Coffee Stirrers Act As Lens For This Digital Straw Camera

May 6, 2021 by Dan Maloney 32 Comments

What happens when you mix over 23,000 coffee stirrers and a Raspberry Pi camera together? Probably nothing except for a mess, unless you very specifically pack the plastic straws and orient the camera just right. In that case, you get this very cool lenless digital straw camera that takes artfully ghostly images.

Image of Yoda photographed through many straws

Actually, lensless is a bit of a reach for [Adrian Hanft]’s creation. While the camera he’s using to grab the image has a lens, the objective, for lack of a better term, is just a tightly packed bundle of straws. We’ve seen this approach to photography before, but there the camera used film placed at the back of the straw bundles to capture the pixelated image.

Here, a ground glass screen stands in for the film; a long lightproof box behind that provide a place to mount a camera to capture the images. Cleverly, [Adrian] built the camera mount from Lego, allowing cameras and lenses to be quickly swapped out. A Nintendo gamepad controller talks to custom software running on a Raspberry Pi and allows the photographer to control exposure and scroll through pictures using a smartphone as a display. There’s a short build video below, for those who can’t get enough of straw-packing techniques.

As with the film version of this camera, we just love the look of the photographs that come from this — the texture of the straw honeycomb and the defocused subject make for a striking effect.

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3D Printed Camera Crane For The Workshop

May 5, 2021 by Danie Conradie 7 Comments

When you make a living building stuff and documenting the process camera setups take up a lot of time, breaking expensive equipment is an occupational hazard. [Ivan Miranda] knows this all too well, so he built a fully-featured camera crane to save his time and camera equipment. Video after the break.

The basic design is a vertical mast with a pivoting camera mounted to the end. The aluminum mast telescopes for increased vertical adjustability, and rides on a plywood base with caster wheels. The aluminum pivoting arm is counterweighed to offset the camera head, and a parallel bar mechanism allows the camera to hold a constant vertical angle with the ground. Thanks to the explosion of home gyms during the pandemic, gym weights were hard to find, so [Ivan] used an ammo can filled with sand and screws instead. A smaller sliding counterweight on top of the arm allows for fine-tuning. [Ivan] also wanted to be able to do horizontal sliding shots, so he added a pulley system that can be engaged with a clutch mechanism to keep a constant horizontal angle with the camera. Most of the fittings and brackets are 3D printed, some of them no doubt on his giant 3D printer.

We can certainly see this crane meeting its design objectives, and we can’t help but want one ourselves. [Alexandre Chappel] also built a camera crane a while back which utilized a completely different arm mechanism. As cool as these are, they still pale in comparison to [mingul]’s workshop-sized 8-axis CNC camera crane. Continue reading “3D Printed Camera Crane For The Workshop” →

A Hot-Swappable Battery Grip Keeps The Camera Rolling

April 21, 2021 by Lewin Day 14 Comments

There’s nothing worse than being in the middle of an important shot, only to have the camera’s batteries die on you. The losses can be very real, so it’s best to avoid them entirely. In an effort to do so, [funkster] built himself a battery grip for his Canon EOS M.

The hack is based around the venerable 18650 battery, packing 3.6V of lithium-ion goodness into a compact metal can. [funkster]’s build has slots for two of these cells, powering the camera off of one and keeping the other in reserve. The cells are monitored by a STM32 microcontroller, which switches from one battery to another as they run out or are removed. This allows batteries to be swapped while the camera is on – a highly useful feature. There’s even an OLED display to keep an eye on the state of charge of each cell.

The manner in which power is connected to the camera is rather amusing. An original Canon battery that slides inside the camera was gutted and turned into a simple adapter for the battery port. The battery grip, which wraps around the camera body, connects to this via pin headers that pass through a hole drilled in the camera’s case. It’s a permanent mod, but one [funkster] is happy with for the added usability – especially as doing it this way still provides easy access to the SD card slot.

Keeping a camera juiced on the go can be a headache without the right gear. [funkster] demonstrates that if you can’t buy it, you can always build it yourself. If your problem isn’t battery power, but your camera is overheating, you can of course fix that too. Video after the break.

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Large Format Lego Camera Is A Bit Near-Sighted

April 19, 2021 by Zach Zeman 7 Comments

Photography doesn’t have to be expensive, something that’s especially true in the realm of film photography, where the imperfections of the medium can be half the appeal. There are many DIY plans and kits available for analog cameras, but [bhiga143] had couple spare components and a pile of small, colorful bricks lying around, so he decided to build a functional 4×5″ film camera out of Lego.

