Photocritic photography blog » Do It Yourself

Building a laser trigger for your camera

Haje Jan Kamps — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:17:37 +0000

There are loads of reasons for why you could want to trigger your camera remotely – to avoid camera shake, for example, or to be able to take a photograph of yourself without having to rely on a timer. If you want to build more ambitious projects, however, you may have to consider getting more exotic.

I recently built a little device which triggers my camera whenever a laser beam is broken – It’s about as simple an electronics project as you can pull off, but it’s going to form the base of a couple of other cool projects I’ll be working on going forward (stay tuned…), so I figured I’d do a quick post explaining how I did this.

Talking to the camera

This looks a lot like a headphone jack, but it isn't - headphone jacks are 3.5mm, this is 2.5mm.

Even though it isn’t strictly necessary, I decided to use my Arduino (check out Arduino.cc) as the base for this project.

I say ‘not necessary’ because you can build this project using just electronic components, which makes it all a lot simpler – however, what I really wanted to do is to build a base on which I can build further in the future. If you want to get more advanced, it becomes a lot easier to use a programmable micro-controller like the Arduino, so I figured I may as well start where I mean to continue.

I stripped the wires from the remote lead. Connecting green and red triggers the camera.

To interface with the camera, I decided to keep things as simple as possible, and I used the 2.5mm jack port on the side of my Canon EOS 450D. If your camera has a different remote control port, you should still be able to use the tips described in this post, but you’ll have to source the actual plug yourself.

Using the remote control port has several advantages, the biggest of which is that it’s really easy to trigger the camera this way. All you need to do is to make a connection between two wires! I bought a couple of cheap remote controls from China and used one of ‘em to interface with my camera, but you can go into your local electronics store to pick up a 2.5mm jack for next to no money…

Triggering the camera with the Arduino

This is the most important part of this mini-project: As soon as you can trigger the camera with the Arduino, only your imagination will stop you from coming up with ways of using this. Because the Arduino will accept input from any number of sources, you can program it to take photos in just about any circumstance imaginable. Just a few ideas:

Motion sensor (trigger the camera when it senses movement)
Heat sensor (take a picture when the)
Sound sensor (take a picture when the dog barks or the phone rings)
Telephone trigger (Hook up the arduino to a mobile phone. Call or SMS the mobile phone to take a picture)
Timelapse photography (Program the Arduino to take a photo every minute)

There are a few different ways you can use the Arduino to trigger the camera – I considered using a relay, but the problem is that even very fast relays are quite slow, so I decided to use a transistor instead:

You! At the back! no sniggering at my atroceous schematic drawing skills!

The Arduino sends a signal to the transistor, which connects the two leads leading to the camera, which triggers the camera.

Forgive the rubbish picture - I was prototyping, so it's less than clear what's going on here. The important bits are in the schematic above. Honest, it's piss easy.

Getting the laser trigger to work

I hooked up a LDR (Light-dependent resistor) with a pull-down resistor to ensure that it wouldn’t trigger randomly to the analog sensor pin 0 on the Arduino. The programme uploaded to the Arduino is as follows:

 int sensorPin = 0;
 int sensorValue = 0;
 int cameraTrigger =  13; 

 void setup() {
   pinMode (cameraTrigger, OUTPUT); }

 void loop() {
   sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin);
   if (sensorValue > 700) {
// trigger is quite low, might need to be higher in daylight
     digitalWrite (cameraTrigger, LOW);
   }
   else
   {
     digitalWrite (cameraTrigger, HIGH);
     delay(10);
     digitalWrite (cameraTrigger, LOW);
	 delay(1000); // Take max 1 pic per second
   }
 }

Pull-down resistor to ensure true readings, and a LDR to do the actual light measuring.

With the arduino all programmed, I just had to add the LDR.

Now, I rigged up a laser module aimed at the LDR, and I checked what the common sensor values were – turns out that it drops to about 200 when the laser beam wasn’t hitting the sensor, and goes up to about 900 or so when it is hitting the sensor. I set the sensor trigger to about 700 to give me some leeway.

In the above snippet of code, the interesting stuff happens in the loop: Basically, it checks if the sensor has gone ‘dark’. If it hasn’t, it simply checks again.

The bright pink bit in the photo here is the laser beam hitting the LDR.

If the Arduino detects that the sensor has gone ‘dark’, it triggers the camera for 10 milliseconds, then untriggers it. This is to ensure that the camera doesn’t continue taking photos for the duration of the beam being broken – I have my camera set to ‘one shot’ anyway, but by adding this line of code, it should still work if the camera is set to continuous shooting when the shutter button is held down.

When the Arduino detects a broken beam, it takes a photo, then waits for a second, before checking for a broken beam again. If it’s still broken, it’ll take another photo and then waits another second.

Does it even work?

Yup. But a video says more than a thousand words so check ‘er out:

(forgive the crummy video quality, but you get the idea)

So, er, what the hell can you use this for?

It’s all a little bit theoretical at this point, because I haven’t actually used the trigger for anything useful yet. For one thing, it’s not very portable yet, but I’m planning to take a version of this and solder it all together so it’s a bit more sturdy. At least I know it works, which was the purpose of the exercise.

