hackerspaces in boulder during our emails about the stolen package. He said he didn’t know of any but would pass it on to someone who would. Yesterday I received an email from Nathan Seidle, the CEO. I love the fact that their customer service provides service, I love the fact that they wanted to make it right, and I love the fact that their ceo took time to answer my question.

DIY Depth of Field (dof) adapter – for sony vx2100

diydof_attached
I love the tight dof look that you can get with cine lenses. I have always been greatly saddened by the lack of dof in consumer and prosumer cameras. I have gone through a few iterations of building different half-assed diy dof adapters. This current one is based on a cd player motor spinning a ground down cd blank with one side sanded to a matte finish. The case is a 2 outlet electrical junction box painted black inside and out. It has a nikon lens mount from a $10 macro tube jb welded to the outside, an external battery pack, and a power switch.

The theory of a dof adapter.
Something having to do with the dimensions of the image sensor and the lens optics means that most digital videocameras have very wide depth of field. What depth of field means is that if you are interviewing them sitting at their desk chair, then their desk and the wall behind them are all in focus. The range of things that are in focus is called the depth of field. By using an adapter you can control this field with lens and aperture selection.

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CHDK Update

chdk_splash screen

So as I referenced in an earlier post, I bit the bullet and bought a camera so I could test out CHDK. CHDK is a hacked firmware for canon cameras that use one of three imge sensors. I believe it is the digic 2, 3, and 4 sensors. It turns out that all of the powershot line uses the same image sensors. The optics, buttons and features are added or removed based on the price point of the camera. If you use CHDK you can enable them AND add new features the designers may never have thought of! click here to find a compatible camera on amazon More info about my trials and tribulations after the jump.

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How to use Ac power to replace the Nikon D40 battery

I still haven’t gotten the grip I mentioned a few posts ago. I don’t know if I will. I have figured out a clumsy hack to get the job done and I might just run it this way, or perhaps clean it up a tiny bit.

This is the battery with little aluminum strips taped to it. The battery compartment is too tight for regular wires, so foil was the only way to do it.

aluminum foil wiring for battery pack d40

This pic shows the “wires” coming out of the battery grip. I have alligator clips on a 7.3V 200Ma cell phone charger. I connect it to the foil and off we go!

The reason why I have the battery in there is because without it, there isn’t enough juice to fully actuate the shutter. I think that some kind/type of capacitor would also do this, but I’m afraid I don’t what kind would work.

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quickie Nikon lens question

I was at my local camera shop the other day and saw this lens in a junk bin. Does anyone know why? It is a nikon 135 f/3.5 that has no apparent fogging, oil on blades or fungus. It focuses and shoots fine.

My initial thoughts are: it has the “ears” so it can only go on a few dslr’s unmodified. It also is full manual focus and aperture. Is it that the 135 is an odd length?

Here’s a newer faster version for $1,250!

The other weird thing is that someone has scratched off the nikkor name on the front of the lens. I should have asked the shop, but does anyone know why this lens would be $5? Thanks for your guesses!

Arduino Intervalometer for my Nikon d40

After seeing this project from cibomahto a while ago, I finally got my act together and bought a $1 IR led from radio$hack so I could build an intervalometer for my SLR.

For those who don’t know an intervalometer is, it tells your computer to take a picture every given interval. This enables you to shoot video with a still camera over a long period of time. Sometimes you have two intervals on fancy ones. Those allow you to use the bulb setting on your camera. Right now it has two potentiometers to indicate seconds and minutes between shots. It is run from a nine volt battery, and I expect it to have fairly good battery life. Only time will tell. The IR LED can’t take too much juice! It has a status led to show when it is firing (for trouble shooting) and not a whole lot else.

This currently needs a housing and a interface. I am debating the merits of a small lcd vs just using a printed label to mark the pot positions. It’s pretty much spray and pray right now. At least it is adjustable!

I’m thinking about getting one of these and eliminating the pots completely.

Which would end up making my project very similar to this one but for a nikon.

One last thought is possibly adding the functionality to use the bulb setting and then add a bracketing ability. Isn’t technology wonderful!

Time Lapses

I had a lot of time to kill over break, so I shot a bunch of timelapses. Here they are!

This is from a coffeeshop that I spent a lot of my time in.

This is of some clouds at dusk. This one has two separate positions, and it is really interesting to see the color shift towards the end of the video. I also have it on auto-something(ISO?), so it isn’t very consistent frame to frame.

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7 questions for my avid fans

Seeing as how I am constantly inundated by media requests – I figured I would use my podium here to ask the readers a few questions. I look at it as distributed googling really, and hopefully finding some vetted answers in the sea of confusion that is out there.

1) has anyone used CHDK here? It is a modified firmware for certain cameras, and seemingly it allows you to get very low level access to the camera. With it you can enable time lapse mode, Raw shooting, video, motion detection, and I think they are working on time travel. This seems like an amazing project. Does anyone have any success with it? Does anyone have any recommendations on cameras? Im kind of looking at the SD1100 and the SD600.

and lastly, does anyone have any recommendations on where to find said camera cheaply? I’m running dd-wrt on my home router and have a hacked xbox, so this seems like it is within my reach, just looking for people with experience in it.

2) does anyone know of any good anti flicker plugins for after effects (or anything else (on a mac)) that will remove the frame-to-frame luminance variations of a dslr time lapse?

3) does anyone know why frame-to-frame luminance variations happen on my d40 running in complete darkness with a manual lens and a flash?

4) does anyone know of a good guide to moving an arduino project towards a mass producible item? Lets say I would like to make a one board version of my arduino rss reader – how would I go about doing that?

5) How much does the average human heart weigh?

6) Does anyone know of a comparison between the online stock video sites from a submitter’s perspective? Does anyone have experience with any specific sites? (feel free to email me if you would rather not post publicly – “r” at this domain, no prefix.)

7) Enough about me – Why are you here? What kinds of projects brought you here, and what kinds of projects would you like to see here?

Thanks for your time, and hopefully your answers!

powering a nikon d40 from an ac outlet

I have been shooting a lot of time lapses lately. The biggest problem with that is battery life. I have a very ghetto hack to power the camera from a cell phone charger, but I am looking for a more permanent solution. I found a fotodiox battery grip on amazon that has an internal battery, and is able to charge from the wall. Getting the right answers out of the vendor has proved to be difficult, so I’m afraid that I may just have to buy it and try it. Does anyone out there in internet-land have this already? And can anyone tell me if it will run from ac power? I am looking at multiple day long shoots, so changing batteries (and bumping the camera each time) just isn’t an option.

Here’s the link to the grip – Any opinions?

Ahhhh…. Thrift stores

I was checking out the local thrift store yesterday and I saw a few filters in their (usually just point and shoot) camera section. I grabbed them and wandered around for a while. When it was time for checkout I tested a theory I have had for a while now. Thrift stores in general (and this one in specific) are really arbitrary about their pricing. Sometimes they will give you a great price on good gear, and sometimes they will gouge you for junk.

Here is how the conversation went.

Me – Here you go!

Her – What are those things?

Me – I dunno, they look like slides, or maybe tiny picture frames.

Her – really? Let me see?

Her – oh, do you know what these are?

Me – Nope

Her – I think they are camera lenses?

Me – really? I was thinking I was going to paint on them?

Her – OK, Cool! That’ll be $1.61

Now this was for a polarizer, a Neutral Density filter and another I don’t remember. The tax alone on those three filters new would have been more than I paid for them. I feel a little bad about lying, but then again, why don’t they price their stuff before you bring it up to the register?

I love looking in thrift stores, I love finding even more!