Details are light for this build, but with a little knowledge about camera structure we can guess at what’s going on inside. Simplicity makes for robust design, and what we have here is in effect a box with a lens on one side and photographic film on the other. The center section of the front, which actually supports the lens, is capable of sliding in and out to adjust focus. On the far side (not pictured) is a slot just wide enough to insert a standard film holder.

The camera really is a hack. [bhiga143] stayed true to the “Lego” part of Lego camera, so there is no glue, no black paper lining, and no frills. The tripod is whatever stack of books lay underneath it. The lens is, quote, “barely functional”. There are light leaks galore, and it can’t focus beyond about 3 feet (1 meter). But every one of those points just makes us love it more. Every nugget of imperfection is a few words added to the story each picture tells. And we honestly can’t wait to see more pictures.

Other Lego cameras we’ve seen have been smaller and less colorful, but using a simple pinhole lens can reduce the overall cost. Of course, you’re not limited to Lego if you want to build your own pinhole camera. Although, the ubiquitous plastic bricks can also be useful in later stages of the film photography process.

Camera Zero Looks Cool, Runs Cool

April 10, 2021 by Al Williams 3 Comments

Security cameras are a commodity item these days, but that doesn’t mean [edgett’s] design using a Pi Zero, an Arducam, an LED ring, and active cooling isn’t worth a look. This is a great example of how integrating some off-the-shelf modules and 3D printing can create very professional-looking results. There’s also a trackball interface so you can control the camera. The software, written in Python, is available on GitHub.

The trackball doesn’t move the camera, but it does manage a menu system that lets you capture a photo or video, set the optical parameters like exposure, shutter, and ISO, and launch Camera Remote to offer a Web-based interface instead of the trackball.

If you add infrared illumination, you can swap out the camera for an IR version and have a nice-looking night vision camera, too. The camera is reasonably compact. Not including the lens and the tripod, the camera measures 100 by 44 by 44 mm. So under two inches square and about 4 inches long.

We worried a little about gluing the LED ring down, but then again our phones are all glued together these days, so maybe we should stop fretting. One thing we didn’t see on either site, though, was a picture taken with the camera itself. However, the 12-megapixel camera and quality lens should do a great job. We’ve even seen that particular camera module work with a much smaller computer recently.

Image Sensors Demystified By [IMSAI Guy]

March 27, 2021 by Al Williams 2 Comments

The February 1975 issue of Popular Electronics had what was — at the time — an amazing project. The Cyclops, a digital camera with a 32 by 32 pixel resolution with 4 bits per pixel. It was hard to imagine then that we would now all carry around high-resolution color cameras that were also phones, network terminals, and so many other things. But how much do you know about how those cameras really work? If you want to know more, check out [IMSAI Guy’s] recent video on how image sensors work.

The video doesn’t cover any practical projects or circuits, but it has a good explanation of what goes on in modern digital cameras. If you don’t know what digital cameras have in common with an octopus, you might want to watch.

If you want to see what the state of the art in 1975 was, have a look at this post. The image sensor in that camera didn’t have much in common with the ones we use today, but you have to admit it is clever. Of course, 1975 was also the year Kodak developed a digital camera and failed to understand what to do with it. Like the Cyclops, it had little in common with our modern smartphone cameras, but you have to start somewhere.

Vibration Isolation Helps Improve FPV Video Feed

March 25, 2021 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

First-person view technology has become hugely popular in the RC community, letting the user get a vantage point as though they were actually within their tiny scale vehicle. It can be difficult to get a good, clean video feed though, particularly in models that have a lot of drivetrain vibration. [Engineering After Hours] decided to tackle this problem with a simple vibration isolator design. (Video, embedded below.)

The first step is to analyse the vibration to get an idea of the frequencies that are most important to target. WIth that done, a simple 3D printed camera mount is designed with three flexible joints between the camera and the base which is rigidly coupled to the RC boat or car’s body. The modal analysis tools in Fusion 360 were used to get a rough idea of the frequency response of the system, helping to get things in the ballpark with a minimum of fuss.

The final design does help cut down on vibrations, though it is unable to counteract heavy vibration from driving on extremely rough surfaces. In these cases, [Engineering After Hours] recommends the use of a gimbal instead. Proper damping can be a godsend in many applications; bricks can make a huge difference for your 3D printer, for example.

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