How To Convert Film Slides To Digital Pictures - Easy DIY setup for any camera

Description

Want to convert slides to digital images? In this episode of House of Hacks, Harley shows how to convert film slides to digital pictures using the gear you already have. This technique also works for transfer old negatives to digital photos.

Resources (Amazon affiliate links):
Clamp light with aluminum reflector
GE 100 watt equivalent LED lights
Clip on macro lenses

Additional information about camera/lens selection and post processing.

How to shoot to the right (aka ETTR)

Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.

If you’re interested in learning more about the House of Hacks' values, here’s a playlist for you.

And here’s the most recent video.

For a written transcript, go to How To Convert Film Slides To Digital Pictures

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 4.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"
Incidental: "Starry," "Touching Moments Two," "Riptide" & "Rocket"

Transcript

Our memories are more like photos than videos. We remember moments. Snapshots in time.

Photos allow us to share these moments with others.

Some may have been there with us and photos give us a common anchor point.

Some may not have been, separated by distance, time or both, and photos allow us to share our experience with them.

Imagine what it’d be like if you could move those memorable moments captured with physical images into the digital world.

You could have a historical record that doesn’t degrade over time.

You could instantly share them others around the world.

You could compile them into new and different ways.

Stick around and I’ll show you how to move from imagination to reality.

In this episode, I’m going to show an easy DIY build to help you digitize either slides or negatives.

Its primary materials are some cardboard and an inexpensive light you can get at the home improvement store or online for less than ten dollars.

And you can use any camera. An SLR if you have one. Or your phone. Or anything in between.

Welcome to the House of Hacks.

If we’re just meeting, I’m Harley and I show you how to create stuff in the workshop.

Sometimes it's out of wood or metal. Today it’s going to be out of cardboard and duct tape.

Basically, we’re going to make a light filled box. This does two things for us.

It diffuses the light nicely so we don't have any hot spots in our final image and it gives us a place to mount either a slide or negative.

Whatever's mounted here gets lit up nicely and then we can use any camera to make an image of it.

I'll show some samples from my SLR and my phone later in the video.

Let’s get started.

The tools we’re going to need are:

• a box knife,
• a straight edge,
• a right angle,
• a pen,
• and a measuring tape.

The materials we’re going to use are:

• some scrap cardboard, (both corrugated and non-corrugated.),
• white duct tape, or you can use white paper or paint,
• shop lamp,
• daylight balanced LED light bulb,
• and glue.

I’m going to be using this inexpensive shop light as a light source. They come in various sizes.

This is one of the smaller ones with an 8.5” reflector. You can get them at any home improvement store or online.

They'll take any kind of light bulb, but I'm going to be using an LED. These run cooler and have great color rendition.

I recommend using daylight balanced for the best color in your final images.

And this one happens to be a 100 watt equivalent.

Since the light is going to be bouncing around inside the box quite a bit, I wanted something with a higher wattage in order to be able to keep the ISO in the camera down lower.

I’ll leave Amazon affiliate links to all of this down in the description below.

First, let’s make a box to contain the light and give us a place to mount the slides or negatives.

This needs to be large enough for the light to mount to and also so there’s enough room for the light to disburse nicely.

Too small and you may end up with some shadows or gradients.

I’m going to use an old cardboard box that was used for shipping.

You could also use some foam board from the craft store and cut it to the desired size.

First I mark a circle where I want to put the light.

Now, I’m going to cut a hole in the cardboard above the reflector for the film mounting point.

I have a number of different film sizes I work with, so I’m going to make this a bit larger than the largest negative I’ll want to duplicate.

In my case it’s 120 film and making it a bit larger keeps the thick edges of the cardboard from casting shadows on the film.

This gives me an idea for the size to cut the rest of the box to.

I want the box to be about as deep as the light is round, so, looking from the top, roughly square.

The idea is to have the light shine in one direction, bounce off the back and then into the film mounted on the same plane as the light.

If we put the light on the opposite side of the film so it's shining directly on it, we might get some hot spots or an unevenness of exposure from the middle of the film to the edges.

Bouncing it this way should help eliminate that problem.

So, this box is a bit larger than I need. I’ll use a box knife to cut it down to size.

I don’t want the inside of the box to be this brownish, cardboard color because that would give us a color cast to the light.

