How to convert film negatives to digital images

This entry is a bit different... I recorded a photography related video for my maker themed video blog. The video is shown below. Go to the entry for House of Hacks if you'd rather read the transcript than watch the video.

Light painting tool - First results

In previous articles I showed the brains of a little light wand device and then subsequently the control unit. I finally got it all assembled and took it out for a field test the other night with the Friday Night Fotogs.

Here it is all assembled.


And here are some detail shots.






It's comprised of an RGB LED with a ping-pong ball on the end for a diffuser, a micro-controller board to control the color of the LED and three sliding adjustment potentiometers to control the hue, saturation and value of the LED.

There is still work to be done on it. As it stands, I haven't put much time into making it sturdy. The wires are all exposed and the computer board is only held on by the wires which in turn are only held on by a couple zip ties. I had an instance where the wind blew the ping-pong ball diffuser off and I had to go dashing across the salt and sand in the dark to retrieve it.

Additionally, I want to put a mechanism on it to be able to easily spin it. I have some skateboard bearings sitting on the workbench and some ideas about how to go about it. I just need to finalize the design and machine a mounting bracket.

Here are some of the first images I made with it.






Overall I was pretty pleased with the way it worked out. I was initially concerned that the single LED wouldn't have enough light output to work too well, but as can be seen, that was unfounded for night conditions. In twilight, it might still be a problem.

I'm going to play with this for awhile and see how it works out. If I make a second version, a couple improvements I've thought about include a power switch, multiple LEDs, a push button switch or two, better construction and possibly running off AA batteries instead of a single 9V. After working with it, I may add some others to the list.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

In need of a visit to the gear doctor

A couple months ago I wrote about my new-to-me 5D camera. Last Sunday, Lady Pebbles and I took a day trip to Cedar Breaks National Monument to make some photographs of the eclipse.

It was a beautiful day. We got down there mid-afternoon to spend time scouting locations before the big event which started a couple hours before sunset. Everything was mostly dry, but there were still patches of snow in a couple places on north facing slopes on the trail. Being a nice warm day, the snow was melting, making the fine clay soil slicker than snot. As I went around one of these spots on a particularly steep slope in the trail, I stepped on what I thought was firm ground. However, it turned out to be a dry crust on top of slick mud. I immediately slid right down into the center of the snow and mud.

Fortunately, I was able to catch myself and slid just on my hands and feet so I didn't get all muddy. All my gear stayed out of the mud. Except my camera. I was carrying it attached to my R-strap by my back hip. As I slid down the hill, it slid around my body and into the mud. It didn't fall; it just crept around and bumped into the ground. My hands were caked in mud and the top of the camera and lens had a little mud, but overall, things weren't too bad.

I used the snow to clean my hands and the worst of the mud from the camera. Everything seemed to be in good shape. We continued scouting locations and making images. Finally we found where we wanted to stay and setup our gear.

I made a couple hundred exposures of the gorgeous canyons as we waited for the eclipse to start and chatted with other photographers setting up next to us. About 45 minutes after the start of the eclipse, I clicked the shutter, looked through the viewfinder to reframe and saw nothing but black. Weird. I hit the shutter release. It opened and stayed open for several seconds before closing again. The image was completely blown out. Really weird. I cycled power and tried again. Same thing. I took it off the tripod, removed the battery grip to really make sure the power was disconnected. I put it back together and tried again. Still the same thing. Hmm. I took the lens off and immediately saw the problem.

The inside is supposed to look like this:

But instead, what I saw looked more like this:

Arg. The partially silvered mirror that allows you to see through the lens had separated from the flippy-uppy thing that takes it out of the way of the sensor. Hence the black viewfinder. And since the exposure meter is mounted behind it, it wasn't geting the proper readings, causing the long exposure times.

This is actually a known problem with the 5D model and Canon has a recall notice out on it. I'm not sure if this body has been in for the recall upgrade or not. And I don't know if the minor tumble had anything to do with it or not. I'll be taking it in to Pictureline to have them send it in. Hopefully, Canon will repair it as part of the recall, but if not, I'm going to have a camera doctor's bill shortly.

Light painting tool - progress update

Last post I showed a couple circuit boards for a light painting tool I'm building. I planned on getting it finished by last week, but spring time house projects intervened and I didn't get as much done as I had hoped. However, I did get the user controls assembled. The three controls will adjust the red, green and blue sections of the LEDs. There are two ways to program it: either as RGB sliders or HSV sliders. I'm undecided which will work best, so I'll probably try both ways and see which I like better. Any thoughts on which way to go?

