A few bits and pieces about photography
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.
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.
I have not actually tried this myself (I don’t have an iphone) but it sounds like a great idea.
[via Scott Kelby]
I blogged about Stefan Hafenege before, he has developed a new version of his free tethering program. It’s specific to Mac and to particular Nikon DSLR models, but if that’s your combination then it looks like a great solution.
Read his description of the new version which is called Sofortbild on his blog, and download it from the Sofortbild Website.
Once again, well done to Stefan!
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]
Visit http://www.photoremote.de if you can underderstand German to read about another WIA based remote control software, targetting Nikon specifically.
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:
Here is an alternative way to do a DIY intervalometer, using some hardware hacking.
From comedyhunter of derbyphotos.co.uk.
Much better video than my clouds!
The software you need is:
Then to get voice activated shutter release:
And yes, of course this thought is inspired by ShutterVoice, the Canon EOS front end that provides much better control via voice — with voice feedback even!
I wondered if I could do something like that myself — but when I checked I realized that basically everything I wanted was already either built in or a free microsoft download. I’ll have a think about if I can adjust the UI of my script so more features can be voice controlled, but for now shutter release is fun.
All together now, say “Shutter release”.
I thought it was well past time that I did some more explanation of how to use the new features in DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control 2.1.
Turns out my video skills need a bit of work though as I ended up putting together a 10 minute video, the YouTube limit, and only covered half the features. Still, I hope this is helpful both to see what sort of thing the script is useful for — in this case I’m covering self-portrait balancing flash vs ambient ala Strobist.
(Click through and view the high quality version if you want to read the text!)
Equipment used:
I cover the use of the remote shutter release, combined with shutter, aperture and ISO controls to take and download images as well as using Bridge to view them.
What I ran out of time to do before the YouTube 10 minute limit was tethered shooting from the camera, and external viewer push. Perhaps I’ll try to do another short video covering those, but I do really want to work on the next features!
While doing this demo I also noted some odd slowness of the script in some situations, particularly M vs P mode that I’m unable to explain at the moment, so will spend some time to investigate that and hopefully speed the whole thing up.
This is a summary of what Nikon DSLR models have been seen working, or not working, with the script.
| XP | Vista / Win7 | |
| D300 | Yes Yes |
Yes |
| D40 | Yes | Yes (vista home, raw works)Yes (vista, raw ok) |
| D80 | Yes | No Yes |
| D50 | No Yes YesYes |
|
| D200 / Fuji S5 | Almost YesYes YesYes |
PartialYes, Win7, jpg only |
| D60 | Yes | Yes |
| D70 / 70s – yes | Yes | Yes (win7 32bit) but no mode changeYes (vista)
Yes (vista, jpg only) |
| D90 – yes /w issues | Yes | |
| D3 – yes | ||
| D2x – yes | ||
| D100 — nobody has this working yet, I think (not sure) it may be impossible due to it not fully supporting ptpD1 – No | ||
| D5000 | Yes | |
| D3000 | YesYes | |
| D80 – yes with 1.01 firmware, no with 1.11 firmware | No (64bit Win7) | |
| D300s – yes | ||
| D700 | yes | Yes (64bit Win7)Yes Win7 jpg only |
| D3100 | Yes | |
| D3200 | Yes | |
| D3000 | Yes | |
| D800/D800E | No | |
| D7000 | Yes | |
| D5100 | Yes | |
As you can see it is quite a mixed bag – I’d love to hear more input on what works and doesn’t work.