2/26/2012

Manfrotto Tripod Review

On Slickdeals i saw this tripod (Manfrotto 7322YB M-Y Tripod with Ball Head) being sold for 50% off and free shipping from Costco. It normally sells for $70 on Amazon.

I like how compact it is and the adjustable swivel head attachment. But i'll have to eyeball the camera being level, especially on shots outside with the horizon.
Manfrotto Tripod Ball Head
Manfrotto 7322YB M-Y Tripod with Ball Head
It's small, light, strong enough.Manfrotto 7322YB  Tripod
And it comes with it's own bag which is nice.
Manfrotto Tripod Case

2/25/2012

Bamboo in Heavy Snow

At least once or twice every winter here in Michigan we get a day of really heavy snow. Even though this has been one of the warmest winters in a long time, i woke up a couple of weeks ago and saw this in the back yard. There was a snow and ice storm and the bamboo was completely bent over and almost broken.Bamboo in Snow
But the bamboo is strong. I went out, shook off the snow and the trees immediately started unbending and straightening up.
Bamboo in Michigan
Here are links to previous posts about growing bamboo in my backyard in Michigan:
  • Bamboo - Transplanting from West Virginia

Here's what it looked like a few days later, good as new.
Bamboo grow in Michigan

2/23/2012

2012 NCAA College Basketball Bracket - All Formats

Brackets for the 2012 NCAA Men's College Basketball Tournament in 6 different Printable Formats - JPG, word, PDF, TIFF, Google Doc

Printable Bracket:

2012 NCAA Tournament Printable Bracket
NCAA Tournament Printable Bracket college basketball
I hope that Michigan State goes all the way, but it looks like they are in the toughest region.

DIY - Infrared Camera Filter

While reading about making the ND filter i saw instructions on making an Infrared filter for your camera. The ND filter used a piece of welding glass to "dim down" the amount of light that enters the camera. With a IR filter you need something that only allows infrared light to enter the camera. I had an old camera that i never use because the lens is kind of scratched, so it was perfect to try this out with.

The infrared wavelength is just longer than is visible to the human eye. In fact visible light is only a small part of the light spectrum.
Infrared Light Table Spectrum
Far infrared is used in thermal imaging cameras. Heat given off by objects is in the far infrared spectrum of light.
Thermal Infrared Camera Heat
The pictures i would be taking would not show this kind of thermal imaging, just the light from the Near Infrared.

Simply put, i wanted to remove the piece of glass that blocks infrared light, then add exposed film which ONLY allows infrared light into the camera.

First, the hard part. Camera's have a tiny piece of glass between the lens and the sensor which blocks infrared light from passing through. I wasn't sure i would be able to remove it but i did. It's the broken pieces of red tinted glass at the bottom right.Build Infrared Camera
And even more surprising is that i was able to put the camera back together the first time and it still worked.
Make Infrared Camera
Now that infrared light can pass to the camera's sensor i needed a way to block the visible light. Online there was a lot of different ways that people said this could be done but the cheapest and easiest way looked to use a piece of film negative and an old floppy disc.

Infrared Film Camera Negative
And i tried part of an old floppy disc.
2HD Floppy Disc
Here are the pieces from the exposed and unexposed processed film.
Exposed 35mm film
I was planning on mounting the film on a PVC filter like i had done before. In hindsight that probably would have been a good idea. So i started to making a fitting out of PVC like before. But then i saw that the best way to do it was to cut the film and glue it in place INSIDE of the camera, right in front of the sensor. So i ended up not using this.
PVC ring
But before i did that i needed to know what is the best material to use. I decided to experiment with all of the ways people suggested to block the visible light. Here were the 3 pieces that i would be testing.infrared filter
The material and the results from the test: (click images to enlarge)

1. Film negative that had been exposed to light
Infrared Test film negative
2. Film negative that had not been exposed to light
Infrared film negative
3. Floppy disc

The floppy disc over the lens made the picture come out so dark that it wasn't usable. I could have left the shutter open for a much longer time, similar to the ND filter, but i decided just not to use it. So i moved on to layering two pieces of material together.

5. Two pieces of film negative that had been exposed to light
Infrared photo test
6. 2 pieces of film negative that had not been exposed to light
Infrared camera film
7. 1 piece of exposed and 1 piece of unexposed film negative
Infrared camera film test
It turned out that the best result was the last one i tested,
1 piece of exposed and 1 piece of unexposed film negative.

I took a couple of pictures in the backyard and liked how they came out. This picture is the original, right out of the camera.
RAW infrared photo dog tree
This is after adjusting the colors in Photoshop.
infrared photo photoshop
Now here's the bad part. When i finally decided what to use i took the camera apart again and glued in the 2 pieces over the sensor.
remove infrared sensor
disassemble infrared camera canon lens
camera infrared glass disassemble canon lens
Then when trying to put the camera back for the 4th time i damaged the small ribbon cable from the lens to the circuit board. You can kind of see the tiny hole in the orange cable.
disassemble canon camera s770is lens
It's a bit of a bummer, not that i would have used this camera a lot but it would have been fun to experiment with.