Light painting tool

I was scheduled to teach a course in the local university's life-long learning program, so over the last several weeks I've focused on making some tools for one of the topics I was going to cover: light painting. This is a photo of control boards I worked on this week for two of these tools.

For this project, I decided to make my own printed circuit boards for the first time. At times it was pretty frustrating learning just the right technique to make them come out properly. But in the end, I am pleased with the results, particularly for a first attempt.

As part of the process, the copper covered board is put in an acid bath to etch the traces. It was pretty cool watching that happen; took me back to the days of watching a print emerge on a white piece of paper in the darkroom.

I plan on finishing them this week and taking them to the next Friday Night Fotogs get together. When I do, I'll post a follow-up with pictures of the completed tool, some build notes and the resulting images.

New (to me) gear

With this week's release of Canon's 5D Mark III, my good friend Rich Legg upgraded his main camera. In doing so, his old Mark II shifted to the backup position and his classic 5D became surplus. So, he made me an offer I couldn't refuse and my new primary camera is now full frame. Even though this body is newly mine, we're already old friends. In the last three years, I've probably shot it more than Rich has. He let me borrow it for a long weekend trip and I've shot second shooter at a couple shoots for him. I'm now looking forward to using it full time.

Crickets

Hear them? The crickets? It's been pretty quiet around here for awhile.

The reasons are multifaceted.

One: I've been busy with things other than photography and haven't spent much time posting articles here.

Two: I have three blogs that I try to keep up. A couple years ago, I'd made a plan, and set up reminders, to write one post for each blog each week. It was simply too ambitious. It was unmaintainable. And it got to the point where I simply dismissed the reminder without giving any serious thought to it. The reminders, rather than spurring me into action, ended up being a means for me to put a guilt trip on myself and resenting. I simply over-committed myself, got overwhelmed and ignored things.

Three: I ran into the issue that some of what I wanted to share didn't fit well into any of my blogs. Things crossed over into other areas that didn't weren't really about the topic of the blog. Additionally, some things didn't fit the written format well.

So, the last couple months I have evaluated what I want to do and how I want to move further with my blogs. I've decided to continue the three blogs. However, instead of posting to each one each week, for a total of three posts a week between them, I plan to only write one post a week and rotate through the blogs. This means each blog will be updated once every three weeks. I think actually writing one post a week is better than not writing three.

I have also started a new video blog. It is less focused on a particular area and so it allows me to share more variety of things. Some of those things will be photography related and when there is cross over, I'll also cross post.

This blog also has a related twitter account. It serves as both to alert of new articles here and also pointers to other things photography related I find out in the internet. I plan on having several posts a week there, so followers will get more than they do here, but won't be spammed with huge amounts either.

Until next time, keep watching the light.

Recent tweets

• Now that's a big camera. (I'd hate to buy a digital back for that!) http://kck.st/z8olTU
• Historically interesting, but I think I'll keep my DIGIC II: http://bit.ly/wSUwVd
• Using LEDs to make a camera: http://bit.ly/yUpswq (Cool, but Canon and Nikon don't have to worry anytime soon.)
• Eyeballs, Rifles and slow-motion video: what could be better? http://bit.ly/wAqPJn

Hooked on Light links

• Flickr
• Twitter

Time-lapse Turntable: the making of

Last week I posted a video giving an overview of my Time-lapse Turntable project. Here's a fun time-lapse showing some of the construction.

Enjoy.



There has been some interest expressed by people wanting to know where to get one. If you are interested in me making one for you, e-mail me at turntable@hookedonlight.com and I'll put you on a list. If there is sufficient interest, I may possibly produce a batch of them for sale in the neighborhood of $200-$300 each. Anything made for sale will be significantly more polished than this rough cut proof-of-concept version.

Time-lapse Turntable: Project overview

I recently did a project for my friend Nicole Young to allow her to do some panning during a time-lapse sequence. This video is an overview of my approach to this problem. In the future, I plan to post some detailed, technical articles on my computer related blog, Skylark Software. These articles will be more about the electronics and software than the photography aspect, so I decided to post them there.

There has been some interest expressed by people wanting to know where to get one. If you are interested in me making one for you, e-mail me at turntable@hookedonlight.com and I'll put you on a list. If there is sufficient interest, I may possibly produce a batch of them for sale in the neighborhood of $200-$300 each. Anything made for sale will be significantly more polished than this rough cut proof-of-concept version.



Now, go see the results Nicole got on a recent trip to Moab.

Time-lapse Turntable: Sneak peek

It's been really quiet here on the Hooked On Light site. I've been busy with other projects and haven't done too much with photography lately. Here is one project that is photography related that I've worked on recently. I'm planning on getting a blog article up about it in the next couple weeks. Enjoy the sneak peek.