CameraTrigger

While recently browsing cheap tripods on amazon (you can never have too many tripod when doing camera trap type work...) I stumbled on one which included this image: Instantly I was drawn to something that made me suspect this advertisement had been photoshopped! How dishonest! Now, you might spot the giant hand next to the man and assume that is what I am referring to. Not so. Zoom in a bit closer to just the model.  The tripod on the backpack just looks wrong. Note the lighting on the left tripod leg in particular, very different to the fairly diffused light on the model. The colour is also wrong compared to the rest of the image. Pick out areas that you are fairly certain will be black, for example the lens hood. Does it match the black of the tripod? No. It is almost a greeny blue while the tripod appears very black. The tripod is much warmer than the rest of the picture. Can we prove the tripod has been added digitally? There are various techniques to try, such as

Previous experiments on this blog used a breaking laser beam to trigger the camera. While this approach has some advantages there are a few major disadvantages too. The main disadvantage is the requirement to set up and accurately align lasers around the target. In certain situations this isn't an issue, but in many cases it is completely infeasible. The goal for well over a year now has been to design a module that will slip over the eye piece on a DSLR and will only fire when something changes in the field of view. The idea being you set up your camera with whatever lens you want, frame up and focus on the target (an empty perch for example) and as soon as the picture changes, the camera fires. In theory this sounds like a simple problem to solve but in reality I've encountered many headaches that have stopped me building the ultra low latency system I envisaged. Rather than allowing these roadblocks to halt all progress though I've decided to work on a simpler syst

The abundance of insects over the last couple of months has been a perfect opportunity to experiment with different macro flash setups. Using a standard speedlight as-is isn't really an option, as the light is projected out much further than the front of the lens (which is exactly what you'd normally want a speedlight to do) and is much too harsh. There are therefore two problems that need to be solved; diffusing the light and directing it closer to the front of the lens. There are of course multiple commercial solutions available, such as the Canon MT24-EX or the Sigma EM-140 ring flash, but these are all relatively expensive and unlikely to be an option to anyone wanting to experiment with macro photography. A speedlight however is much less of a barrier to entry. A few different prototypes were made but the design I settled on was a light pipe style design that captures the flash light and funnels it down to the front of the flash. Of course, it would be ideal to hav

The snow over the last few days has finally encouraged smaller birds back into the garden. Today saw starlings, blue & great tits, dunnocks, robins, black birds and even a goldfinch making visits so a perfect opportunity to try some high speed shots. Of course, wood pigeons were also making regular appearances. The laser setup is gradually becoming simpler through trial and error. The heavy duty tripods have been replaced with metal poles which are simply hammered into the grass. This speeds up setup time but also means less kit to replicate the setup. The aim for today was slightly different to previous tests. The laser wasn't aligned along the perch, it was instead set back about 10cm so that it would be broken by the bird on approach to the perch rather than after it landed. This would mean less shots, but hopefully the action shots that drove this project in the first place. This seemed to work and the results are quite encouraging. More experimentation is required to r

The laser trigger module is the most useful gadget to come out of the camera trigger project so far. It is a simple board that controls up to two lasers with sensors to detect if the beams have been broken. The electronics involved in detecting a broken beam are very simple so using a microcontroller might at first glance seem to be unnecessary overkill, but using a microcontroller gives a significant amount of flexibility in a small and inexpensive package.

The box of tricks is a simple microcontroller based gadget and its purpose is to provide a way of detecting / recording / modifying or generating a signal. This simple set of requirements allows for a helpful set of features to be provided by single small gadget though. One of the driving factors behind this particular gadget was to allow a delay to be introduced to the signal sent to the camera. As mentioned previously , this opens up new possibilities and allows limitations with setups to be overcome. It also, when combined with the splitter , allows multiple cameras to capture the same event at different times which might increase the chance of getting 'the' shot. The picture above shows the board without a case. The headphone jack in the top left is the input, the jack on the top right is the output and there are buttons in each of the bottom corners. The display is a 3 digit 7-segment display that displays numbers and some letters. Choosing the display was one of the