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.

Components

• Three bamboo poles — at least 6 foot long, dirt cheap where I am
• A roll of 3M scotch bundling wrap — this is GREAT stuff, strong yet soft enough it doesn’t damage fabric it rubs against.
• Couple of pieces of elastic cord tied in long loops — I carry some of these everywhere

And then the backdrop, I have a few meters of sheet material from a fabric shop which is almost completely white — and once it is blasted with enough light it is white.  For colour backdrops I just ad gels (to the flash).

Then I need to find two chairs — dining chairs are great though I also use some rattan arm chairs  – then put a bamboo pole upright next to leg of the chair and bind it top and bottom of the chair-leg with bits of velcro.  If the chair back has exposed poles you can bind to all the better for stability.   That gives me two uprights.

Now I take the third pole, stand on the chair to reach, and bind the horizontal pole to the upright with elastic cord giving me an “H” shape of poles.  It takes longer to write it down than to do it and it’s lightweight yet sturdy and all I have to carry about is three poles and the rest goes in my pocket.

I guess this is one up on the “clamp the sheet to a bookcase” in terms of flexibility of where you can put it, but is similarly basic.  But then that’s all you need really isn’t it?

Having said all that — I’ve lost interest in the idea of white backgrounds and really want to find more interesting textures out in the real world to be the backgrounds in my portraits.  But that’s another story.

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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. 

Secondly you only get the full set of exposure mode controls on screen if the camera is in M mode when you connect it.  

Also it fails to create the default c:\tethered directory…

I’ll try to fix these today and put out a bug fix but I have to go do some work soon so might not make it - gotta earn a living you know…

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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.

New features:

• Control exposure mode (M/S/A/P) - Tested D300 works, D40 does not (because that setting is a physical dial on the D40 and software can’t override it)
• Control Shutter speed, Aperture, ISO, WB and Exposure Compensation from the PC - Tested  D300 and D40 work
• Shows battery status while in tethered mode - Tested D300 works

New known bugs, issues and uglinesses

• Exposure Compensation drop down makes no sense — 0 means 0 but the others are internal codes, you’ll see what they mean after a few moments though, each one is a third stop plus or minus.
• Not all the exposure setting drop downs default to sensible values, e.g. the current camera settings.
• Also read this bug list

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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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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.

Still have some work to do on the Exposure Compensation control as well.  And generally on the layout of the controls to make them fit together in some sort of sensible way.   

But look out soon for this new version — and let me know what other controls or info you’d like to see in here.

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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

As I have wrapped up the script in a nice interface I thought I should fix up the download and install process as well.  So it now has a real installer which makes a Start menu icon, installs and registered the Microsoft DLL, and it can be uninstalled via the Control Panel Add/Remove Program icon.

So if you are not happy about download and running text file scripts or installing DLLs yourself then this is the version for you.  I’ve tried to “degeek” it as much as I can!

Screen shot of Camera Control 1.0

I haven’t added a lot of new features, this is more of a combination of existing stuff but you will notice:

• It automatically detects your camera if you have only one installed, it only asks you to select if you have more than one.  And it isn’t confused by scanners any more, it knows those are not cameras.
• You can choose the output folder to save the files with a click of a button.
• There is a preview window that shows the image you just shot.  Size is adjustable.  JPG only for now, but if you shoot RAW + JPG then both download and the JPG is displayed.

Existing features maintained include:

• Choose Raw or JPG when triggering remote shutter
• Download (optionally) when remotely releasing shutter - if you do then it becomes the “Self Portrait Script”
• Tethered mode where all images shot using either the PC button or the camera shutter release button are immediately downloaded.  Takes about 7 seconds from pressing shutter release to viewing it full size in Bridge.
• Pushes external veiwers, including Adobe Bridge CS3 and Windows Explorer, to the next image.

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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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But then I just read this blog post where he mentions “four Getty photographers would all be shooting tethered into 2 editor’s computers” - I don’t really know what he meant by that but I read it as more than one camera connected to the same computer.  

Not a problem!  I presume I can do that — two WIA device instances — but then what do I do with two cameras shooting at (nearly) the same time?  Well just let all those wicked flavours (as Jamie Oliver likes to say) do their thing — and mix all the ideas together and out pops..

Stereoscopic Time laps Movies!

If I rig up two cameras with suitable distance appart — a bit more than true eye distance is necessary due to the size of the cameras and probably desirable to exagerate the 3D effect — then shoot them simultaneously while looking at a scene at regular intervals.  And tada!  My own 3D movies.

But.. But… how to display them?  Can I show stereo onscreen?  Blue/red glasses?  ug no!  How about that trick where you basically go the reverse of cross-eyed while staring at something.  It sometimes works but does give you eye strain after a while.  Perhaps I need to find some lenses and make a real viewer.  

This one gets filed under Ideas (e.g. not actually done yet), but maybe one day!

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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.  

It comes with a cold shoe but it may be a bit tight for the SB-900, but works fine with an SB-800.  Now I haven’t got a 900 but presume that like a SB800 it comes with it’s own cold foot or stand - the AS-19 which is a often ignored but very useful piece of kit.

This gives me a simple option to DIY a replacement for a Justin Clamp, for cheap.  A Bulldog clip from a stationary store, bolt and a couple of nuts and I have this.

Shown here clamping onto a bookcase with flannel to get a good grip without scratching the wood.

And if you are wondering why I don’t use those big clamps with the green or orange rubber tips, it’s because I can’t find any place that sells them around here!

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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.

So to get the WIA Take Picture command to get me a NEF I actually have to ask for a picture of type “undefined”!  It’s amazing it works, I guess somewhere an engineer (I’m not sure Microsoft or Nikon) decided that undefined=NEF.  I have no idea of this will also work with Canon, it might or it might not.  

Anyway it works, and it opens up a whole range of possibilities I’ll be exploring soon with the scripting.  But until then head over to the posts for those remote scripts and you can download the latest versions which support RAW.

• The Self Portrait script (which is also good for table top still life. e.g. ebay shooting as well)
• D300 Remote Control Script (or any Nikon dSLR, in fact probably any dSLR regardless of brand)

PS.  Please please no religious RAW vs JPG comments.   It’s a free world, people are entitled to the file format of their choice.

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