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My buddy SaskView from Canada made a really cool video involving laser triggered high speed photography. You can check out this url for more detail.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Laser-Triggered-High-Speed-Photography/
He put together a little synopsis of what he did below.
"I've been playing with something called Canon Hack development Kit (CHDK) that replaces the firmware on numerous Canon cameras. It allows you to override the normal functions and to even run programs on the camera. Stuff that you normally can't do on an inexpensive, point-and-shoot camera. Using CHDK and a simple circuit that senses when a laser beam has been interrupted, I can take high-speed photo's like those milk drops made famous by Harold Edgerton."
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Footage Shot In Outer space for a whopping $150
Meet the $150 (almost to) Space Camera.
Bespoke is old hat. Off-the-shelf is in. Even Google runs the world’s biggest and scariest server farms on computers home-made from commodity parts. DIY is cheaper and often better, as Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh found out when they decided to send a camera into space.
The two students (from MIT, of course) put together a low-budget rig to fly a camera high enough to photograph the curvature of the Earth. Instead of rockets, boosters and expensive control systems, they filled a weather balloon with helium and hung a styrofoam beer cooler underneath to carry a cheap Canon A470 compact camera. Instant hand warmers kept things from freezing up and made sure the batteries stayed warm enough to work.
Of course, all this would be pointless if the guys couldn’t find the rig when it landed, so they dropped a prepaid GPS-equipped cellphone inside the box for tracking. Total cost, including duct tape? $148.
Launch
Two weeks ago, on Sept. 2, at the leisurely post-breakfast hour of 11:45 a.m., the balloon was launched from Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Lee and Yeh took a road trip in order to compensate for the prevailing winds, which could have otherwise taken the balloon out onto the Atlantic, and checked in on the University of Wyoming’s balloon trajectory website to estimate the landing site.
Because of spotty cellphone coverage in central Massachusetts, it was important to keep the rig in the center of the state so it could be found upon landing. Light winds meant the guys got lucky and, although the cellphone’s external antenna was buried upon landing, the fix they got as the balloon was coming down was close enough.
The Photographs
The balloon and camera made it up high enough to see the black sky curling around our blue planet. The Canon was hacked with the CHDK (Canon Hacker’s Development Kit) open-source firmware, which adds many features to Canon’s cameras. The intervalometer (interval timer) was set to shoot a picture every five seconds, and the 8-GB memory card was enough to hold pictures for the five-hour duration of the flight.
The video captures the unit going around 93,000 feet, just shy of 18 miles high. It’s short of the widely-accepted Kármán line, which is at 100km (62 miles) up, but it’s in the stratosphere, and it’s still impressive. To give you an idea of how high that is, when the balloon burst, the beer-cooler took 40 minutes to come back to Earth.
What is most astonishing about this launch, named Project Icarus, is that anyone could do it. The budget is so small as to be almost nonexistent (the guys slept in their car the night before the launch to save money), so that even if everything went wrong, a second, third or fourth attempt would be easy. All it took was a grand idea and an afternoon poking around the hardware store.
Check out this amazing still imagery. Wow!
Bespoke is old hat. Off-the-shelf is in. Even Google runs the world’s biggest and scariest server farms on computers home-made from commodity parts. DIY is cheaper and often better, as Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh found out when they decided to send a camera into space.
The two students (from MIT, of course) put together a low-budget rig to fly a camera high enough to photograph the curvature of the Earth. Instead of rockets, boosters and expensive control systems, they filled a weather balloon with helium and hung a styrofoam beer cooler underneath to carry a cheap Canon A470 compact camera. Instant hand warmers kept things from freezing up and made sure the batteries stayed warm enough to work.
Of course, all this would be pointless if the guys couldn’t find the rig when it landed, so they dropped a prepaid GPS-equipped cellphone inside the box for tracking. Total cost, including duct tape? $148.
Launch
Two weeks ago, on Sept. 2, at the leisurely post-breakfast hour of 11:45 a.m., the balloon was launched from Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Lee and Yeh took a road trip in order to compensate for the prevailing winds, which could have otherwise taken the balloon out onto the Atlantic, and checked in on the University of Wyoming’s balloon trajectory website to estimate the landing site.
Because of spotty cellphone coverage in central Massachusetts, it was important to keep the rig in the center of the state so it could be found upon landing. Light winds meant the guys got lucky and, although the cellphone’s external antenna was buried upon landing, the fix they got as the balloon was coming down was close enough.
The Photographs
The balloon and camera made it up high enough to see the black sky curling around our blue planet. The Canon was hacked with the CHDK (Canon Hacker’s Development Kit) open-source firmware, which adds many features to Canon’s cameras. The intervalometer (interval timer) was set to shoot a picture every five seconds, and the 8-GB memory card was enough to hold pictures for the five-hour duration of the flight.