I want it to be as close to a neutral white as possible.

I'm going to line the inside of this box with white duct tape.

But you could also use white paint or glue white paper to the inside. We just need it to be white.

And of course, this step could be skipped if white foam board was used.

Now that the box is white inside, I’m going to tape the box closed.

Next, I’ll tape the light to the box.

To do this, I’m going to first put down a layer of tape on the outside of box.

Then I’m going to tape the light to the tape on the box, making sure to fold over the end of the tape to give me a little pull tab.

By taping to the tape on the box instead of the box itself, it’ll be easy to remove the light without tearing up the box.

We're almost ready to use this, but first we need an easy place to put the film.

In addition to 35mm film cameras, I have a number of cameras that take 120 film and expose it in different aspect ratios.

Some give me square images and some give me wider images.

I’m going to use this thin cardboard to make different holders for the various sizes so I can convert images from any of my cameras.

For each type of film, I cut a large base piece that covers the hole in the box. These can all be the same size.

Then each base gets a smaller hole for a particular film format.

Finally I make holders appropriate for each type of film to hold it in place.

For slides, I cut some cardboard and glued in a U shape around the hole.

Then I glued a small piece of cardboard on the corners to help hold the slide in place.

This will allow the slides to be consistently placed in the same location.

For film, I’ll use cardboard folded to the correct size to make a sleeve and line it with fabric to minimize scratches.

I can then run the film through this sleeve.

Like the area around the opening for the light, I put more tape on the box around the hole where the film holders go and also on the film holders themselves.

Then whatever film holder I need for the project at hand can be taped to the box and removed without tearing anything up.

Now that we have the box constructed, let’s put it to use and get it setup.

I've got a nice stable setup here with the box on the table and the camera on a tripod.

When you set this up, you want to make sure your camera is straight on with the image that you're taking a picture of.

If there's any angle involved at all, one side will be smaller then the other and you'll have distortion that you need to fix in post processing.

They way that I've found easiest to set this up is to level the camera and then raise and lower the tripod until the images were centered between what I was taking the picture of and the camera.

And then I could move the box in and out to change the zoom level until the image completely fills the sensor.

In my case, I have a 35mm camera, full-frame, and a true macro lens and 35mm slides that I'm taking pictures of so I can perfectly fill the image of the slide with the camera.

If you have a different camera, different lens or different film, then the aspect ratios may not perfectly line up and you'll end up with black bars on either the sides or top and bottom in order to see the entire image.

If you're using a zoom lens in your setup, you want to set it to something over 100mm ideally.

This'll give you the least amount of distortion.

If your wider than that, then the edges may get distorted because of the lens optics.

Now that we have the physical setup, we need to setup the settings inside the camera.

There's two things we're concerned with: exposure and white balance.

For exposure, we need to make sure the light's on, set the camera to manual mode and look at just the white light coming out of the box.

We want to set this so that our camera's histogram is as far to the right as possible without actually getting clipped off.

I have a video that talks about this in more detail.

This'll give us the most amount of brightness in our images without glowing out any details.

For white balance, you want to use the custom setting.

How this is setup will vary from one camera to the next, so look in your user's manual to find out how to setup yours.

Now that everything is setup, I'm ready to put a slide in the holder and start making images.

This box will work with any camera.

I just showed an SLR but I've got my phone here and I can use it to just kind of position there and take an image.

It'd be better if I had a tripod for my phone if I was doing a lot of these.

But I don't and hand held works fine enough for demonstration purposes.

I also found that digital zoom works but having a clip on macro lens works even better.

These are inexpensive for cheap ones. They're not perfect lenses but they're satisfactory.

As I mentioned, different cameras, different lenses and different films will give you different aspect ratios and may require some post processing.

Slides of course don't require post processing for color correction but you may need to adjust for crop.

Negatives will need some color correction.

Obviously you need to invert the colors and I go into a lot of details about different camera lenses and the effects that they have and also how to post process negatives in this video over here.

I'll see you over there.

Down here is a video that YouTube thinks you'll enjoy.

And when making things, remember...

Perfection's not required.

Fun is!

Transform Your Photography: DIY Kaleidoscope Camera Attachment

If you're looking to add some creative flair to your photography, a DIY kaleidoscope attachment for your camera is a fun and easy project that will allow you to take stunning abstract images.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how to make this attachment using simple, inexpensive materials that can be easily assembled with just a few tools.

