looks like the camera needs to be set to take pictures more instantly to be practical.

Posted at 2:28 pm on Jun 19th, 2009 by hang

@hang
You’ll notice the autofocus light come on as soon as he breaks the beam. That’s just how long the camera takes to take a picture. Maybe if he used chdk to manual focus it could be quicker but it’s not the trigger that’s causing the lag.

Posted at 3:10 pm on Jun 19th, 2009 by anonymous

the audrino is extra here

Posted at 8:42 pm on Jun 19th, 2009 by therian

i agree with therian
the motion detection scripts would probably be faster for this

Posted at 10:10 pm on Jun 19th, 2009 by kyndal

I was thinking that I’d suggest using a photo transistor since they have a much faster response than a photoresistor, but after looking at the video and comments I agree that something else is making this much slower than the few extra ms from a photoresistor.

That said, I think this project is useful for a lot of applications. For instance if your camera is set to a wide angle and you want to take a picture of people walking through a room this should work fine. Nice article.

Posted at 6:32 am on Jun 20th, 2009 by ribblem

chdk allows to half-press the shutter in scripts to make the camera focus, set white balance and charge the flash. You can then full-press the shutter and get much better response times (just like you can do by hand).

Posted at 9:13 am on Jun 20th, 2009 by vic

Would it be worth adding a resistor between pin 12 and the camera to ensure you don’t burn out the pin or am i just being paranoid?

Posted at 10:26 am on Jun 20th, 2009 by Nick