The video captures the unit going around 93,000 feet, just shy of 18 miles high. It’s short of the widely-accepted Kármán line, which is at 100km (62 miles) up, but it’s in the stratosphere, and it’s still impressive. To give you an idea of how high that is, when the balloon burst, the beer-cooler took 40 minutes to come back to Earth.
What is most astonishing about this launch, named Project Icarus, is that anyone could do it. The budget is so small as to be almost nonexistent (the guys slept in their car the night before the launch to save money), so that even if everything went wrong, a second, third or fourth attempt would be easy. All it took was a grand idea and an afternoon poking around the hardware store.
Check out this amazing still imagery. Wow!
Saturday, September 5, 2009
HVX200 vs Canon 5D Mark II
Two drastically different devices are compared by kossomedia. The Panasonic HVX200A and the Canon 5D Mark II. I found it interesting because this really is a reflection of our time. One where we can compare high end prosumer camcorders to professional still cameras. Moreover, a time where uncertainty exists in the minds of still photographers and videographers can be understood when you watch this video because the quality is pretty close in many ways. Ahhh...the convergence between all mediums continues to pick up steam.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Make A Doggy Cam
I really enjoy my dog Eli. So much so that I thought it would be fun to figure out a way to mount a camera on him and call it a doggy cam. My buddy Darren Schmidt (cinematographer for GurillaTV) generously donated his POV.1 made by VIO. It is a nice cigar camera that is supposed to be waterproof, dustproof, and shock resistant. All good things when putting a camera on a 90 pound beast like my four-legged goof ball.
Here is a fun video tutorial that shows the doggy cam below.
Here is my film entitled NAUGHTY PRIEST that contains a shot (it only lasts like 2 seconds) from the doggy cam footage above.
Here is a fun video tutorial that shows the doggy cam below.
Here is my film entitled NAUGHTY PRIEST that contains a shot (it only lasts like 2 seconds) from the doggy cam footage above.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Time-lapse filmmaking talk
Godfrey Reggio's first film KOYAANISQATSI changed my perspective on time-lapse photography. This film should be watched by every filmmaker because it gave birth to the explosion of what we know as time-lapse today. Everything from CBS's Survivor to the recent Beijing Olympics uses this style of photography. If you are not familiar with the film you can watch the trailer below.
I have been experimenting with time-lapse videography for a long time. It is a really cool way of viewing the world from a altered perspective. The ability to watch something 1000x faster then it is normally viewed can create a visceral experience and help you see something in a whole new light.
I have found that time-lapse is a great way to show an event to a mass audience. An event that would normally bore people can be very engaging when it only lasts a minute or two. My video ONE MINUTE ENGINE REBUILD -DIRECTORS CUT is my favorite of all of them. I shot the repair over a period of three days. I set up a 1k lowel tungsten balanced light, and put my Panasonic DVX-100A on a tripod with lots of sandbags. I set up the camcorder on a 100 shutter, 3.2 Kelvin white balance, 2.8 exposure, and a fixed focal of 72 for the event. I set the time-lapse to recording 15frames every 1 minute. In post I took the footage and multiplied it by 1000%, cut out the dead spots where the work was not progressing, applied frame blend, and added music from my Smartsound collection. The rest is history.
Here is another fun video of car repair. Since i'm mechanically inclined and don't have the money to pay a mechanic, I might as well combine both of my skills right? This video incorporated all the same camera settings I used before. The difference is I wanted to see what it would be like to view a time-lapse that jumps all over the place. I move the camera at least a dozen times throughout the process to give a different perspective. Check it out!
I have been experimenting with time-lapse videography for a long time. It is a really cool way of viewing the world from a altered perspective. The ability to watch something 1000x faster then it is normally viewed can create a visceral experience and help you see something in a whole new light.
I have found that time-lapse is a great way to show an event to a mass audience. An event that would normally bore people can be very engaging when it only lasts a minute or two. My video ONE MINUTE ENGINE REBUILD -DIRECTORS CUT is my favorite of all of them. I shot the repair over a period of three days. I set up a 1k lowel tungsten balanced light, and put my Panasonic DVX-100A on a tripod with lots of sandbags. I set up the camcorder on a 100 shutter, 3.2 Kelvin white balance, 2.8 exposure, and a fixed focal of 72 for the event. I set the time-lapse to recording 15frames every 1 minute. In post I took the footage and multiplied it by 1000%, cut out the dead spots where the work was not progressing, applied frame blend, and added music from my Smartsound collection. The rest is history.
Here is another fun video of car repair. Since i'm mechanically inclined and don't have the money to pay a mechanic, I might as well combine both of my skills right? This video incorporated all the same camera settings I used before. The difference is I wanted to see what it would be like to view a time-lapse that jumps all over the place. I move the camera at least a dozen times throughout the process to give a different perspective. Check it out!
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