First, we'll start by cutting three strips of mirror using a glass cutter and a straight edge. Make sure to wear gloves and safety glasses for this step, as broken glass can be sharp and dangerous. If you have trouble getting a clean cut on the first pass, don't be afraid to give it another try. It might take a few tries to get the hang of it, but once you've scored the mirror, it should snap easily along the scored line.

Next, we'll tape the three strips of mirror into a triangle shape to hold them in place while we glue them together. Using a hot glue gun, run a generous bead of glue along each seam to secure the mirror in place. Hot glue is a great material to use for this project because it sets quickly and holds things together firmly.

With the triangular mirror assembly complete, we can move on to creating the mounting plate for the camera. Cut a piece of plywood to the desired size and drill two holes in it. One hole should be slightly larger than a 1/4 inch and will be used to hold the camera in place with a bolt. The other hole should be closer to the top of the plywood and should have a 1/4-20 t-nut for tripod mounting.

Finally, attach the triangular mirror assembly to the mounting plate using a couple of unions and a bolt. Make sure everything is securely in place before mounting your camera on the attachment. Once everything is set up, you can start shooting through the kaleidoscope attachment and creating unique, abstract images.

This DIY kaleidoscope attachment is a great way to add some creativity to your photography and capture unique and eye-catching images. With just a little bit of time and effort, you'll be able to transform your photography and see the world in a whole new way. So why wait? Gather your materials and get started on this fun and rewarding project today!

Additional resources

Originally invented by Sir David Brewster when experimenting with light, kaleidoscope comes from three Greek words. "Kalos" meaning beautiful, "eidos" meaning shape and "skopion" meaning to observe. So literally, "to observe beautiful shapes.”

There’s a great video talking about some philosophical ideas related to the kaleidoscope: Veronica Soare: We are kaleidoscopes

Here's another video featuring abstract photography: burning bulb filament.

Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.

If you’re interested in learning more about the House of Hacks' values, here’s a playlist for you.

And here’s the most recent video.

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.

• Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"
• Incidental: "Welcome to the Show" and "Riptide"

Transcript

Interested in abstract images? Both stills and moving?

Today we're going to be doing this at the House of Hacks.

In today's project, I'm going to show you how to make this. It's a DIY kaleidoscope attachment for your camera.

It's basically a mounting plate that your camera bolts to and a triangular mirror assembly that can be rotated around if you want.

You just shoot through it and take a picture of whatever you want and whatever you're making becomes a kaleidoscope image.

This is easily made from inexpensive materials, most of this was actually just scrap that I had lying around from previous projects.

The only thing I really had to buy was a couple unions at the hardware store.

I think that was it.

Everything else I had on hand.

For this build, we only need a few materials.

I've got a base that's 3/8" thick plywood, 3 inches wide and 18 inches long. The dimensions aren't super critical.

I've got a 2x4 that I'll be using to make some brackets out of.

Two unions, ABS, 3 inches in diameter.

And a piece of 12 inch square mirror.

A couple tools that we need:

Some hot glue.

Some tape.

Glass cutter.

And a little bit of hardware.

I've got a t-nut, that's 1/4-20 and a bolt that's 1/4-20 that's long enough to go through the plywood and into the camera and a couple washers to make it so it snugs down tight.

I think that's everything we need. Let's start making this.

Welcome! If we're just meeting, I'm Harley and this is the House of Hacks where I make stuff, usually out of wood and metal.

Today it happens to also include mirrors, tape and a little bit of hot glue.

This is the base that, off camera, I drilled two holes in. One is a little bit larger than a 1/4" where the bolt will go through from the bottom and hold the camera in place.

The other is up here closer to about a third of the way up that has a 1/4-20 t-nut in it and this'll be for tripod mounting.

The dimensions of this piece are 3/8" thick plywood. It's 3" wide and 18" long.

The dimensions aren't super critical just as long as you have a good base to mount the camera to and it's long enough for the mirrors that we're going to be cutting.

OK. I've got the gloves on because I want to be safe.

We want three strips of mirror out of here that are 1 and 3/4" wide each and so I'm going to make a mark on where I want that cut.