I have a couple of fantastic ideas for how I can create some pretty cool projects where the camera can just stand there and take photos automatically. Think birds on a bird-feeder, people walking through a doorway, balls in flight, etc.

If you plan to use the kit to take people by surprise, you may have to hide the lasers away a bit better. In a cleanish room, the red laser is pretty much invisible anyway (although it shows up in specs of dust etc), but if you want the sensor to be completely invisible, you can just use an IR laser instead – it’ll make it invisible to the naked eye.

Disclaimer

I haven’t broken my own camera equipment doing any of this, but if you balls things up, there’s a good chance you might. Be careful, know what you’re doing, and don’t come running to me if you blow up your camera, please!

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Colour illusion

Haje Jan Kamps — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:36:22 +0000

Have you ever wished that you could make it look as if your black and white photos were in colour? Well, through the magical powers of chromatic adaptation, you can!

Someone posted a really cool optical illusion on Reddit today, and one of the commenters was wondering how it is done.

As it turns out, it’s really quite easy, so I decided to tap out a quick little tutorial. Here is how:

Start with the original image:

Arizona 2003 by Photocritic on Flickr

Upping the saturation will help your image seem more, er, saturated (clicky for bigger)

Inverse it in an image editing package like Photoshop or the Gimp (in Photoshop: Image → Adjustments → Invert).

Next, increase the saturation a little bit (this will help with the colour perception – in Photoshop, Image → Adjustments → Hue & Saturation).

Finally, blur the photo a little. This will ensure that you concentrate on colour, rather than the texture. In Photoshop, I used Filter → Blur → Gaussian Blur, with a setting of 2px, but experiment to see what looks best.

That’s your first picture:

For the second picture, simply desaturate your original photo. If you want, you can up the contrast a little bit, or even sharpen it further.

The final result? Check out the video below. To see the effect, simply start the video and stare at the horizon. After 20 seconds, the image will change, and you’ll be able to see the optical illusion:

The effect isn’t very strong in this particular photo, but that’s because it’s such a gradient and vibrant photo to begin with. You may find that man-made, simpler structures (buildings etc) have a stronger effect. Experiment away, and if you make a particularly awesome one, why not post it in the comments?

Cheerio!

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How to clean your dSLR sensor

Haje Jan Kamps — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:31:07 +0000

So you have spent thousands on your camera and you’re wondering how to clean it? Well it’s a good question to ask; a dirty sensor will impact every single one of your images, as it is – quite literally – the focal point of all the camera’s technology. That’s right, your hard earned dollars reduced to the mercy of the elements. Scary thought eh? Despair thee not, young padawan, help is at hand…

Well, good news! You are in the right place place to learn how to simply, cheaply, and quickly clean your DSLR and get back to the important part; taking photos.

Your goal is to remove dust (and possibly moisture) off the sensor. You want to do this as carefully and easily as you can. There are myriad people who are delighted to take your money off you to help you do this, so let’s start by picking some of the best:

Sensor Swab

‘Sensor Swab‘ is the preferred method and for a very good reason; it’s a mighty fine product which is recommended by quite a few of the camera manufacturers to boot. Sensor Swab is a wet solution which is applied to the sensor by a, well, swab.

For around $25 you can get yourself a kit and that will remove both wet and dry dust. It is 99.9% effective when done properly and even offers a guarantee in case of damage to the sensor – which is handy, because replacing a damaged sensor is filthy expensive. The downside is that it can’t be shipped by air and is illegal in some countries (due to containing methanol). If you’ve got a decent camera shop nearby, however, they probably stock some – go talk to your friendly neighbourhood lenspeddler to find out.

Brush

Here is the old fashion method. Offering multiple uses and a straight forward method the brush definitely has some advantages. Brushes generally use a method that utilizes static allowing the brush fibers to remove stubborn dust. A brush is also very transportable.

Down sides include the fact that the brush cannot be cleaned and can’t remove wet dust or moisture. A standard brush will cost about $25 while the ‘Brush Off‘ brand (which is more effective) will set you back about $50.

Blower

Using an air blower – like the Giottos Air Rocket – is what your manual will recommend, the reason for this is there is no contact required with the sensor, which reduces the risk of anything going wrong. Unfortunately the downside is that the blower is not that effective, and doesn’t actually remove the dust from the inside of your camera; it merely shuffles it about a bit. In addition, it will struggle to remove dust with a static charge and anything with moisture.

Despite its downsides, using an air blower is often the easiest thing to do when you’re in the field – it’s easy to transport, relatively cheap, and gets rid of the worst dust in a quick and capable way.

Time for a spring clean!

Every once and again, you need to clean your sensor properly; depends on how much you use your camera, but for me, it’s approximately every 2-3 months or so, a process which involves several of the products above. Here’s how to do it:

Charge the Battery – If your battery dies at any point this can be very bad news and step 2 explains why.

Open Shutter – This is different for all cameras but most have a ’sensor cleaning mode’ which will open the shutter and move the mirror aside so you can access the sensor for cleaning. If the battery dies during this phase will close and possible take the swab with it which will probably cause damage to the inside of your camera.

