DiyPhotoBits.com

The other day I saw this nice post at diyphotography.net about a simple backdrop stand, and it made me think how I do this with bamboo.  Nothing bamboo specific about it I think, and in fact really not much to it at all.

Basically I leverage chairs, specifically any chair with straight legs (so no sofas or lazyboys or office spinners).  Why?  Because chairs are everywhere, and they tend to stay put — they are easy to weight down with a few books or you can even have someone sit on it.  So you it isn’t anything extra, it’s just using what you have.

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Man I knew I shouldn’t have released this — Camera Control 2.0 is stuffed full of bugs.  None destructive, but they are bad enough to interfer with happy usage of the tool.  

Two are biggies:

First of all for those people getting the “Error: File already exists” error — that was also in 1.0 — and it is caused by using the Shutter Release button while the Start Tether button is down.  Just use one (Shutter Release with the “Download Immediately” ticked -or- use the Start Tether to do continuous tether) and it will be ok. 

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Ok so here is DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control 2.0 — the Embarrassment release.   I’ve named it that because I’ve had no time to work on it recently and so it still is a) very rough with major holes and b) fails to have all the obvious fixes and enhancements that I have discussed with people.

DOWNLOAD

So why release it at all?  Well because having control of the camera exposure from the computer is cool — and at the moment I have it sitting here on my PC working and maybe you’d like to have it on your PC working as well.

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I can’t tell why it is that the Camera Control script doesn’t work for some systems, but I presume it is some difference in the WIA configuration or settings of that camera or PC.  If you’d like me to try to fix it for your system then I’ll need some more details.

Use this WIA test program, from http://www.milika.net/, to get the details of your WIA connection and send them to me.  You can leave them as a comment here or email them to me at raymond -at- this domain name (diyphotobits.com).

Thanks.

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This still isn’t finished but I’m quite happy that I’ve got so far all ready…

Camera Control 2 in development

Now I can control from the PC which exposure mode the camera is in (M, P, A, S) — but only on the D300, I suppose sensibly it is impossible to control that on the D40 where it is set by a physical dial.

But presuming the mode allows it I can then control aperture and shutter speed easily.  ISO, and WB are easy to set — but I can’t tell what the initial settings of the camera are when it is plugged in which is a bit annoying.

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Update; Now try version 2.

Ok here’s something new — I’ve taken the various little scripts for tethered shooting and remote control and wrapped them up in a nicer interface.  This is the first time I’ve tried writing a “hypertext application” or .HTA file and it’s quite an interesting mix of HTML and scripting.  I think I can do quite a few interesting things with this.  But for now here I have produced:

DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control 1.0

DOWNLOAD (200K installer)  Use version 2 instead

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This is not mine and I haven’t tried it but I appreciate the nice simple approach, perhaps because it is like mine, of a script wrapper around some standard functionality.

See this post where appollux explains the scripting necessary to get tethered shooting working on Linux, or probably any similiar *nix system.

It really makes me want to go ahead and implement some more interesting features now that the basics are taken care of for most people.  But first I really have to do that bamboo monopole — I suffer from terrible handshake it seems.

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Just saw this great time laps video, via Chase via Savan, via Gizmodo, which gives me an idea as to what one would actually use an intervalometer for.  So I’m one step closer to writing that intervalometer script I’ve been meaning to do.  I mean really it is just remote shutter release on a timer, though one could spice it up with tethered downloading and maybe deletion from camera to prevent a small memory card from limiting the idea.  battery power is still going to be a limit though — A/C adaptors are available I know but never seen anybody who had one.  

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If you follow any of the small light shooters or “strobism” in general as I do then you’ll have come across the “Justin Clamp” quite a few times in passing.  If not, then lets just say it is an ugly beast that provides several useful ways to attach something to something else — typically a hotshoe flash to a pole, shelf, tripod leg or probably someone’s nose if they stay still long enough.  

Supposedly it was invented to satisfy the need of one particular photographer, but anyone can buy one if you are prepared to part with $54.90 plus shipping.  

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Two of my scripts let you press a key on the keyboard, or click with the mouse, and remotely release the shutter.  But just like the built in Windows Explorer technique for doing these they both only are able to trigger JPG, even if the camera is set to RAW.

Until today.  It turns out this is not that hard to fix.  But the programatic technique is a bit of a laugh; because Windows Image Automation does not officially support RAW the NEF files on my Nikon D300 are typed as being of “undefined” type.  Unlike JPG files which WIA does know are JPG files and are typed appropriately.

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