And I'll lay a straight edge down on those marks. I've got the glass cutter.

We need to give ourselves a little bit of extra room to compensate for the thickness of the glass cutter.

We just press down firmly and we want to just do a single pass.

And then we'll see if this breaks. And I do have my safety glasses on.

And that didn't work too well. I don't think I was pressing down quite hard enough.

Generally, you don't want to try to do two cuts. You want to score it in the first pass. I'll give this another try.

That looks better. I should be able to just... snap it like so.

And we didn't get as good a cut as I would have liked.

If you notice, this edge didn't get cut very well. We'll try again.

And you should hear a creaking sound.

That's much better!

OK. So now we have our three pieces of glass.

And now I'm going to take a piece of tape and tape this into a triangle.

That's just a temporary thing to hold it while we glue it.

Now that we have the mirror in a triangle formation, temporarily held in place by the tape, I'm going to just use the glue gun and run a bead along each of the seams.

And this will be what really holds it in place for good.

We just want to take out time and run a very generous bead along each of the edges.

Hot glue is one of those things that I don't think is really given enough credit in the workshop.

It is a really handy material to work with when holding things together either temporarily or even permanently on projects.

It would be nice if it set up a little bit faster.

One of the cool things about this project is it doesn't have to be perfect. There's a lot of leeway for kind of imperfections that really won't show up in the final product.

This is definitely one of those cases where we're looking for utility over beauty.

OK. I'm going to let that sit for a couple minutes and let that really setup well.

The hot glue has setup and I took the temporary tape off and finished up the seams with some more hot glue there in the middle where the tape was.

And so now we don't really have any sharp edges on this glass. The corners are a little bit sharp but we don't have any cut edges exposed like we did before so we don't really need the gloves.

The next step is to wrap this whole thing in tape. That will do a couple things.

It will make it light tight along the edges so we don't have any light leakage.

It will also, if anything should happen to this and it should break, then it'll help contain the mess and won't get glass all over the place.

I've got some duct tape, so let's start wrapping this up.

Now I'll take the utility knife and just cut the edges here.

I think we have everything now ready to assemble.

The unions I have have a little tab on them from the manufacturing process and I want to put those on the outside of this assembly so I want to make sure I know where those are relative to the mounting brackets.

So, those just slide inside the mounting brackets like so, so now that'll help hold everything together so this part doesn't slide in and out as much.

And now, if everything is setup right, this should just kind of have a pretty snug fit inside these unions. And it's looking really good.

The tape gives it a good snug fit and if it's a little loose, you can just wrap a little tape around this and it'll hold it nice and tight.

So we've got one side in and now the other side should just kind of go in the same way.

And now we're ready to glue this down.

Now when I cut this, I did put one of these edges thinner. So I want to make sure that's on the bottom.

And then when this gets glued in, it'll be just like that.

We're ready to mount this.

I've got the camera bolted to the base plate so that I know exactly where I want to mount this.

So this will mount in front of the lens and I want to make sure that I have enough room for the lens to move in and out but I don't want it so much that I have a lot of light leakage around it.

I made sure I have the thin part of my wood down here and so I think that's pretty much where I want to put it is right about there.

I'll just turn this over and run a bead of hot glue along this edge.

Now I'll turn it over and I have a little bit of set time where I can get things lined up just right.

I want to try to get it as centered as I can and get it going as straight as I can with the camera going along the axis of the mirrors.

It's just a matter of letting the glue set now.

Assembly is complete. Let's go make some images.

I'll see you in this video where I show you how to make some other abstract images using light bulbs.

But in the mean time, let's go make some images.

Remember, perfection's not required.

Fun is!

How To Find A Lost Digital Camera - Unique color codes (Part 4)

Description

Ever lost a camera or other photo gear? Looking for ideas for how to find lost camera (digital)? This is the fourth in a series where Harley shows ideas that can help a lost camera find its way back home. These travel tips and hacks can help someone who has found a lost camera return it to you.

Buy online (Affiliate links):

• Colored electrical tape
• Model paint kits

Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.

If you’re interested in learning more about the House of Hacks' values, here’s a playlist for you.

And here’s the most recent video.

For a written transcript, go to How To Find A Lost Digital Camera - Unique color codes (Part 4)

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"

Transcript

Ever lost camera gear before?