Blow out excess dust – Look for a dust free environment and begin blowing, this removes the big particles of dust. Never use compressed air in a ’spray can’ for this (it leaves a residue) – get one of the bellow-style blowers like the Giottos Air Rocket described earlier in this article. This is extremely important because if this isn’t done at a later stage you can be dragging particles around with the swab, causing scratches and more problems than you had before. (NOTE: Some people will suggest using a foot pump because your hands are free, DO NOT DO THIS. Reason being a foot pump has too much power and sits on the floor drawing in dust and dirt)

Take a look – Use a small torch/flashlight (the little single-LED torches are great for this) to spot exactly where there are dust particles on your sensor

Swab – Use as little swabbing liquid as you can while swabbing and apply with the pressure of the pen. Use one side of the swab for the liquid solution, and the other to wipe when complete – whatever you do, don’t touch the swab itself.

Do some test shots – the easiest way to do this is to take a photo of a blue sky or similar even, bright surface, and look at your image at 100% magnification on your computer. If you still see problems, it’s back to point 1 for a second try.

Now comes the trickiest bit; going back out there and taking shots so awesome that they’re worthy of your freshly cleaned imaging sensor. Good luck and have fun!

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Nude self portraiture

Haje Jan Kamps — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:15:40 +0000

Taking photos of yourself has a certain under-tone of intimacy about it at the very least; but choosing to shed your clothes and do the same thing adds a whole new dimension to the experience.

One of my long-time readers, Brigitte, told me her approach to nude photography; She doesn’t share her photos with anyone, but decided to take them for her own sake. It made me think; I know that my blog is quite strongly in favour in sharing all your photos with the whole world, but perhaps that misses a little bit of the point; Who are we, in fact taking photos for? Anyway – that’s a topic for another post… Today, it’s Brigitte’s turn…

Nude in front of (and behind) the lens

A few days ago I was reading articles on nude photography… and these took me down memory lane. When I was pregnant for the second time, I used to take a thorough look at myself everyday in the mirror and marvel at the way my body had changed. There is an immense softness in a pregnant woman’s curves which I find very appealing, and I knew from my first pregnancy that once the baby is born, it’s easy to forget the way you looked before.

This time, I very much wanted to be able to remember my whole life the way my body was right before I gave birth. Of course, I had lots of pictures taken by my family and friends, but it felt like cheating, by hiding some of the curves while emphasizing others. Most were not very becoming, either… these pictures were taken on the fly, showing me in whatever position I had deemed comfortable at the time, and I felt it was really unfair. To be totally honest, I’m pretty sure I’ve torn and thrown away the vast majority of these!

Trusting others vs trusting yourself

I know lots of people can undress in front of a photographer they trust (Demi Moore, to name but one!), but I simply felt I could never do that, underwear or not, nine months pregnant or not. I did not trust anybody else’s look but mine on my body to take these pictures, not even my husband’s (OK, he’s a poor photographer anyway!), and I realized I would have to be both the photographer and the model.

I selected a plain white wall with a wooden door as the background for my pictures, no direct sunlight but no artificial light either, and set-up my Canon EOS 20D on a tripod. I made the necessary adjustments in terms of sensibility and focus, selected the B&W mode, and used the self-timer to take the pictures. Between each shot I practiced in front of a full length mirror… I wanted to be able to share these pictures with my children when they grow up, so I was determined to be as beautiful as possible (of course!), and if sensuality was permitted, I did not want these pictures to turn out erotic.

And that’s the best part. I know I may sound like a control freak, but I was the one who wanted these pictures, and I greatly appreciate the fact that I got to do them myself, without being subjected to anyone’s influence. In the end, all the decisions were mine, and if I had not liked the result, I could just have discarded all the pictures without any hesitations, regrets, or fear to offend the photographer.

Find out more!

Brigitte is a 34-year-old French lady who works as a translator and editor. You can find Brigitte’s blog on tequilas-secrets.com, with her photos in the, er, photos category. If you’re of the Twittering kind, she can be found on @Brigitte_Ba, as well.

The photos in this post are from iStockPhoto

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Digital Schizophrenia

Haje Jan Kamps — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 05:23:37 +0000

One of the first things I started doing when I started shooting digital images, was thinking of ways of doing digital double exposures – adding one part of an image to another – for a greater impact of my digital shots. It turned out to be relatively simple, but carrying high impact. All it takes is suitable photos, a copy of Photoshop (or the Gimp, which is sort-of nearly as good as Photoshop, but free), and a bucket full of time…

Have you made any cool images using this method? Post them somewhere on the internet – your blog, perhaps – and add a link to the comments, so we can admire the photos!

Starting with a series of photographs taken with the camera on a tripod, to ensure that the angle doesn’t change:

I loaded all of them into Photoshop, and copied them to the same document in different layers. When doing this type of editing, it makes sense to arrange the images in a way that allows you to work from top to bottom, or from left to right. So the first thing you need to do is arrange the layers in a way where they have a logical progression. In the case of the images above, I layered them in the order 4 – 5 – 2 – 1, with 1 on the bottom

The easiest way of doing these photos is by doing it in a way that the character doesn’t interact with itself, but on the other hand it is a lot more believable if they occupy the same field of view (i.e overlap) or interact in some way – getting them to hand things to each other, or similar, is an additional layer of messing with your readers’ brains.

