Nikon didn’t build a light metering chip into the D40. That’s fine if you’re using one of their auto lenses with the on-board chip. [Matt] decided to add a sensor to his camera and try it out with his manual lenses. His writeup is a bit challenging to get through, but if you’re really into Nikons, you’ll make it. He had to tap into the ribbon cable inside the body, mount the extra hardware, and add an additional switch outside the body to allow the chip to be turned on and off. The extra sensor adds a bit of a step to taking the shot, but it’s the sort of thing that’ll become second nature pretty quickly.
digital cameras hacks964 Articles
D200 Hotshoe GPS Redux (el Cheapo Version)
It’s been a while since we talked about putting a GPS on top of a D200. [Rick] sent in his latest version. He used a nice 20 channel sirf III gps from spark-fun, a cheap D200 remote cable and a few parts to send the NMEA sentences down the wire. The biggest improvements include taking the $100 Nikon cable out of the mix and swiping power from the camera for the GPS board. All the info is there, but I had to seriously stare at his wiring instructions for a while despite the low parts count. I like to see actual circuit diagrams!
Super8 Automatic Film Scanner
[edocronian] sent in this interesting mindstorm hack. [Harri] had several Super8 reels that he shot during the 80s. His kids put together this mindstorm NXT transport mechanism, and he did the rest with linux. The lego’s pull the reel across an Epson scanner, and some linux hacks run the scanner, identify the frames, and reconstruct the film. Unfortunately, [Harri] didn’t release any of the software hacks he used to pull it off.
SLR Lenses On Your Digital Video Camera
Considering all the attention we give digital cameras, I wanted to find an interesting hack for those old school analog SLR cameras. (I spent a fair share of time behind one; I’m fond of the classic Canon AE-1) [Joshua] mated his Sony VX-2000e video camera with a Canon FD lens mount and created this monster. With the new lens mount, he’s got a full selection of lenses without the huge investment of specialized lenses.
Laser Camera Tracking
[ashish] is still having fun with his lasers. His latest hack is a dual laser based tracking camera. He mounted his camera to a simple parallel port controlled stepper motor. Essentially, if the camera loses track of either laser, it tracks to locate the lost edge of the object. I’d probably go with IR to reduce the chance of retina damage…
Fiber Optic Flash Ring
Ring lights that surround the lens are generally used for macro photography – they’re not cheap, but they’re one of the few ways to get shadowless photos. This fiber optic flash diffuser is based on the same ideas of this one. Rather than use a few large optic strands, [Joris] is using many, many more to decrease shadows as much as possible. His previous efforts are even more interesting. He built a LED version – with serial connected LEDs and a step up switching power supply to drive them. Then he moved on to cold cathode fluorescent before moving onto the fiber optics.
3D Video With Consumer Cameras
While perusing our photos from the Hooptyrides, Inc. tour you may have noticed [Eric Kurland]’s two handed stereoscopy rig. It’s constructed from two consumer grade Sony DV cameras. The problem with using two separate cameras to make stereo images or video is that a lack of clock sync will make objects appear out of their true position because of differences in framerate. To solve this problem Damir Vran?i? developed the 3D LANC Master. It reads the crystal frequency from one of the cameras and writes to the ram of the other camera using Sony’s LANC protocol. This constant monitoring keeps the clocks within +/- 3ms. The control box also has buttons to power on, zoom, and record in sync. The 3D LANC Master plans are completely open source and work with a large number of Sony cameras. We have more photos of Eric’s rig after the break.
