Photography Camera hacking

Ive bought a new camera!

But more importantly for right now, my old camera didnt focus any more, so I thought I might pull it to bits to see if I could fix it.

A camera hack if you like.

Well its hacked now.

But in the process of attempting to fix it, I thought it might be grit or something stuck in the focus gears. I figured I might be able to override the emergency shutdown on lens fail, and just use brute force to get past the grit.

But before pulling it apart I thought Id look for a software hack to manually focus the thing. Its a Canon Powershot A490 point and shoot (or at least it was), so it doesnt normally have manual focus.

I found much more than a focus hack, but also much less.

Much less in that I still couldnt do manual focus, but so very much more in that I found CHDK - Canon Hack Development Kit.

CHDK is amazing. Its a kit full of files that you install onto your SD memory card, put it into your camera, then use the update firmware option (only seen on my camera when the CHDK is on the card) of your camera to install all the new functionality. It does things like...

• motion detection
• increment focus to automate focus/photo stacking as mentioned in the previous post
• depth of field calculator
• exposures from 2048s to 1/60,000s with flash sync
• change the layout and visibility of you on screen display info
• etc etc etc (so much more)

Look here to see a slightly bigger list, but still not all of it.

And here for the manual which covers more.

But even more can be found on the forum in the form of scripts that can be loaded into your camera. There are scripts that do motion detection fast enough to catch lightning strikes. (less than 60ms I think it was - dont quote me)

So in spite of just buying a new camera, Im off to see if the $20 camera I saw in the electronics shops bargain bin is a cannon powershot. 

120 Things in 20 years CHDK camera hack - Awesome. 

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Photography Photo stacking

Ive been reading a bit about photography, and discovered this thing called "photo stacking".

It helps you create super close ups that have everything in focus.


Normally in a photo, you get some bits in focus, and some out of focus.

This can be a good thing, because you dont always want, for example, the background to be sharp.

Sometimes things look better when you cant see them.

But sometimes you want to see it all.

Ill drop a series of seven photos here with each one seeing a different section in focus.

This first pic of a 300mm ruler is taken at a focal length of 10mm.

This next pic is at 20mm

You can see that the section thats in focus has moved a little further back.

This one at 50mm

 Here are three more in the series with each one seeing the focal length change through 100mm, 150mm, 200mm, and 300mm.

I would have preferred to use increments of 5mm all the way through, and take 60 photos, but this camera I have only deals with those photo lengths when used in manual focus mode. 

There is software that is free and open source, that can take the best bits of each photo, and knit them all together to make one photo. 

Apparently its possible to do this in a graphics program, but I dont have the skill set, and the software seems to work. 

There are a few different software packages, some that cost and some that are free. The one Im playing with is called, CombineZP. All you have to do is select the photos (New), then chose something that I dont understand called, "align and balance used fra..." (the title of this function is cut off because whoever made it doesnt respect my inalienable right to resize whatever window I want, and my screen size isnt the same as theirs), then click something that makes perfect sence that says GO.

After a few seconds wait, the end result is pretty good for a first attempt, and might just prove to be a very useful tool in trying to capture extreme close up shots. 

Im guessing it would be perfect if I just had a camera that could deal with letting me chose where to focus all on my own. 

Even without respecting my free will, the result is quite good. You can see in the photo below, some bands of blur where I couldnt divide the focal length and add another frame. Theres an obvious blur between the "k" and "i", and another at the "3" in 300. Another at 250, but they are all errors caused by my camera not letting me take pictures in between the ones I took. 

Tis an interesting bit of kit, and I thoroughly recommend trying it if you are taking macro shots. 

 

The result...

120 Things in 20 years - I love discovering new things like photo stacking for macro shots, and I love discovering that there are only 6 photos in my series of 7. I deleted one, and have no idea which one it was, so I moved on. 

Im also without confidence that Im using the words "focal length" properly. 

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Aquaponics Strawberries

Yum.

I love strawberries, and spend way too much money each year in keeping the fridge stocked.

I cant get enough of them.

Here are some free strawberries  from the backyard.









Some are from the aquaponics system, and some from the dirt along the side of my house.

I planted a stack in one blue barrel grow bed, and a stack more in the ground along one side of my house.

The strawberries grown in the aquaponics system are always bigger and juicer. They also look better. Always big and perfectly formed. But Im not convinced they taste any better. In fact I think the ones out of the ground may actually taste better.

When growing grapes for wine, I understand you dont want too much rain as this makes the fruit bigger, but lowers the amount of sugars per lump of grape.

Or so Im told.

This might have something to do with why the strawberries seem to taste better out of the ground. The ground strawberries get watered once a day when its hot, and every couple of days if its not.

The aquaponics strawberries have as much water as they want when ever they want it.

Or...

It could have nothing to do with that. I cant be sure which went where, but there were two batches of strawberry plants. One batch was fully grown mature plants, and the other batch were all new runners. I seem to remember planting the runners in the aquaponics system because they were smaller, and I wanted to see if they would catch up to the others. But I also remember not doing that. I remember mixing them up so I would get a sample from each. I remember a few other contradictory things as well.

So... possible that they taste different.

But I think its going to prove to be water content.

I think Ill do some experiments with the runners from both batches to see if there is any difference when all plants are the same age. Both beds are producing runners, so I think I should know within a few months.

Another thing to try, might be to change how long the aquaponics plants have wet feet. I should be able to control very precisely how much water the plants are exposed to.

I have an electric tap from a sprinkler system, so I might try to make some kind of moisture sensor, and perhaps try letting their roots get almost dry before giving them more water. I have no idea if such a thing is even possible, so Ill find out.

Or...

It could be that the strawberries dont taste as good when they are hot. Very few of the fruit ever make it into the house. Most get eaten straight from the plant, and there is a huge difference between the temperature of the narrow, protected side of the house, and those grown in a hot house. Now that I think of it, I think strawberries grow well in places like England. Im not sure if England is called England or not, but that place thats sometimes called England seems to be the kind of place people grow things like strawberries.

Perhaps a hot house makes the fruit taste different.

Ill have to find some more information.

Im being very fussy here.

All the strawberries from my back yard taste much better than anything Ive ever bought from a shop. Shop strawberries are always under-ripe, and seem to be made of something other than strawberry.

Thats store bought on the left, and back yard grown on the right.

Even with this poor photo, you can see the difference.

I can also smell the difference.

And if you drop a store bought strawberry into a clear drink, you get a strawberry in a drink. But the back yard ones colour the clear drink strawberry colour.

I count aquaponics and dirt grown strawberries as a total success.




120 Things in 20 years - I think Il buy a second hand digital SLR camera so I can take better photos of strawberries and.

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