Now, in the top image, carefully cut out the area you don’t need. The trick is to cut off as little as possible. For the sake of example, I’ll show you what I would do if I were to add another photo all the way to the right of this montage:

By leaving as much of the image intact as possible, chances of getting the cut-out wrong are limited. In this case, because the right side of the girl isn’t cut out at all, there are no mistakes to be made!

Hide this layer, and move on to the next one, and the next one, etc.

Finally, you’ll probably spend a bit of time carefully polishing your cut-outs. You may also need to darken some areas to ensure that the shadows look genuine – do you remember what we said about that in How to spot Photoshopped Images? Exactly.

Now, when you’ve put all the photos together, you get a result that looks like it could happen, if it hadn’t been for the fact that this lady doesn’t have any siblings, much less quaduplets…

Couple of examples

Do you like this stuff? Well, have a go at it yourself! And just to get you on your way, why don’t we add some more examples? The following three were taken free-hand, with quick series of five shots for each photo. In case you recognise the background: Yes, it’s taken in Vigerlandsparken, in Oslo, Norway. I think it was around 2003 or so.

Photo: Skatezophrenia by Photocritic.org on Flickr

Photo: Skate-zo-phrenia 104 by Photocritic.org on Flickr

Photo: Skate-zo-phrenia by Photocritic.org on Flickr

So, what do you reckon? Can you do better? Of course you can! Get cracking, and post the results in the comments – I’m curious!

Couple of other examples

Photo: Self portrait with self by Photocritic.org on Flickr

Photo: Jonathan Squared by Photocritic.org on Flickr

Finally, if you like these, you can get loads more inspiration on the Multiple Exposure group on Flickr!

This post was originally posted in 2006 (which is why the observant among you will notice a couple of old comments on this post – so no, you’re not going loopy:). I’ve updated it and added a few more photos, hence the re-publish.

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DIY pinhole for dSLR

Haje Jan Kamps — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 20:15:54 +0000

If you’ve been around photography for a while, you’ve probably come across the term ‘pinhole’. Basically, it’s the simplest form of bending-light-into-the-shape-you-need-it-to-be you can possibly do. A well-built pinhole camera can take gorgeous photos, with incredible depth of field, with a wonderful lo-fi look to them.

But what if you can’t be bothered getting your hands dirty with sheet film, developing or even having to build your own pinhole camera? If you fancy having a go at pinhole photography while using your trusty digital SLR, then this is everything you need to know to build your first pinhole ‘lens’.

It starts with a body cap

The first thing you’re going to need is a camera body cap.

You can either use the one that came with your camera (but you’ll be cannibalising this body cap, just like you did when you followed the instructions to create my macro extension tube out of a Pringles can) of you may want to get a second one. They are cheap as chips on eBay these days (I bought 2 of ‘em for £3), so you may as well get a spare…

Now, to prepare the camera body cap, I used some coarse sanding paper to take the logo off, then some finer sanding paper to get the coarseness down a little. There’s no good reason for doing this, other than that it’s a little easier to work with a flat surface than one with the logo of your camera embossed on the front.

If you wished, you could just drill a hole in the body cap and mount the actual pinhole to the inside of the cap instead, but seeing as how I’m planning to experiment with different pinholes in the nearby future, I like the idea of having the pinhole bit mounted on the front – easier to work with that way.

Now, you’ll have to forgive me for the blurriness of this illustration image – it’s tricky to hold a drill and a camera cap and a camera to take the photo all at the same time.

The real reason for taking this ‘action shot’, however, is that I didn’t want to look like a complete amateur, even though I was using a masonry bit in my drill. Of course, going through all the trouble to avoid showing you lot, only to then go ahead and tell you in the body copy anyway is a bit of a waste. You’ll have to forgive me.

Anyway, you end up with a body cap with a hole in it. Finish the hole by sandpapering down the rough edges both on the front and the back of the body cap, and remember to sandpaper the inside a little bit too – if for no other reason than to get a prettier finish.

Now, a very important step: you need to wash the body cap very well indeed. after all the sandpapering, it’ll be covered in black dust, and this is the kind of stuff you really don’t want to be stuck inside your camera – especially not on your imaging chip!

Creating the pinhole itself

Next up, we’re going to create the pinhole itself. There’s tons of way of doing this, but I’m a big fan on using whatever you have to hand. You need a material which is soft enough to work with efficiently, but it needs to be firm enough to be at least a little bit durable.

A coca-cola or beer can is perfect, but since I didn’t have any of those kicking about (I know, it’s mad, isn’t it? I seem to have lots of empty beer- and wine bottles, though, but they don’t make for great pinhole photography), I decided to use the side-wall of a tea light instead.

Drinks cans and tea light are made of soft aluminium, so you should be able to cut them with a pair of kitchen scissors without any problem. Beware that the edges may be very sharp, though, and you don’t want blood everywhere, so be careful.

With a very sharp implement (like a safety pin or similar), push gently into the aluminium. It helps if you have a soft-ish surface like a writing pad (that’s why all the photos are taken on lined paper. Well, that, and laziness). You want to push and turn the needle so you can only just barely see a hole.

Now, using extremely finely gritted sanding paper (I used 1200 paper), polish down the opposite side of where you poked the pin through.

The reason for the sandpapering is two-fold: for one, you don’t want the burrs on the other side of the metal, but you also want to make the metal as thin as possible, because the thinner the metal is, the finer your pinhole photos will be.

