3D-Printed Automated Development Tank For Classic Photo Films

[packetandy] had a problem. He was still into classic analog photography, but local options for development were few and far between. After some frustration, he decided to take on the process himself, creating an automatic development tank for that very purpose.

For black and white film, developing is fairly straightforward, if dull and time consuming. The film requires constant agitation during development, which can be dull to do by hand. To get around this, [packetandy] decided to build a development tank rig that could handle agitation duties for him by wiggling the film around in his absence.

The tank itself is created by Patterson, and has a stick on top for agitating the film inside. The rig works by attaching a NEMA stepper motor to this stick to jerk it around appropriately. Rather than go with a microcontroller and custom code, [packetandy] instead just grabbed a programmable off-the-shelf stepper controller that can handle a variety of modes. It’s not sophisticated, but neither is the job at hand, and it does just fine.

It’s a nifty build that should see [packetandy]’s black-and-white photography on the up and up. Meanwhile, if simple development isn’t enough for you, consider diving into the world of darkroom robot automation if you’re so inclined!

A Concrete Solution To Balance And Protect Camera Gear

Knocking over expensive camera equipment is an unfortunate occupational hazard when filming projects in a workshop. [Dane Kouttron] wanted to stop sacrificing lights to the cause, so he came up with a practical use for a weeble: A self-stabilizing monopod.

Inspired by a giant scale weeble built by [Colin Furze], [Dane] first did the math to determine the parameters for the build. It’s all about achieving torque equilibrium with a hemisphere of concrete, and [Dane] walks us through the equations, arriving at the conclusion that a 2 lb. camera on 4 foot pole, one needs a hemisphere with a mass of 28 lbs. and a radius of just under 4 inches. To achieve this weight in the given volume would require extra dense concrete with steel shot added.

After some CAD work and 3D printing the 4-part mold was assembled, with RTV silicone sealant acting as both adhesive between the parts and mold release agent. [Dane] first did a test mold with concrete he had laying around. With success achieved, he pursued the real mix but had issues with an error in the concrete-water ratio and the difficulty of mixing in the steel shot. On the second attempt he managed to extract a functional hemisphere from the mold, with the pole held in position during curing by a 3D printed bracket.

The hemisphere bottom of the hemisphere has a flat spot to keep it stable when bumped lightly. [Dane] added a Manfroto quick-release mount to the end of the pole to allow easy attachment of lights and cameras. It might be a bit hefty to carry around, but it’s takes up less floor space than a tripod and is sure to save [Dane] from expensive bumps-turned-crashes.

Camera cranes, small and large, are another great tool for workshop cinematography. For sheer overkill it would be hard to beat an 8-axis workshop-sized motion control robot.

Falsified Photos: Fooling Adobe’s Cryptographically-Signed Metadata

Last week, we wrote about the Leica M11-P, the world’s first camera with Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) credentials baked into every shot. Essentially, each file is signed with Leica’s encryption key such that any changes to the image, whether edits to the photo itself or the metadata, are tracked. The goal is to not only prove ownership, but that photos are real — not tampered with or AI-generated. At least, that’s the main selling point.

Although the CAI has been around since 2019, it’s adoption is far from widespread. Only a handful of programs support it, although this list includes Photoshop, and its unlikely anybody outside the professional photography space was aware of it until recently. This isn’t too surprising, as it really isn’t relevant to the casual shooter — when I take a shot to upload to Instagram, I’m rarely thinking about whether or not I’ll need cryptographic proof that the photo wasn’t edited — usually adding #nofilter to the description is enough. Where the CAI is supposed to shine, however, is in the world of photojournalism. The idea is that a photographer can capture an image that is signed at the time of creation and maintains a tamper-proof log of any edits made. When the final image is sold to a news publisher or viewed by a reader online, they are able to view that data.

At this point, there are two thoughts you might have (or, at least, there are two thoughts I had upon learning about the CAI)

  1. Do I care that a photo is cryptographically signed?
  2. This sounds easy to break.

Well, after some messing around with the CAI tools, I have some answers for you.

  1. No, you don’t.
  2. Yes, it is.

Continue reading “Falsified Photos: Fooling Adobe’s Cryptographically-Signed Metadata”

Retrotechtacular: Studio Camera Operation, The BBC Way

If you ever thought that being a television camera operator was a simple job, this BBC training film on studio camera operations will quickly disabuse you of that notion.