Looking for ideas for how to recover camera gear if it's been lost?

Today at the House of Hacks, I'm going to show you a strategy to help your lost camera gear find its way home.

I belong to a local photography Facebook group where sometimes somebody will find photography gear that was accidentally left at popular shooting locations.

Generally, a post goes out to alert people that gear has been found and who to contact to retrieve it.

Many times the gear can be reunited with its owner.

Inspired by these posts, this is the fourth in a series of ideas to help your gear find its way home if it gets lost.

The other videos in the series can be found in this playlist.

The previous ideas help if your gear is found by a random stranger.

Today's idea helps your gear stand out from the rest, that may be very similar, when you're in a group.

Hi! If we're just meeting, welcome!

I'm Harley and this is the House of Hacks where we do things related to the workshop like metal, wood and electronics projects and other things of that nature.

Today we're talking about photography gear.

When you're with a group of photographers, many times people have either the same or very similar gear and if things get jumbled up, sometimes it's hard to figure out who's is who's.

To help in this situation, select a three or four color combination and get paint or tape in these colors.

Multi-packs of electrical tape and model paint kits are great sources to get multiple colors of each.

Electrical tape can be found at home improvement stores and model paint kits can be found at craft stores.

Or, they're both available on Amazon. I'll leave affiliate links to searches for multiple products of each down below.

Using tape or paint, depending on the equipment and your preference, put your color code on all your equipment.

This makes it easy to identify your equipment when it's combined with the same equipment from other photographers.

If you have friends that do the same thing, be sure to coordinate with them so you don't use the same or similar color combinations.

I'd love to hear in the comments below if you have any strategies for identifying your equipment.

And remember, it's a good idea to have a multi-pronged approach and identify your equipment in multiple ways.

I'll see you in one of these videos that YouTube thinks you'll enjoy.

And when making things, remember...

Perfection's not required.

Fun is!

How To Find Lost Camera (Digital) - Use pet tags (Part 3)

Description

Ever lost a camera or other photo gear? Looking for ideas for how to find lost camera (digital)? This is the third in a series where Harley shows ideas that can help a lost camera find its way back home. These travel tips and hacks can help someone who has found a lost camera return it to you.

Engraved pet tags on Amazon (Affiliate link)

Other videos in this series.

Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.

If you’re interested in learning more about the House of Hacks' values, here’s a playlist for you.

And here’s the most recent video.

For a written transcript, go to How to Subtract In Binary Using 2'S Complement

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"

Transcript

Have you ever lost your camera gear?

Are you looking for ideas about how to recover your camera gear if it ever does get lost?

Today at the House of Hacks, I'm going to show you a strategy to help your camera gear find its way home if it gets lost.

I belong to a local photography Facebook group and occasionally people in that group will find camera gear that was left at popular shooting locations. Generally what happens is the person that finds the gear will post where it was found and who to contact to get the gear back. And many times the owner is a member of the group, sees the post and is able to get their equipment back.

Inspired by these posts this is the third in a series of ideas to help you get your camera gear back if it ever gets lost. The other ideas can be found in the videos in this playlist.

Hi! If we're just meeting, welcome I'm Harley and this is the House of Hacks where we talk about workshop related items. Things made out of wood metal electronics and other things of that nature.

Today we're talking about photography gear.

The previous two tips were a bit on the technical side and required knowledge of the finder to go look for the information and they only worked for your camera and memory cards.

Today's tip is less technical and more obvious for the finder.

And it's this: go get pet tags for your gear.

You can go down to your local pet store and they have engraving machines where you can have anything engraved on little tags. You can then put these tags on your camera gear. At a minimum you probably want one for your camera and your bag but you can get one for any gear that you want to put it on. However you can't put much information on them. Just your name, phone number and maybe an email address.

Another place to get them is on Amazon they have a bunch of different vendors with a bunch of different styles. I'll leave an affiliate link below to a search query showing those different options.

I'd love to hear in the comments below if you have any strategies you use for identifying your equipment.

And remember it's a great idea to use a multi-pronged approach to identifying your gear. For example this way, while it helps for a lot of your gear, doesn't work for memory cards.

I'll see you in one of these videos that YouTube thinks you'll enjoy.

And when making things, remember, perfection's not required. Fun is!

