DiyPhotoBits.com

Not normally an important question this becomes relevant when you start doing time lapse, which means very large numbers of pictures taken.

Consider a 1 hour time lapse at one shot per 5 seconds, that’s 720 frames for the one hour.

Particularly I’m concerned about camera models which do not have time lapse built in, so the manufacturer had a different expectation of what the total number would be that you achieve.

The camera makers have their own estimates of the total shutter life of each camera, however a more interesting exercise is actually collecting data on this and that has been done here http://olegkikin.com/shutterlife/  Read more...

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This is the first part in a little series, which I expect to run to 5 parts, about my experience with doing a “white seamless background” look, with mostly DIY parts; and weaving in the use of tethering software.

• Part one will discuss why I’m writing this, why you should read it, and why you might want to do it anyway.
• Part two will be how I set up the physical environment with totally inadequate space and inappropriate materials; a too small room, off-white crumpled fabric, not quite white wooden boards and at least one bamboo lightstand.
 Read more...

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Seems the spammer has finished his holiday and resumed spamming. And the clean up I did last time wasn’t good enough (I’m on the current version of WP).

So another day wasted doing clean up — and this time I’ve done a lot more WP hardening. Hopefully that’ll fix it and I can get back to some more productive things!

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If it were not for the spammer. I’ve got a new rev of Camera Control nearly ready to release but have spent all my “free” time today cleaning up.

Wrote this VBA code which helped a bit to clean up the posts table:

' Manipulating a text file with VBA
' Loops through text file and creates revised one
' This code requires a reference (Tools > References) to Microsoft Scripting Runtime
' based on a sample here: http://www.ozgrid.com/forum/showthread.php?t=61822

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Hackers have been at my wordpress database and filled it with links, mostly hidden with a display:none style, to all kinds of spammy things. Very irritating as I’ll have to spend some time cleaning up. Unfortunately my sql-fu and my regex-fu are not really very powerful so this may take a while. Time I should be spending on something else!

Looks like I’m going to have to edit the posts table offline, so first thing is to use the delete revisions plugin to remove the unnecessary items in that table.

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I do, at least I am able to do when I’m shooting tethered with my CameraControl 4.1 script. Every image goes onto the flash memory card in the camera *and* onto the hard disk of the attached PC.

That matters to me when I’m doing a critical shoot. To me a critical shoot means one of my wife or my kids, capturing moments near to my heart which may never be exactly replicated. Particularly true with a 4 month old baby! It’s amazing how every week he is do different – so no going back and saying “I’ll take that picture again next week”, coz it won’t be the same will it?  Read more...

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Check out Whiternoise over at Hexus.net who has this great post about building a hardware timelapse device using programable chips.  He has posted circuit diagrams and great shots of the plastic breadboard set-up.

Looks like a real fun project if you like that type of DIY – the electronics with wires and solder type – and if your Nikon DSLR is one with an IR receiver for a remote; e.g. works with a ML-3.

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Changes in 4.1 – the “Eat your own dog food” release of DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control.

4.1

- allow fractional bracketing by changing Cint to Cdbl

- don’t crash on line 157 if there is nothing to download

- removed the “download immediately” function and changed things so that the normal tether does this function
- fixed the bug where push external viewer doesn’t work unless you explicitly choose the output folder

Download it here.

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Update: Sadly this doesn’t work. Ok I really need to fix this bug soon.

Getting this message from DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control when you click the “Shutter Release” button?

It’s a bug, the script is failing to handle the fact that the camera is very slightly slow in delivering the image after taking it.

To avoid this:

Stop using the “Download Immediately” checkbox

Instead, press the “Start Tether” button.

The result is (almost) the same; when you click Shutter Release the images ARE immediately downloaded (because the tether is running), but it’s by a different piece of code that patiently waits for the image to become available rather than demanding it immediately.  Read more...

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I’m glad to see more and more things that make my Camera Control script obsolete! See this Iphone Nikon remote control application.

Now you can get full control of your Nikon (not just PTP things but full SDK control including liveview) via an iphone or itouch. It’s only $20 too so very reasonable – there is a “lite” version for $2 also.

Downside is that it isn’t really the iphone controlling the DSLR, actually the iPhone talks to software on your PC (via what they call “server” software) and the PC talks to the DSLR so you do need a PC (windows or apple) meaning this is not quite the lightweight solution it appears at first glance.  Read more...

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