brainwagon

I’m a huge fan of gadgets which have the possibility of open source third party updates. I have a couple of Linksys routers that I’ve reflashed with DDWRT and/or Tomato and/or OpenWRT. I’ve played with the NSLU2. I have a Canon SD1100 which I run CHDK.

Today, I discovered another interesting one:

Magic Lantern Firmware Wiki

This is firmware for the Canon 5D Mark II DSLR to adapt it to the specific needs of film makers. While the 5D is nominally intended as a still camera, it has many advantages when compared to equivalently priced setups when used as a motion picture camera. This firmware is designed to expand this use considerably. Very cool.

Magic Lantern firmware introduction from Trammell Hudson on Vimeo.

I have a little Canon SD1100 that I picked up a while ago. One of its cool features is its ability to run the alternative CHDK firmware. It includes many interesting features, such as scripting, improved time lapse photography and such, but it also includes the ability to do really fast shutter speeds. I was dinking around with it a bit yesterday for a few minutes, and got this picture, taken with a 1/16000th second shutter speed. It’s not great as a photograph, but it hints at what is possible.

One of my first attempts at macro/high speed photos using a Canon SD1100 and the CHDK alternative firmware. Shutter speed was 1/16000th of a second.

Addendum: Here is some more information, and more impressive photographs.

Addendum²: Here’s another try, just trying to catch water drops hitting the bottom of the sink.

Water drops from the faucet hitting the bottom of the sink.

My morning browsing eventually sent me to Nick’s pinhole photography, which has many excellent scans of 19th and early 20th century articles on the subject of pinhole photography. Very neat stuff.

Check out the cool video of a pair of tufted titmouses who are building a nest in a birdhouse that has been equipped with a webcam.  Courtesy of the Make blog.

[tags]Birdhouse,Webcam,Science Project[/tags]

By way of the ReadyMade Blog, check out how to use common kitchen ingredients like coffee as photographic developers.  I’ve had an interest (mostly academic and appreciative) in alternate photographic processes for some time, and while this relies on standard emulsions, the use of ordinary kitchen stuff for developers and fixes is really quite intriguing.

[tags]Photography,Developing,ReadyMade[/tags]

Check out these cool landscape photos by Olivo Barbieri. He takes photos of landscapes, and then modifies them to make them look as if they were pictures of tiny models. They give a very curious case of perspective.

Addendum: Juan read more carefully than I, and explains that these are shot with a tilt-shift lens. I’m even more impressed.

Addendum²: You can get some more examples of this tilt-shift wizardry on this Japanese website.

[tags]Photography[/tags]

Got this from digg, this entire short film was created by using the burst mode of the Canon 20D. The shots look really nice, with lots of great depth of field and exposure. Previously, I blogged about how The Corpse Bride was filmed using digital still photography, but this is the first time I think I’ve seen this particular trick, and it works really well. Worth checking out.

Incidently, a quick check at dpreview.com reveals that the Canon 20D burst mode is 5 fps until the buffer fills, then it slows to about 1.4 fps. I suspect that at smaller resolutions, much longer times at the full fps are maintained. Neat.

PATRYK REBISZ

[tags]Photography,Canon 20D,Film,Video[/tags]