Posted Apr 3rd 2008 8:44PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks
We usually get
Canon mods, but [polossatik] sent in
some interesting Sony/Minolta lens modding work by [Shaocaholica], who's been really been taking lens modding to a new level of quality. He picked up several old Rokkor F1.2 lenses and swapped parts around to make four decent lenses. Then he had [Pete Ganz]
turn down some new mounts on his lathe. Finally, a quick round of epoxy to add a lens id chip activates the on board image stablization and focus confirmation. Be sure to check out the photo build log
here.
Posted Feb 28th 2008 10:37PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks, misc hacks
[JC Doré] sent in
this [
english] interesting optics hack. The rubber grips are made from an old mouse pad, the springs for the clip were salvaged from zip drive floppy discs. A pair of old photo slide frames sandwich a diffraction grating slide. (Like
this one) This simple mod allows the slide to be mounted to most cell phones, turning them into digital
spectrometers.
Posted Feb 27th 2008 10:47AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks
Nikon didn't build a light metering chip into the D40. That's fine if you're using one of their auto lenses with the on-board chip. [Matt] decided to
add a sensor to his camera and try it out with his manual lenses. His writeup is a bit challenging to get through, but if you're really into Nikons, you'll make it. He had to tap into the ribbon cable inside the body, mount the extra hardware, and add an additional switch outside the body to allow the chip to be turned on and off. The extra sensor adds a bit of a step to taking the shot, but it's the sort of thing that'll become second nature pretty quickly.
Posted Feb 24th 2008 7:15PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks, gps hacks, misc hacks
It's been a
while since we talked about putting a GPS on top of a D200. [Rick] sent in his
latest version. He used a nice 20 channel sirf III gps from spark-fun, a cheap D200 remote cable and a few parts to send the NMEA sentences down the wire. The biggest improvements include taking the $100 Nikon cable out of the mix and swiping power from the camera for the GPS board. All the info is there, but I had to seriously stare at his wiring instructions for a while despite the low parts count. I like to see actual circuit diagrams!
Posted Dec 8th 2007 11:05PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks, home entertainment hacks
[edocronian] sent in
this interesting mindstorm hack. [Harri] had several Super8 reels that he shot during the 80s. His kids put together this mindstorm NXT transport mechanism, and he did the rest with linux. The lego's pull the reel across an Epson scanner, and some linux hacks run the scanner, identify the frames, and reconstruct the film. Unfortunately, [Harri] didn't release any of the software hacks he used to pull it off.
Posted Nov 25th 2007 10:26PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks, misc hacks
Considering all the attention we give digital cameras, I wanted to find an interesting hack for those old school analog SLR cameras. (I spent a fair share of time behind one; I'm fond of the classic Canon AE-1) [Joshua]
mated his Sony VX-2000e video camera with a Canon FD lens mount and created this monster. With the new lens mount, he's got a full selection of lenses without the huge investment of specialized lenses.
Posted Oct 21st 2007 11:06PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks
Ring lights that surround the lens are generally used for macro photography - they're not cheap, but they're one of the few ways to get shadowless photos.
This fiber optic flash diffuser is based on the same ideas of
this one. Rather than use a few large optic strands, [Joris] is using many, many more to decrease shadows as much as possible. His previous efforts are even more interesting. He built a
LED version - with serial connected LEDs and a step up switching power supply to drive them. Then he moved on to
cold cathode fluorescent before moving onto the
fiber optics.
Posted Oct 14th 2007 7:30PM by Eliot Phillips
Filed under: digital cameras hacks
While perusing our photos from the
Hooptyrides, Inc. tour you may have noticed [Eric Kurland]'s two handed stereoscopy rig. It's constructed from two consumer grade Sony DV cameras. The problem with using two separate cameras to make stereo images or video is that a lack of clock sync will make objects appear out of their true position because of differences in framerate. To solve this problem Damir Vrančić developed the
3D LANC Master. It reads the crystal frequency from one of the cameras and writes to the ram of the other camera using Sony's LANC protocol. This constant monitoring keeps the clocks within +/- 3ms. The control box also has buttons to power on, zoom, and record in sync. The
3D LANC Master plans are completely open source and work with a large number of Sony cameras. We have more photos of Eric's rig after the break.
Continue reading 3D video with consumer cameras
Posted May 6th 2007 7:28PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks
I was under the impression that canon firmware hacking had fallen by the wayside a bit. [random guy] pointed out that Canon firmware hacking is still alive and well, but it's the smaller consumer models that are getting the attention. Several cameras, like the
A610 happen to share the same digic II image processor as my Rebel XT. By uploaded some modified firmware, you can shoot RAW format pics, and get quite a few other features as well. There's even a HDK (Hack Developer Kit) for rolling your own firmware. Most of the work appears to have been written up in Russian, but there's an
english wiki and
guide page to get you going.
Posted May 5th 2007 11:32PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks
This isn't a brand new hack, but it's a great solution for most digital cameras that like to go to sleep on you.
[T. Black] put together a nice simple pic circuit to control a cheap aiptek digital camera. It uses a 12C508, a cap and a resistor. The PIC not only activates the shutter, but can wake up the camera from sleep mode. You don't even have to provide a dedicated control channel - it can piggy-back on the throttle control signal. The hardest part of the project is tapping the signals on the SMD pc board inside the camera. There have been quite a few R/C camera controllers built, but this is certainly one of the most elegant. You can grab the code and schematic from the bottom of the project page.
Posted Mar 29th 2007 10:26PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks
We've seen some work on diy digitizers
before, but the
one that [LP Rondeau] sent in is pretty sweet. It automates the process by advancing a slide projector carriage, blowing the slide clean with compressed air, and activating shutter release from a single controller. The images in this case have been shot in RAW (with a digital rebel ), and the setup allows immediate user review of the images - not to mention using the laptop for storage of all those huge images. The results of the shot and post processing are pretty good.
Posted Jan 16th 2007 11:50AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks
[ash] wasn't satisfied with
these instructions, so he provided a
complete how-to on gutting a Rebel XT to remove the glass IR filter. This one involves pulling everything down to the CCD. Once the IR glass is removed, it's replaced with some high grade glass from Edmund Optics. If you're into camera modding at all, and own a Digital Rebel, the reference links at the end of the how-to are worth a read.
Posted Jan 15th 2007 10:35AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: digital cameras hacks
[Andrew]'s
love hate relationship with his PSP is impressive. He used a webcam to watch for the appearance of the woodblock and used a small motor (probably serial or parallel actuated) to trigger the button on command. It's a little silly, but it's a good exercise for computer visual interaction.
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