A few bits and pieces about photography
Stefan Hafeneger , has built a Nikon specific camera control app for macs which is now beta and freely available. He is using the Nikon SDK as well so should be able to implement much more Nikon specific controls than I am able to via WIA on Windows in my script.
Apparently he is able to understand the SDK as well – which means not only can he program better than I but his English/Japanese parsing skill is much higher than mine as well and I salute him!
[via dptnt]
Sorry, being a total geek here.
If you are also a command line geek you will look at the above and go Ahhhh…
Otherwise, it means nothing and you can skip over this post. 🙂
For the rest of you — the above “converts” NEF files into JPG faster than anything you have ever seen before.
And is great for converting 250 NEF files you snapped of something totally unimportant that should have been shot in jpg and not raw.
For example: we visited a couple of flats/apartments this weekend (thinking about moving) and I put a Sigma 10-20mm Best of the Best 4: Without Warning hd on my D300 and walked around shooting absolutely everything. The idea was that once we got home if we thought “hey, was there an xyz in the whatever room of that second one” or something like that we could jsut refer to the images rather than go back or phone and ask. So to cover everything, even at super wide, I was shooting like crazy. Barely aiming, not bothering to focus (and that lens managed fine actually, very well for this purpose).
But I got home and found I had 250+ raw files — or almost 4G of data! Drat, should have switched to jpg for these snapshots, but now what do I do? Sure I can batch them through ACR or photoshop, but it’ll take forever.
So luckily I had just been looking at dcraw, the command line raw processor recently, I had the Windows build, and tada.
for /f "tokens=*" %x in ('dir /b *.nef') do dcraw -e %x
An command line that takes all the raw files in the directory and spits out jpg files instead. After that I just del *.nef and I’m done.
Up side:
Downside:
Still a good trick and to save me having to think about the syntax next time I have to do this I’m blogging about it so I can go back and refer to my own blog. I knew there was a reason I was blogging!
And of course now that I know dcraw can do this I’ll be looking to integrate raw preview into Camera Control using this. In my copious free time! Huh!
PS. There should have been a video today about how to do the paper grid spot, but I totally messed up the recordings and all the files are a disaster so this too will have to wait for another time.
Visit http://www.photoremote.de if you can underderstand German to read about another WIA based remote control software, targetting Nikon specifically.
No? Me neither.
I wish I did though as this past weekend I lost my SB-800! I’ve been going around since then cursing my carelessness! Arggg!!!
Lets just say that when leaping hurriedly into and out of a taxi in the dark while holding a toddler in one hand and a camera bag in the other hand it is wise to make sure that the bag is fully
and securely
closed!
The little carrying case I had the flash in was also stuffed with little DIY items which I’ll have to remake such as the folding grid spot and the sticky IR filter as well as all the gels I’ll have to re-cut.
I’ve got some other lights but I was quite attached to the SB-800 which is a great light despite the expense. I guess I’ll have to start saving pennies again if I want to replace it, let alone consider the SB-900!
A quick thank you from me to all of those of you who have blogged about, or posted in forums about, or told friends about this site and the Camera Control script.
It’s great to have your recommendation – even with caveats!
Please keep it up! 😉
Here is a great invention by Joergen Geerds, a hardware based platform for doing exposure bracketing. Just when I released a software approach targetted at Nikon cameras Joergen releases a hardware approach targetting Canon!
Actually I suspect that both ways will work with both Canon and Nikon, but that is untested. Where as I’m using USB and WIA and PTP to control the camera from Windows Joergen is using a microcontroller and a cable release to the camera which is in Bulb mode to do variable length exposures.
I wish I could make Bulb mode work, but the way WIA just sends “commands” like “take picture” I don’t see how I can get an open shutter command and a separate close shutter command at a later time.
[via gorillasites] well just about everybody; www.dsgnwok.com, www.hackszine.com, digital-camera-online.co.za, www.electronicsinfoline.com
, www.hdrlabs.com, www.usd6.com, dailydiy.com, and blog.makezine.com
What is the lowest spec PC/Laptop that Camera Control will work on? I don’t know — I have a Thinkpad X31 running XP SP2 and it is ok though you can see a little sloweness at times.
Would it work on lower end, either old machine or one of the new light netbooks? Let me know!
It is here, it is basic, but it works (somewhat) — Bracketing. Once again I find myself either spending an hour I have available to work on the code, or publishing what I already have working, limited though it may be.
So here we have 4.0 – the Basic Bracketing version.
Expect bugs — that’s why the version is a .0 one! However it should do you for some basic HDR or timelapse uses.
Update: