Now that 3D printers are beginning to proliferate, I thought I’d offer up these STL files for use in rapid-protoyping and model making. I made this model back in the day for use in a Cinefex ad, and it was also used to make many of the resin models that people are selling.  These have been sitting on a hard drive for a decade, which is a shame. If you have access to a RP printer you can print your own model kit using these files.

2001 POD

I’m not claiming anyone on the PanoCamera team is that newsworthy. However, when the LA Times features you in a story, you have to blog about it, right? This is the same news crew that found that homeless -uh, violin- soloist. Here’s a link (to my story, not the soloist.)

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2010/03/alice-in-wonderland-gets-model-effort-from-gentle-giant.html

The stories of photographers being harassed for shooting in public places might make it seem like we’re slowly losing civil rights to Big Brother, but this c1939 banner from a Canadian museum suggests that such situations might be cyclical.

Navi took some pictures of me while I was using the Nintendo DS shooting rig at Whistler today. Although he promised to send me the shots, I realized that most of the time I might never see these images, and I probably have a bad track record of getting shots of others back in any timely manner. (I think it took three years before I gave Angela pictures of herself in London.) I usually return with several hundred images that go into the Aperture library/black hole, and once I’ve flown back home days or weeks or months later, I might not even remember to dig the pictures out.

So note to myself: bring a memory card so that you can say something like “Get a shot of me with the ski slopes, oh,and pop in this card so I can have them right away.” Too narcissistic? Given the ratio of photos I have vs. the ones with me in them, I’d say it is probably the only way I’m going to have them.

I’m looking at a pano I did for the Twilight website, and it’s a little depressing. New Moon Site (enter the Volturi Estate.) This was shot with a 5D-2 and a Sigma 8mm. The background pano image is soft, though in truthiness I didn’t do the actor comp-in or final tone-mapping.

I’m wondering how it might be done better, short of a more extensive pano shoot with the motor mount and multiple tiles. With shots like this time is of the essence, what you can’t see in the image is the video interview crew and the carpenters rigging the set and wondering with anger when I’ll get out of the way.

Putting aside the issue of sensor quaility, let’s look at the number of pixels a 7D will devote to the image when the 8mm lens is used. With this lens one essentially captures a 180 degree view, although image quality near the edge is greatly reduced – overlapping multiple shots ameliorates this.

As this diagram shows, the 7D will create a much higher resolution image in the “sweet spot” of the lens, and the portion lost on the edge will be covered by additional pano tile shots that would be needed with the 5D Mark II as well. There’s a bit of cropping at the top and bottom, but the bottom is usually obscured by the tripod head, and there are tools available for zenith & nadir replacement.

The slightly lesser quality of the 7D sensor will not be an issue, because the final HDR image will be compiled from 11 exposures at one stop increments, which helps overcome high iso noise and other quality issues.

I’m gearing up for (update: went on shoot) with Doc Russel Brown after Comic-Con, and I’m seriously considering NOT hiking 15 miles in the desert heat with an entire 5DMkII outfit. This preliminary test is to see how much can be squeezed from a point and shoot.

I bought the Polaroid X530, a 4.5 MP Foveon based camera “broken” on Ebay for $15. Actually they were so cheap I bought two guessing I could fix one with parts from both, but both cameras arrived in perfect working order. I wanted to use the Foveon after reading “The Silicon Eye” by George Gilder. Having started out with an Amiga, I can relate to the pariah aspect of the Sigma chips. Other things going for it: A raw image format, It has a Ricoh lens, and I assume they make better lenses than the Polaroid holding company, even though I know it can’t touch a Canon L – though all lenses have their share of aberrations. The Foveon chip design moots Bayer pattern artifacts (for this level of resolution – I don’t think the Bayer pattern has much of an effect on the 5D2 with a 5.4 micron element size) and the sealed imager means far fewer sensor dirt spots than a DSLR.

