[Eduard] sent in his IR webcam whiteboard project. He wanted something like the Wiimote version, but without the expense of a Wiimote. He added some film negative to the camera to reduce the amount of visible light picked up by the CCD. (He notes that you might need to pull the IR filter from your camera to get a decent signal.) The pen is the usual IR LED with a power supply. To do the actual work, he wrote a custom application in Java.
digital cameras hacks955 Articles
Surveillance As Art
The Target Project is a graduate project from the Royal College of Arts in London. It is designed to make us question our relationship with surveillance technology and CCTV. This is a particularly meaningful demonstration for a country like Britain which is said to contain up to 4.2 million CCTV cameras or roughly 1 for every 14 people.
This project has two demonstrations on their site. The first is dubbed the RTS-2 (Racial Targeting System). This system is essentially a camera which follows faces and is able to analyze and interpret the person’s race. The second is SOLA. This system is able to quickly scan someone and calculate their body mass index then publish this information to the web. Both systems achieve their goal by blatantly pointing out a line in which more surveillance does not equate to more security. They also show the wealth of personal data that can be obtained about a person by a simple camera.
[via we make money not art]
Pet Photography And Tracking
We’ve seen numerous products geared toward tracking the location and activities of your pets, two in the last month, but we feel sure you can make more functional devices than those you can purchase. Let’s look at a few and consider our options.
Intervalometers And Timelapse Photography
Time lapse photography can seem out of reach for many of us who don’t have fancy cameras(or a hacked cannon point and shoot). We recently covered using a TI-83 as a timer, and now we’ve gathered a collection of DIY intervalometers to help you get clicking.
Up first, for those of you who don’t want to dismantle your camera, here are some mechanical ones that will work on any camera.
[Simplesimon] has done a fantastic job with this integrated system pictured above. He’s added an adjustable solenoid to click the shutter release. By including a second kit board to handle an RF remote, it has remote single shot capabilities too!
Continue reading “Intervalometers And Timelapse Photography”
StereoData Maker
So you got CHDK working on your camera, and the histograms, raw image files, variable shutter speeds and other added functions are amazing, but stereo imaging is what you really want. If you have two or more CHDK-ready cameras, it’s cheap and easy to run StereoData Maker, a system that synchronizes the shutter and flash of multiple cameras.
The first step in getting SDM to work is installing the software on your SD card. You’ll need to find the correct version for you camera; a list is available on the main SDM page. If you are running Windows XP or Vista, run the installer in the zip file. Otherwise, load the files on the SD card and run the installer directly from the camera. Then decide whether this will be the right or left camera and repeat the steps for your second camera.
Next, you’ll need to prepare a switch unit, essentially a set of synchronized USB remotes. There are many ready made commercial units available, but building one on your own shouldn’t be much trouble, and a few ideas are provided on the SDM instruction page.
You’re basically ready to start shooting stereo images, just take a few test shots to get used to it and to customize the configuration on the cameras.
Flip Camera Microscope And Macro Lenses
Flip cameras are fun and easy to use, but not particularly versatile. If you’ve had poor results at macrophotography with a Flip, you might be interested in these DIY lenses. One is macroscopic lens for taking photos and video of small things, and the other is a microscope for even smaller things.
To construct the macro lens, you’ll need a pair of binoculars, some rubber bands and paper clips. Simply remove the lenses from the front of the binoculars, complete with the plastic casings that hold them. Thread a rubber band folded in half to the plastic casing and hold it in place with small segments from the paper clip. Now place the lens in front of the Flip’s lens and secure the rubber band around the flip.
The microscope’s eyepiece uses no such attachment method, simply hold it in front of the Flip. The same process can’t be used here because getting the proper focus requires it to be held at varying distances from the camera, not flush against it like the macro lens. In any case, it’s any easy mod that should have you taking pictures of bugs and other tiny things in no time. Look after the break for video of the lenses in action.
Create Your Own HDR Images
Hack-A-Day friend [Nathan] showed us some of his results creating his own High Dynamic Range images. Three normal Low Dynamic Range photos. One is under exposed, one is normal and the third is over exposed to capture the information needed. Then all three are used to create a single HDR image. Technically, the HDR image contains too much information to properly display, but even this limited version looks damn impressive.
You’ll need a tripod, a camera that allows you to adjust your exposure value and a decent CPU to do the processing. (This pic took a couple of minutes to render on a quad core cpu) You can check out the full HDR photo here and one of the original frames here. For the software side, you can use pfstools on the command line or QtpfsGUI for the graphics side – both are free and open source. [Nathan] suggests a camera with bracket mode and a remote shutter release for best results. If you’re all about theory, you can grab a white paper on the process here.