How to find lost camera gear - Set contact file (part 2)

Description

Ever lost a camera or other photo gear? Looking for ideas for how to find lost camera (digital)? This is the second in a series where Harley shows ideas that can help a lost camera find its way back home. These travel tips and hacks can help someone who has found a lost camera return it to you.

Other videos in this series: How to Find My Lost Camera
Photography videos: Photography Tutorials

Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.

If you’re interested in learning more about the House of Hacks' values, here’s a playlist for you.

And here’s the most recent video.

For a written transcript, go to How to find lost camera gear - Set contact file (part 2)

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"

Transcript

Have you ever lost camera gear?

Are you looking for ideas to recover your camera gear if it ever does get lost?

Today at the House of Hacks, I'm going to talk about two such strategies.

Hi. If we're just meeting, welcome!

I'm Harley and this is the House of Hacks where we do projects related to the workshop, things made out of wood, metal, electronics and other related types of materials.

Today, it's photography gear.

I belong to a local photography Facebook group where occasionally somebody will run across some camera gear that was accidentally left at a popular shooting location.

Generally what will happen is a post will go out describing where it was found and who to contact for more information.

Often times the owner is a member of the group and gets their gear back.

Inspired by these posts, this is the second in a series to help reunite you and your gear if it does get lost.

There's a link to the series right up here.

Our cameras use SD or CF cards to store images on. These are really nothing more than solid state disks that can store any kind of information, not just images.

With this in mind, today's tip is to add a file that contains your contact information in it.

I'm going to show you two ways of doing this.

The first way is to create a text file.

To do this, open a text editor.

On Windows, hit the WIndows key, type "notepad" and hit enter.

On a Mac, hit Command-space and type "textedit" and then hit enter.

Once you're in the editor, put in your contact information. Things like your name, address, phone number, e-mail and website.

Then, save this information on your computer. It can be anywhere you'll remember where it is. Your desktop or documents folders are great locations.

Call the file something that makes the contents obvious. Something like "contact info" or "read me." If you start the name with an underscore character, it'll be at the top of the file list when sorted by name in Windows Explorer or the Mac Finder.

Next, plug your memory card into your computer using a card reader.

The operating system should detect the new drive. Using either Windows Explorer or the Finder, open the card's drive and copy the new file into it.

And you're done!

Do you have any strategies for helping your camera gear find its way home?

Leave a comment below. I'd love to hear it.

And the second way is to create an image with your contact information in it.

To do this, grab a blank sheet of paper. A sheet from your nearest printer will work great.

And then get a marker pen. One with a thick tip is best.

Just write your contact information on the paper and make sure it's legible.

Then take a picture of that page and you're done.

You can keep the paper in your camera bag and then whenever you reformat your card, it's really handy to just grab it and take a picture so that card is now ready to find it's way back home if it ever gets lost.

With either of these tips, if someone finds your camera or your card, all they have to do is take a look at it and they'll be able to find your contact information.

Like the tips in the last video, this is a great first step but it only works for your camera or memory cards. And it requires a bit of thought on the person finding your gear. They have to go look for the information.

And if you ever format the card, you have to put the information back, either copying it off the computer or taking another picture.

In the next tips, I'll give ideas for identifying your equipment that's less technical and doesn't require as much thought on the part of the person finding it. And it'll work for pretty much any item in your camera bag, not just cameras and memory cards.

I'll see you in one of these videos that YouTube thinks you'll enjoy.

And while making things, remember, perfection's not required. Fun is!

How to find lost camera gear - Set Metadata (part 1)

Description

Ever lost a camera or other photo gear? Looking for ideas for how to find lost camera (digital)? This is the first in a series where Harley shows ideas that can help a lost camera find its way back home. These travel tips and hacks can help someone who has found a lost camera return it to you.

Other videos in this series: How to Find My Lost Camera
Photography videos: Photography Tutorials

Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.

If you’re interested in learning more about the House of Hacks' values, here’s a playlist for you.

And here’s the most recent video.

For a written transcript, go to How to find lost camera gear - Set Metadata (part 1)

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"

Transcript

Ever lost photography gear?

Looking for ideas for how to recover camera gear after it's been lost?

Today at the House of Hacks, I'm going to show you a strategy to help your lost gear find its way home.

Hi! If we're just meeting, I'm Harley and this is the House of Hacks where we work with things related to the workshop. Things like wood, metal, electronics and things of that nature.

Today we're talking about photography gear.

I belong to a local photographers Facebook group where occasionally somebody will find some camera gear that has been accidentally left at a popular shooting location.

Generally, what will happen is a post will go out on the group describing the gear, where it was found and who to contact to retrieve it.

Often times the person is a member of the group and sees that post and is able to get their gear back.

Inspired by these posts, this is the first of several tips to help reunite you and your gear if it ever gets lost.

And today's tip is to update the metadata in your camera.

This information will get saved into every photo that's taken with that camera.

All the Canon camera's I've owned have come with a program called the EOS Utility.

Inside this utility is a Camera Settings section and inside this section is a place for you to enter your name and other contact information.

When this data is uploaded to your camera, it will be added to every photo that's taken by that camera.

This helps in two ways.

Every image you take with that camera has your information in it that can help resolve any copyright disputes.

And if your camera or memory card is ever found, someone can look at your photos and find your contact information to get a hold of you.

And if you find a camera or memory card, look at the card in either Windows Explorer or the Mac Finder.

Any information the user has stored in the metadata will be shown in the information panel.

This way of identifying your gear is a great first step but only works for your body and memory cards and it's not intuitively obvious to anybody that finds it that it's there.

They have to know to go look for it.

I'd love to hear in the comments below if you've done this.

I'd also love to hear if you know how to do this for other camera brands.

In future videos, I'll give additional ideas for identifying your gear.

I'll see you in one of these videos that YouTube thinks you'll enjoy.

And when making things, remember, perfection's not required. Fun is!

DIY Camera Gear: Spring Clamp Hack

Description

Need some inexpensive camera gear? In this episode of House of Hacks, we're going to take a look at an inexpensive but super useful DIY camera gear hack: the spring clamp. Also known as A-clamps, spring clamps are cheap but essential camera gear for beginners that should be part of every camera bag.

Spring clamps at Amazon. (Affiliate link)

Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.

If you’re interested in learning more about the House of Hacks' values, here’s a playlist for you.

And here’s the most recent video.

For a written transcript, go to DIY Camera Gear: Spring Clamp Hack

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"

Transcript

Besides a camera, today at the House of Hacks we’re going to look at one of the most essential, and cheapest, tools for a photographer’s camera bag: the spring clamp!

Hi! If we’re just meeting, I’m Harley and this is the House of Hacks where we talk about things workshop related. Things like metal working, wood working, electronics, photography and making things in general.

The spring clamp, also known as an A-clamp, is super useful on photo shoots. Today we’re going to talk about a modification that makes it even more useful for photography purposes and then we're going to talk about a number of ways it can be used.

Spring clamps come in a variety of sizes from huge, giant things to these medium sized ones, these happen to be 2 inch, to these smaller guys. I think these are 1 inch. Personally I find the medium sized ones the most useful, followed by the smaller ones. I've haven't ever found a need for the really big ones.

They cost a couple bucks apiece and can be found at most large home improvement stores. I’ve also left a link below to where you can get them on Amazon. This will save you a trip , I get a small commission and it won't cost you anything extra.

To make them even more useful for photography applications, I like to add a 1/4-20 bolt with a nut on it to allow you to mount things like cameras and other photography accessories lights.

To add this hack, for each clamp, get a 1/4-20 1 inch long bolt. I like to use a star lock washer. They seem to work a bit better than say the split ring lock washers. A nyloc 1/4-20 nut. A 1/4-20 flange nut. This is a nut that has a flange on with a wider section on one side. And a large washer where the hole in the middle is large enough for the nut part of the flange nut to go through but not large enough for the flange to go through.

And also some two-part epoxy.

Mix up a bit of epoxy and use it to glue the flange nut to the inside of the washer. The flange itself should be exposed and keep the nut from going through the washer.

While that’s setting, check your clamps to see if they have a hole between the hinge and the tip of the clamp. If they don't, you'll need to drill one. Some brands have a hole here. Some brands don't. These don't, so I'll have to drill a hole. And I'm going to drill that hole just below where the plastic part of the tip ends.

Then, with the star lock washer next to the bolt head, place the bolt through the hole from the inside so the threads are poking out. Use the nyloc nut to hold it securely in place.

