I actually used the photo script for the first time in probably a year a couple weeks ago. I wanted to do some bulk document copying, specifically to do copies of some old paper photo albums. There were far far too many pages to sit and scan properly, but I wanted soft-copies as backups as they are important personal things. So as a compromise, and to test my understanding of how to do document copying, I decided to quickly set up a station to do that.
Camera on a tripod pointing down, then two flashes in brollys left and right very low, to get a good even illumination. Seemed obvious I should also use Camera Control to control it as a “remote” and also as a big preview. So plugged it in and got it working fine, amazingly haven’t forgetting how to use it. 🙂
But in the end didn’t find it all that useful, the delay between shooting and displaying on screen didn’t allow me to work fast enough so I ended up looking through the viewfinder anyway to line up shots (my attempts at using masking tape to define the right place to put the albums just didn’t work accurately enough due to their thickness and floppiness. Then using the PC as a remote seemed painful, and slow, so I just used a simple wired remote to avoid pressing the shutter button on the camera itself.
In the end I did get over 300 pages copied, though only about two thirds are as straight as I would like and I may go back and redo the first third before I realized my positioning was off. Point for me though was that tethering prooved pretty useless to me in this context. I’ll have a think about whether I can improve it, but perhaps it just isn’t relevant.
Only DIY aspect of this venture then was that because I was using CLS to trigger the flashes I had a problem with the commander pulse reflecting off the albums. Despite what they say even when you sent the commander to “–” it still fires enough to show when basically shooting into a mirror.
A crumpled piece of silver/aluminium foil tucked under the pop-up flash to reflect the commander pulse upwards instead of towards the albums worked fine though! A lot cheaper than one of those IR filters that Nikon sells – SG-3IR which is more than 10 bucks!
Meanwhile over in my other life, trying to earn a living, I’ve been doing a lot of CSS/HTML5 work so hopefully can reapply that and get Camera Control restyled with CSS to be a little (only a little) less ugly! One day…
Saw your site and software mentioned in a forum.
Thought I would give it a try, not really thinking that it would do much.
but, wow, was I wrong.
ignoring the interface and focusing on functionality, it great, and free.
many thanks
Kevin
I have been using your wonderful DIYPhotoBits software to take pictures of germinated seed in a study we are conducting. It was working great for instantly reviewing the seed and storing the photo on my hard drive. Then one day at start-up I got a script error message. It states:
An error has occurred in the script on this page.
Line: 653
Char: 4
Error: The parameter is incorrect.
Code: 0
URL: file:///C:/Program%20Files/DIYPhotoBits.com%20Camera%20Control%205.0/Camera%20Control.hta
Do you want to continue running scripts on this page?
I have tried uninstalling and re-installing, as well as re-downloading the software.
Any suggestions?
I found my answer with
DIYPhotoBits.com Camera Control 5.1 beta
Thanks again for your wonderful software.