There are advanced ways of making the metal thin enough, or if you’re properly hardcore, you can get a professionally laser-cut pinhole body cap (see the ‘further reading’ section below for a link), but as long as you’re doing your best with making the hole a) as small as possible and b) as round as possible, you should be able to start making pinhole photographs soon.

When you think you’ve had a pretty good stab (haha, see what I did there) at making your first pinhole, hold it up to the light. If you can see that it isn’t perfectly round, discard your piece of metal and try again. It should look roughly like it does in the photo. Of course, the size of the pinhole is very important as well, but for now, we just want to make images appear, so this is a pretty good start.

Putting the two together

Now, you’re going to want to mount the pinhole to the centre of your body cap. Measure the centre carefully (or just take a wild guess, it’s up to you, really. I’m firmly in the guessing camp on this one), and simply tape the strip to your body cap. Also, I wish to apologise for the blurriness of this photo – you’d have thought I was capable of taking a sharp macro photo by now, but I guess that’s not the case. I blame my camera, the light, and London Transport Police because obviously, it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with me just rushing things a little bit in my excitement.

Next, use a sharpie (or whatever black permanent marker you might have handy at the time), and black out the front and back of the visual metal. I’m not sure if this is actually good for anything, but it makes me feel better thinking that I’ve at least tried to reduce the refractions on my aperture ever so slightly. That, and it makes the lens cap look more home-made, which is always a bonus.

After the previous step, you’ve actually finished everything you need to do to create a pinhole photograph! I decided to add an extra step, which is to add an additional white cover to the front of the pinhole body cap (because, obviously, if it’s a DIY project you have to add such adornments. And also, it’s a marvelous excuse for me to post a photograph of myself on my own blog), but that’s just me.

Now, it’s time to actually start taking some damed photographs, finally! Put the body cap on your camera, and set your mode dial to ‘manual’. Turn to a low-ish ISO (100 or 200 are good starting points) and a long shutter time. If you’re taking photos outdoors, start with 10 seconds and then adjust.

If you can’t see anything, you need to check if you’ve accidentally put the wrong body cap on your camera, and then select a longer shutter time.

With all the equipment finally put together in a half-way meaningful fashion, I figured it was time to start shooting some photographs…

Time to experiment!

Coca-Cola

Coffee cup

Coffee

Portrait

Autopsy of my photos

As you can see, all the photos came out a little bit on the fuzzy side.

One of the big problems you have when you’re shooting digital pinholes is that your imaging chip is absolutely tiny – the camera I was using here, a Canon 450D, has a 22.2 x 14.8 mm CMOS sensor. Compare that to a 36×24mm ‘normal’ negative, or the 60×60mm roll film (or even sheet film) that they’ve got in the analogue world, and it becomes clear that you have an awful lot less leeway.

The tiny sensor also has implications on how precise your pinhole needs to be – both in roundness (which is nigh-on impossible to get right with a safety pin) and in size (which, again, is tricky, although there is a way of measuring the size of your pinhole with a scanner)

However, the purpose of this exercise wasn’t to get perfect, super-sharp photographs, but go get a feel for how it’s actually possible to take photographs without having a lens attached to the front of your camera, for next to no money at all!

Pan and scan, baby

Haje Jan Kamps — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:29:49 +0000

If your digital camera has just packed it in, or you just feel like shaking things up a little bit, why not consider alternative photography? After all, using a camera isn’t the only way to get stuff into your computer for processing… Instead of scanning your prints, why not skip the camera altogether and scan the objects you’re photographing?

It ain’t nothin’ new – at the dawn of the internet, there was a site where people put their kittens on a scanner, and saw what came out – normally, little blurry bunches of fur that were confused by the sound and moving light – but good fun nonetheless.

Of course, you can go beyond the nefarious business of scanning your pets – Use your imagination, and you can use your scanner to scan 3D objects: Cigars, apples, bugs – all you need is a bit of imagination.

Using a scanner for capturing your images has many advantages:

1. You will get a great exposure of the object

2. You can do macro photography using your scanner

3. You can scan anything you can place on the scanner

A couple of tips:

1. Clean your scanner properly first, because if you don’t, you’ll find yourself spending hours in Photoshop cleaning it all off.

2. You can remove the top lid of your scanner and turn the lights off to get a black background.

3. You can use any kind of material above the object you want to scan to get a different background. Want blue? Try a sheet of paper or a t-shirt!

4. Macro photos? No problem! Scan in high resolution, and crop in on what you want to cover.

6. Most scanners will allow you to scan in very high resolution

7. Scan scan scan and experiment with any kind of objects.

Give it a shot – dust off the ‘ole flatbed scanner, you’ll never see it in the same way again! Happy scanning!

Have you tried it? Post a link to your Flickr gallery in the comments!

(This article is based on ‘Scan your Imagination‘ by Raymundo Panduro. All photos © Raymundo.)

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Making a killing jar

Haje Jan Kamps — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:00:21 +0000

If you want to get extremely close to insects, you may have to convince them to stop moving somehow.

Sadly I have yet to come across tranquilliser darts for bumblebees (if you know of any, post a comment!), so killing them is the only way to persuade them to sit still.

Is it OK to kill insects to photograph them?

It sounds terribly barbaric, but it isn’t, really: If you make one of these jars correctly, you can kill insects quickly and painlessly. If you feel bad about it afterwards, you can always bury it in a tiny grave and sing it a song – make sure you get photos first, though!

Entomologists (that’s really just a posh word for people who collect insects) have perfected the art of killing insects as humanely as possible, by using a ‘killing jar’. To make a rudimentary killing jar, use a reasonably large jar with a tightly closing lid.

Cut out a circle of an old t-shirt or other thick cotton material, and make sure it fits snugly on the bottom of the jar. You’ll want a few layers of cotton. To this jar, add enough ethyl acetate (you can buy this from lab suppliers and hobby stores – be careful not to breathe it in yourself though, it’s nasty stuff!) to saturate the cotton, but no more. Put your insects in the jar, and leave them for a few minutes to kill them.

Wanna learn more? Check out killing jars on Wikipedia, or this article on the University of Illinois website!

For approximately ten billion more tips (and photos!) like this, check out my book – it’s on sale in exactly a month, but you can pre-order it today!

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Learn photography step-by-step

Haje Jan Kamps — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 00:00:32 +0000

I think it’s pretty safe to say that I’ve got a new favourite website: instructables! It uses a flickr-style, very web 2.0 approach to doing ‘do it yourself’ guides: Hover-over-image items for descriptions of what you are looking at, and many of the instructables available guide you through projects baby-step by baby-step.

There are a lot of them available already, mostly for geek projects. Luckily, there are some wicked photography DIY projects as well – well worth a peek!

Some of my favourite instructables include Photographing in the Ultraviolet spectrum, how to make a macro attachment for a digital compact, converting your Holga to a 35mm (more about holgas), a pretty good guide to creating QuickTime VR panoramas (although, if I were you, I’d use CleVR instead…), a superb guide to taking infra-red photos with your digital compact cameras, building a light tent.

There are also a few truly cheeky guides, such as how you can use a condom to water-proof your camera (it works, but most condoms are not fully translucent, so you’d struggle to get decent-quality photos with this technique)

The instructable to introduction to band photography is decent as well, and well worth a look – but it’s not as good as Photocritic’s discussions of the same, obviously :-)

A quick search on instructables for ‘Photography’ comes up with 51 DIY guides of varying quality – great reading material for a lazy sunday morning!

(thanks, sam, for reminding me to do a post on Instructables! He wrote the condom-waterproof guide and the IR photo guide. Give it some love!)

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Keep the dust off your lens

Haje Jan Kamps — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 00:00:25 +0000

If you’ve got a compact camera, you know how bloody annoying it is to have to clean your lens. It’s tiny, and it seems to attract dust as if it was a lamp, and the dust were moths, confused by the lovely, bright source of light. Right? Right? Right.

There’s a ridiculously simple solution worth trying: When you know you’re going to be in a particularly vulnerable situation (a desert, a dusty place, or a night on the lash*, for example), you could do some pre-emptive maintenance: Just cover up your lens with a piece of high-quality scotch tape!

Important: Obviously, only use the following tip if your front lens element (that’s the glass bit) doesn’t actually stick out further than the lens barrel. Otherwise, you’ll make your lens sticky and dirty and the whole point is gone!

Sounds simple? Well, that’s because all the greatest solutions usually are. The better quality your tape is (i.e. the more translucent it is), the better. The best thing, obviously, is that the scotch tape is a hell of a lot easier to clean off than the crinkly, unreachable crevices of your digital compact camera!

Bonza.

*) on the lash is a Britishism for being pished as a newt. Hammered. Whacked. Smashed. Pissed. Fucked. Or, in the parlance of our times: ‘drunk beyond reason’.

Extra special thanks to CalebVaughn for this ridiculously simple, yet incredibly effective tip!

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Your photos, 300-style!

Haje Jan Kamps — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:00:31 +0000

Movie audiences of the world are vastly and completely amazed by the beauty of the new movie 300. With its extremely distinctive style, quick-moving plot and — like Sin City, another of my favourites — relatively closely based on one of Frank Miller’s graphical novels, it’s got it goin’ on.

If you’ve seen the film, you can’t have failed to notice the amazing quality of the artwork involved: The CGI is amazing, of course, but even the live-action bits of the film is nothing short of stunning. So, how, exactly, can you recreate the effects? We interviewed graphic artist Jason Niedle to find out more…

300 was shot entirely using blue- and green-screen, which is a technology which allows you to create the backgrounds digitally. Of course, the actors use props etc, but the fact remains that nearly 90% of all the footage used in the film involves various types of visual effects. The film was in post production for nearly a year — ages, in film industry terms.

Oh, so you’re a tech geek, are you? Well, let’s find out what IMDB tells us about the technology used:

The film was edited on an Avid, with an HD cut also maintained in Final Cut Pro The 3D was made using Maya, XSI, and Lightwave The 2D composites were made with Shake, Inferno, Fusion, and Combustion. The film makers prefer Macintosh, but large portions of the movie were made under Linux. Asset management was handled by custom software written in the Panorama development environment, made by Provue. Color management was handled by Truelight software. The film was scanned on a northlight scanner and was recorded on the arrilaser. Most of the film was shot at high speed, between 50 and 150fps. Normal film is at 24fps. The film was transferred to HD SR tape and quicktime, and HD quicktimes were the basis for the HD preview cuts. The working resolution for the film was 2K, at a working aspect ratio of 2.11 and a projected aspect ratio of 2.35.