The first thing that strikes you upon watching this 1982 gem is just how physical a job it is to stand behind a studio camera. Part of the physicality came from the sheer size of the gear being used. Not only were cameras of that vintage still largely tube-based and therefore huge — the EMI-2001 shown has four plumbicon image tubes along with tube amplifiers and weighed in at over 100 kg — but the pedestal upon which it sat was a beast as well. All told, a camera rig like that could come in at over 300 kg, and dragging something like that around a studio floor all day under hot lights had to be hard. It was a full-body workout, too; one needed a lot of upper-body strength to move the camera up and down against the hydropneumatic pedestal cylinder, and every day was leg day when you had to overcome all that inertia and get the camera moving to your next mark.

Operating a beast like this was not just about the bull work, though. There was a lot of fine motor control needed too, especially with focus pulling. The video goes into a lot of detail on maintaining a smooth focus while zooming or dollying, and shows just how bad it can look when the operator is inexperienced or not paying attention. Luckily, our hero Allan is killing it, and the results will look familiar to anyone who’s ever seen any BBC from the era, from Dr. Who to I, Claudius. Shows like these all had a distinctive “Beeb-ish” look to them, due in large part to the training their camera operators received with productions like this.

There’s a lot on offer here aside from the mechanical skills of camera operation, of course. Framing and composing shots are emphasized, as are the tricks to making it all look smooth and professional. There are a lot of technical details buried in the video too, particularly about the pedestal and how it works. There are also two follow-up training videos, one that focuses on the camera skills needed to shoot an interview program, and one that adds in the complications that arise when the on-air talent is actually moving. Watch all three and you’ll be well on your way to running a camera for the BBC — at least in 1982.

Continue reading “Retrotechtacular: Studio Camera Operation, The BBC Way”

Simple Hack Lets Smartphone Take Resin Printer Time-Lapses

With how cheap they’re getting, everyone seems to be jumping on the resin printer bandwagon. They may not be able to fully replace your trusty old FDM printer, but for certain jobs, they just can’t be beaten. Sadly though, creating those smooth time-lapse videos of your prints isn’t quite as easy to do as it is on their filament-based counterparts.

Not as easy, perhaps, but not impossible. [Fraens] found a way to make time-lapses on any resin printer, and in a wonderfully hacky way. First, you need to find a smartphone, which shouldn’t be too hard, given how often we all tend to upgrade. [Fraens] recommends replacing the standard camera app on the phone with Open Camera, to prevent it from closing during the long intervals with nothing happening. The camera is triggered by any readily available Bluetooth dongle, which is connected via a simple transistor circuit to an Arduino output. To trigger the shutter, a light-dependent resistor (LDR) is connected to one of the microcontroller’s inputs. The LDR is placed inside the bed of the resin printer — an Anycubic Photon in this case — where light from the UV panel used to cross-link the resin can fall on it. A simple bit of Arduino code triggers the Bluetooth dongle at the right moment, capturing a series of stills which are later stitched together using DaVinci Resolve.

The short video below shows the results, which look pretty good to us. There are other ways to do this, of course, but we find the simplicity of this method pleasing.

Continue reading “Simple Hack Lets Smartphone Take Resin Printer Time-Lapses”

Spuds Lend A Hand In The Darkroom

If film photography’s your thing, the chances are you may have developed a roll or two yourself, and if you’ve read around on the subject it’s likely you’ll have read about using coffee, beer, or vegetable extracts as developer. There’s a new one to us though, from [cm.kelsall], who has put the tater in the darkroom, by making a working developer with potatoes as the active ingredient.

The recipe follows a fairly standard one, with the plant extract joined by some washing soda and vitamin C. The spuds are liquidised and something of a watery smoothie produced, which is filtered and diluted for the final product. It’s evidently not the strongest of developers though, because at 20 Celcius it’s left for two hours to gain an acceptable result.

The chemistry behind these developers usually comes from naturally occurring phenols in the plant, with the effectiveness varying with their concentration. They’re supposed to be better for the environment than synthetic developers, but sadly those credentails are let down somewhat by there not being a similar green replacement for the fixer, and the matter of a load of silver ions in the resulting solutions. Still, it’s interesting to know that spuds could be used this way, and it’s something we might even try ourselves one day.

We’ve even had a look at the coffee process before.

Photography Goes Leaf Green

Something that haunts film photographers is the prospect of a film shortage. This won’t replace film in that event, but [Applied Science] demonstrates photography using leaves. That’s right, a plant can record an image on its leaves.

Anyone with a high-school level of education can tell you that the leaf is a solar energy harvester, with the green chlorophyll using CO2 scavenged from the air to make sugars in the presence of light. It stands to reason that this light sensitivity could be used to capture images, and indeed if you place a leaf in the dark for an extended period of time its chlorophyll fades away where there is no light. The technique described in the video below the break is different though, and much more sensitive than the days-long exposures required to strip chlorophyll. It relies on starch, which the leaf uses to store energy locally when it has an excess of light. Continue reading “Photography Goes Leaf Green”