It’s been a couple months since the CVS camcorder downloading alpha release. [Matt Gilbert] thought it would be a good idea if we checked up on the community. There has been a lot progress made: from low level stuff like unearthing USB commands to upping the resolution and record length. Modding for macro work and building helmet mounts has also been done. A great overview of how all of this came about is the “credit where credit is due” post. Recently they’ve been dealing with new firmware versions that make the cameras harder to play with (sound familiar?). No worries though, if the solutions maintain the simplicity of jumping one wire there’s a bright future ahead. Congratulations to everyone involved in this project; you’ve done some incredible work.

Continue reading “CVS Camcorder Follow-up” →

This macro photography rig is really incredible. The system uses two lasers to trigger the camera when photographing flying insects. The site has an extensive writeup of the trials and tribulations involved in this build. The D100 shutter ended up needing to be replaced by a faster one. Of course the article also has lots of example images.

[thanks unstable_geek]

Continue reading “Macro Photography Rig” →

We’ve featured IR webcams before, but this is Fuji FinePix 2300 still camera that has been modified to take IR photos. The site has a pretty thorough walk through of the disassembly and has all of the warnings you’d expect. Once the IR filter is removed (or broken in this case) it is replaced by at least two layers of material cut from exposed 35mm negatives. From the sample pictures it looks like it works well. I kinda wish I had been an early adopter so I’d have a worthless camera laying around right now to tear open.

[thanks Captain seduction]

Continue reading “IR Digital Camera Mod” →

SplineScan is a cross platform 3D scanning solution. While the target object is rotating on a motion controlled turntable a laser is projected on it. A camera collects images of each step of the rotation. Using simple trig the individual frames’ line data can then be used to construct a 3D model. Andrew Lewis is in the process of porting the model generator to C from VB, but it can already be run in Ubuntu using WINE. If all goes well he will be doing a live demo at LUGRadio Live with detailed source to follow soon after. He expects the final scanner to only cost approx. $90.  Sounds like a lot of  fun. Thanks for sending it in Andrew.

Continue reading “3D Scanner” →

now this is something. apparently back in the 1970s when communism was all the rage, it was hard to get a hold of decent magazines so people would share them. one magazine though roughly translated to “An ABC of Young Technicians and Natural Scientists” published an article showing how to make a fully functional camera out of stiff paper. yes, its 35mm too. it’s called the “Dirkon” paper camera and obviously bears a pun to the tune of nikon. there’s even a few sample photos to go along with how to make it. we wanna see someone make a modern day one

First off — don’t go getting all Silence of the lambs on us, aight? But if you’ve got some legitimate, non-creepy reason you want to record video in infrared, Geoff Johnson’s gonna show you how to do it. He’s gutting a fairly generic USB camera made by Sweex, and is careful to note which steps are Sweex-specific and which are not. You should be able to get this working with any ol’ USB cam you’ve got lying around with possible slight modifications.