Err, right. If anyone fancies translating that into English, feel free to post a comment. That’s totally not why we’re here, though, and I’ve let my mind wander way off track (it does that a lot recently, I blame the fact that I’ll soon be visited by my lovely girlfriend, who I haven’t seen in more than two weeks. It does weird things to my mind. Oh, I’m waffling again. But then again, as a regular reader, I’m sure you’re used to that from me by now… Right?)

How did they achieve the special look of the film? As it turns out, the directors and film editors decided to do a ‘crush’ technique. This means that you extend the blacks (‘crush’) to up the contrast and make a scene look eerie.

Let’s illustrate. Starting with a straight-up photo of the lovely Christine, where she’s looking ever-so-slightly devious:

Now, to apply the ‘crush’ technique, you need to adjust the levels on your image so the black comes out stronger. Obviously, you need to do these changes only to a selection of your image, otherwise, it’ll come out way too dark.

Now, with some careful selections and some drastic image editing, you can turn this photo into something that has far higher impact and offers up a lot more contrast to work with. This is important, especially because the contrasty style of 300 would be impossible to recreate without, err, contrast.

When you’ve got the contrast right, you’ve got to start playing with the colour — it’s got to be right, after all.

When Jason saw the movie, he explains, he wanted to re-create the effect. Re-visiting a photo he took a while ago, he combined the photograph with some stock stuff, and came up with the image to the right.

“I spent a little time balancing the brightness of the images”, he recalls, such as darkening the background and making the model stand out properly. Subsequently, he added a Sepia tone to the image:

… Which brings the photograph in line with the colour feel of 300, apart from the whole ‘300 being in colour’ bit. What next? “Well, I liked the effect quite a lot, but it didn’t quite cut it. For one, it wasn’t nearly colourful enough”, Jason explains, “so I took the base image, made a copy of the layer and put it right back on top”. By using the ‘multiply’ channel layer and fine-adjusting the opacity of the new layer in Photoshop, it adds some of the colour back into the image, and amicably imitates the ‘crush’ feel of 300.

We’re getting close now, but the lighting- and director of photography of 300 had shot the film with rather dramatic lighting. In addition, a lot of the scenes in 300 has the models oiled up (or, at the very least, sweating like pigs. Wouldn’t you, in the heat of battle?), so the powerful lighting reflects off the models in a wicked way. “Basically, I added a motion blur to the background, and added it as a separate layer to the Photoshop file”, Jason explains.

The final result? Judge for yourself:

Jason suggests that the original photo could have done with more powerful, side-on lighting, but the basic feel of the 300 movie posters is there… Wouldn’t you agree?

Jason is a graphic designer and photographer based in Orange County, California. Read more of his stuff on Jasontopia. The first three images in this article are used courtesy of Warner Brothers under Fair Use / Fair Dealing, for illustrative purposes. For full-res versions and more info about the movie, check out the official 300 website.

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Emergency tripod? Piece of string!

Haje Jan Kamps — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 00:33:51 +0000

The main problem of taking photos free-hand is that your hands aren’t particularly sturdy. Myself, I find using a heavier camera makes it a lot easier (the inertia of the camera means it is reluctant to move, so up to a point, a heavy camera is easier to hold still for the duration of a photographic exposure than a very light camera.), but what about lighter cameras?

The obvious answer is a tripod or a monopod, but these devices can be terribly heavy, and they are not particularly portable. One solution is to hold the camera against a surface (a tree, a building, or a signpost), but that doesn’t always work either, and none of these items offer an awful lot of flexibility.

How?

I often find myself thinking “Damn, if there was only a way to anchor the camera to the ground…”, and I recently found a solution that works: A String Tripod (also known as a Chainpod)!

It is a laughably simple device: You get a wing nut bolt (or anything that screws in) that fits into the tripod hole of your camera (you are looking for a bolt with 3.5×8″ threads), and drill a small hole into the bolt. Then, you attach a length of string to it, with a loop at the end. If you use the shearing lines available for tents, you can vary the length of the loop, and, as such, the height of the camera.

To use one of these string tripods, put your foot (or feet) through the loop, and pull the string taut against your foot. Now, out of nowhere, your camera will be a lot more stable, as it has an axis against which it cannot move (up/down). This means that you can hold the camera a lot calmer – you would be surprised how much of a difference this can make!

But… But…

Sure, it will never replace a proper tripod or monopod, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you gain a couple of stops on your shutter time by using this system. And the best thing? Making one of these is going to cost you less than a bottle of milk and a loaf of bread!

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DIY Digital Picture Frames

Haje Jan Kamps — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 09:58:58 +0000

Photo frames are an easy way to add some gusto to your images. The future of this particular business, of course, is digital photography frames. You just upload some of your favourite photos to the frame, and then the frame cycles through the photos for you. If the frame is cleverly enough disguised and lit, it looks like a perfectly normal frame, with the only difference that the photo changes before your very eyes!