The plan: to rewire all of the camera functions to be under Viliv control, so that HDR sequences and other functions can be captured without touching or jostling the camera. Ideally it will be a roadmap to gaining total control of every function on the E-P1 when it arrives.

Wires are run to each button on the camera

This is where I start to wonder why some cameras are not built for hacking. The wires are run to a control harness in the only free space available inside the camera. From there, they will be run to a microcontroller circuit that chats with the Viliv.

Some test images: the X530 saves to a Sigma raw format, and from nine images stacked in HDR software we can get true 32-bit images from a 99 cent camera. (The rest of the cost was for shipping.)

Since some grumpy old coots think being too interested in the “process” makes me a technician, not a photographer, I submit these technographs… remember they’re not photos!

What walks down stairs, alone, or in pairs? It fits easily in your jeans pocket on photohikes, yet supports the full power of the Canon camera SDK. It boots in five seconds and can even run Lightroom. The Viliv S5 “Unlimited Excitement Walking PC”, unlike the Slinky, actually lives up to expectations. Canon finally sent a link to the latest EDSDK, so I was able to begin converting the DS HDR bracket program as well as the pano mount controller as soon as the S5 arrived.

Because it uses a touch screen control, I can set up bracketing ranges in seconds, and I can (or will, when I’m finished) set up pano shot angles by dragging the camera icon directly on screen.

If you look at the Nintendo DS camera controller further down the blog, you’ll see that many of the features here are derived from that project. It also supports live-view and focus bracketing, so I’ll be able to do much more because of the Viliv’s USB host controller. Next steps will be to add compatibiity with some of my other bodies, beyond the Canons, I’ll attempt to add control for the Casio FXH1, and the Olympus E-P1, and the good old G9.

I checked, DontEverTryThis.com is available, and I considered reserving it for this hack, because you should never do this to a $2700 camera. I debated posting this, but I had already promised the DS shooter user’s group that I’d give it a try.

Bracket sequences don’t seem to work with live-view enabled.  I needed to find a way to lock the mirror through an entire shooting sequence. Upon studying the 5D’s mirror mechanism, I found that the mirror is spring loaded, and will not force it self back down after swinging up, if it is -somehow- held in place. Barring modifying the camera’s body, I found the easiest way to seize the mirror is by attaching a knob to the back of the lens. I don’t think this will work with smaller sensors, there is only a small “window of opportunity” that is not exposed on an APS sized body.

The gimmick is to attach half of a rubber bumper to the edge of the lens, so that a rule held to the top edge of the glass is tangent to the bumper. This will gently hold the mirror up out of the way, only if the mirror is moved up using the camera manual cleaning function before the lens is attached. Do this wrong, and the mirror will crash or the bumper will dislodge and the sticky residue on the back of it will naturally fall onto the sensor.

The cleaning function. Real high-quality image, Eddie?

So why on Earth would I do this? Image quality, plain and simple. (Empirical data to follow.) There is significantly less impact resonance inside the camera body when the mirror is not slammed to the top before every image, and thanks to the Gods of live-view, focusing through the viewfinder is moot in situations where I need to take several aligned exposures.

Mirror locked up by the manual cleaning function

The alternative is to wait longer after pressing the shutter in ML mode for the vibration to settle, then expose the image. In pictures like this bridge, a 1 second settling period would add 15 seconds to the exposure sequence, and at sunset & with wind and water, a lot can move in 15 seconds.

Multiple Exposureness

Some of the programs included:

I wish I had more time to use the astrophotgraphy module…. too…sleepy…

Included e-manuals as well:

The first image from a Nikon D100 connected to a Nintendo DS for bracketing (of whatever happened to be next to this desk.) Good news: Exif data seems to be correct, unlike Canon’s rounding off to the nearest second. Bad news: unlike the Canon’s… on this camera at least, the controlled shot time will not go below 1/4 second. It will always take a 1/4 second shot any time a shorter shot is requested.

The non-bracketed image: