Welcome to the Camera Trigger blog

The Camera Trigger project started several years ago with my goal simply being to take 'better' wildlife photographs. This vague goal is open to many interpretations however and it didn't take long for the ideas list to become so large and complex that the whole project stalled pretty much before it started. Fast forward a few years and the project has now matured to the point of being usable and the real work of taking photographs can finally begin.

The goal of taking 'better' wildlife photographs will mean different things to different photographers. For me, a particular goal at the time was to capture woodland birds in flight but there are many issues to overcome, including:

Sharp in-flight images require very short exposure times
Short exposure times require a lot of light
The focus point has to be exact

One solution is to use a break beam type system to trigger the camera with a high-speed sync flash. There are a few commercially available options available but considering the electronics involved to detect a broken light beam and trigger a camera are relatively simple, I decided to build everything from scratch. This decision certainly impacted the rate of progress toward the original goal but the benefits of going alone have ultimately been far more useful.

This blog aims to serve partly as a record of my ongoing experiments and partly to solicit ideas for improvements. There are several areas this project has taken me into, PCB design and manufacturing, 3D printing, rapid prototyping and those are just the technical areas. The wildlife reconnaissance and monitoring side is equally large and challenging.

Below are just a few of the projects and experiments I'll be documenting. They range from the custom laser housing with precision adjustments (top left) to the laser / camera / flash / external shutter controller (the red board).

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Macro diffuser update

I've simplified the macro diffuser that I open sourced last year . The MK1 version required printing out a custom lens hood which would only attach to a Canon 100mm macro lens. The MK2 version no longer requires a custom lens hood, it simply clicks on to the hood of whatever macro lens you might have making it far more versatile and easier to print. The tested lenses so far include: Canon 100mm Canon 180mm Sigma 180mm Sigma 105mm This hood helps reduce harsh shadows you often get when using flash but the main advantage for me is that the head can be positioned depending on how close you get to your subject. This is the typical kind of result I'm getting with this setup now. To build your own version you just need to print the model and supply a few basic parts: M3 x 40mm Hex Head bolt (the shape of the head is hex, NOT the shape of the tool used to tighten it). M3 wingnut. Diffuser material. I use the plastic casing found on some notebooks and it seems t...

Experimental macro flash diffuser

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 laser trigger module overview

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.

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