They make for great gifts, and can look pretty damn smart in various installations too. But sadly, they’re often quite expensive. Understandably, you might wish to try and make your own. I decided to start researching the topic, and was surprised to find the Laptop to Digital Picture Frame page on Likelysoft. It’s got over a hundred projects explaining how you can convert your old laptop into a gorgeous photo frame. The articles cover software, how to build the frame itself, and presentation opportunities.

With the weather being so damn lousy at the moment (hey, I live in the UK, I should be used to it by now, right?), it makes sense to have a nice little home DIY project. So dig out your old laptop and get crackin’! :)

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Rescuing data from defective flash cards

Haje Jan Kamps — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 00:00:32 +0000

If you’ve ever lost all your images of a memory card, due to failure, or by accidentally formatting it, you know how horrible it is. Back in the day, when you lose a roll of film to an accident, at least you can console yourself that you only lost up to 36 photos. Now, if you lose a large memorycard, you can lose hundreds, perhaps thousands of photos. Not very nice.

Luckily, your memory card is likely to not lose all of the images, even if some were to become erased or corrupted…

If you have an accident where you believe you may have lost some images, do the following:

Don’t use the memory card any more. Don’t take any photos. Don’t try to format it. Don’t do anything that might write to the card.
Take it out of the camera.
Insert your memory card into a card reader
Rescue your images!

Of course, the rescuing bit is the most tricky. Luckily, there are lots of services and software out there that can help.

If you use Linux, you could go the hardcore, manual way of recovering your photos, using Sleuthkit. If you don’t feel that confident or hardcore, Lexar bundles an application with its memory cards called ImageRescue. If you don’t have this piece of software (it’s for both Windows and OS X), it’s worth buying a Lexar memory card just for the software. Alternatively, you could buy it online for $30. A cheap price to pay, if you ask me, for a piece of software that could save your irreplacable photos.

Of course, there are loads of other software out there. I haven’t tried anything but Lexar’s software (why would I? It works :), but I’ve heard good things about CardRecovery ( (£22.80, US$39.95), Media Recover (US$30), and Photos Recover (US$30) PhotoOne Recover ($25) as well.

When you have recovered your photos, I would suggest testing the memory card thoroughly. If it never fails again, it may have been a freak one-off accident. If it ever does it again, take it back to the store you purchased it, and demand a replacement. Don’t jeopardise your cherished memories.

If your pictures are a matter of life and death

If your photos are so important to you that they cannot possibly be replaced, it may be worth getting professionals involved. Professional data recovery services cost an arm and both legs, but these guys really know what they are doing – using clean-rooms, and disassembling the memory card for you, if necessary, to ensure they can recover as much of the data as possible. There is a lot of variation between the success rates of professional services, so ring around and don’t commit until you are sure you have a service you trust. There are dozens of big data recovery firms around, and I’ve never used any, so I’d be hesitant to recommend anybody, but a quick search for Data Recovery in Google should bring up the companies relevant to your area.

Good luck!

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Create your own IR filter

Haje Jan Kamps — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 00:08:10 +0000

A digital camera sees more infrared than we do, and all you need to do to capture it, is to block out all the visible (non-infrared) light. You can buy filters that do this, but they can be ridiculously expensive – and buying stuff removes all the fun of creating stuff, n’est-ce pas?

The trick? In order to be able to withstand the heat on projectors, slide film will be created so it lets through infrared light, even past the portions of the slide that are completely black. In other words: Unexposed, developed slide film can be used as an IR filter!

Top tip: If your camera lens is bigger than 35mm film, why not just buy a roll of 120 slide film? It’s bigger :-)

More information about the hows, the whys, and the wherefores can be found on Wim Wiskerke’s website.

Where can you get developed, unexposed film?

1) Go into a camera store, buy a roll of slide film. (120 film is great, because it has larger surface area and no sprocket holes). If you can get film that is out of date, it’s cheaper. They may even give you a roll or two for free.

2) Hand the newly aquired roll of film back to the salesperson behind the counter, and tell them to get it developed. If they look at you in a confused way, explain why. Tell them to add a note on the film that yes, you know it is unexposed, and yes, you want it developing anyway.

3) Go back to the store 48 hours later, pick up your now-developed, still-underexposed slide film, which now is ready to be used as IR filter. The whole thing should cost you a fraction of the price of an IR filter!

Photocritic photography blog » Do It Yourself

Building a laser trigger for your camera

Talking to the camera

Triggering the camera with the Arduino

Getting the laser trigger to work

Does it even work?

So, er, what the hell can you use this for?

Disclaimer

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Colour illusion

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How to clean your dSLR sensor

Sensor Swab

Brush

Blower

Time for a spring clean!

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Nude self portraiture

Nude in front of (and behind) the lens

Trusting others vs trusting yourself

Find out more!

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Digital Schizophrenia

Couple of examples

Couple of other examples

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DIY pinhole for dSLR

It starts with a body cap

Creating the pinhole itself

Putting the two together

Time to experiment!

Autopsy of my photos

Further reading and inspiration

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Pan and scan, baby

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Making a killing jar

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Learn photography step-by-step

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Keep the dust off your lens

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Your photos, 300-style!

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Emergency tripod? Piece of string!

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DIY Digital Picture Frames

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Rescuing data from defective flash cards

If your pictures are a matter of life and death

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Create your own IR filter

Where can you get developed, unexposed film?

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