Once the epoxy is set, thread that assembly onto the bolt with the flange part of the assembly pointing out.

This gives you a place to mount standard 1/4-20 threaded items onto. The flange nut works as a jam nut to tighten the item down and the washer gives you a little handle to be able to loosen and tighten it.

So, how can you use this?

You can hold backdrops or reflectors to stands…
tighten loose clothing on models…
manage cables and cords…
hold gels on lights…
keep gobos in place...
mount cameras or lights in awkward places…
hang sound absorbing material to deaden room echos…
or whatever you can think of.

If you have clamps like these, leave a comment below and tell me how you've used them.

I’ll see you in this video over here that YouTube thinks you'll find interesting.

And remember when making things: perfection's not required. Fun is!

[John 4:14]

Hands on: Canon 77D first impressions and review

Description

Harley reviews the Canon 77D and gives his first impressions after having his hands on it for five months. This includes a brief comparison between the Canon 77D and 80D. This is a subjective review and not an in-depth scientific analysis and comparison of the 77D vs 80D.

Canon 77D unboxing

What entry level DSLR should I buy?

How to take your first picture

Absolute Beginners Guide to Removable Lens Cameras

Subscribe for more DIY videos.

Watch my most recent video.

For a written transcript, go to Hands on: Canon 77D first impressions and review

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com

Transcript

After five months of owning it, today at the House of Hacks I want to give a quick hands-on review of the Canon 77D and give my first impressions of it.

[Intro]

Hi Makers, Builders and Photographers. Harley here.

As I mentioned in the intro, about five months ago I got a new Canon 77D on the first day that it came out. I did an unboxing of that. If you want to see what it looks like coming out of the box, you can take a look at the card here or link down in the description below.

I won't be actually showing the camera today since I'm using it to record. But I do want to talk about some of the pros and cons that I found with it. Things that I've like and things I didn't like and also do a little bit of comparison between the 77D and the 80D in terms of features, because they're pretty similar in a lot of respects.

There's a lot of similarities between the 77D, the T7i and the 80D. It really does fall right in between the two of them, both price wise and feature wise. So I want to talk a little bit about that today. I don't want to compare it to the T7i, it's really pretty close in a lot of ways. Really the only difference is it has a few more buttons and it has an information panel on the top of the camera rather than completely relying on the LCD on the back. So, it's a little bit more "pro" but not as "pro" as the 80D.

So the real comparison I wanted to do today is with the 80D. All the numbers I'm throwing out here today are as of August 2017 and are for "body only." I'm not including any lens kits because those can kind of change the prices somewhat. So it's just the "body only" I'm going to be using for price comparison on.

The 77D is about $300 less expensive than the 80D. The interesting thing is that both have the same sensor in them. The 77D does have a newer computer in it and with that newer computer come some additional functionality. The 77D's ISO does have one more stop than the 80D and I think this is primarily because the processor in it can do more noise reduction and things of this nature. Like I said, the sensor is the same, so it's purely a difference in the way it can process the information with the faster computer.

That said, the 77D does have one less stop on the shutter speed. It only goes to 1/4000th of a second whereas the 80D goes to 1/8000th of a second. Also, the 80D's sync speed is 1/250th of a second instead of 1/200th of a second for the 77D.

The 77D's viewfinder, that you look through the back on, covers less surface area of the sensor than the 80D. The 80D covers 100% whereas the 77D only covers [95%]. So it works well for focusing and composition, but it doesn't give you the full range all the way out to the outer edges.

On drive mode, the 77D only shoots 6 frames per second as compared to the 80D's 7 frames per second. So it's one frame a second less but on the other hand the faster processor allows it to save that as fast as it shoots it whereas the 80D has a buffer that fills up eventually. So you can shoot all day on drive mode with the 77D whereas the 80D eventually will fill up and will stop taking pictures. This is only if you're shooting JPEG. If you're shooting RAW, they'll both fill up right around 25 frames.

If audio is a concern for you, the 77D does not have a headphone jack to monitor audio with whereas the 80D does.

The 77D also has a lower battery life than the 80D when taking stills. I'm not sure how it compares when shooting video.

The 80D is designed as a lower level pro camera, so it does have some additional features that aren't found on the 77D. Notably, it has an optional battery grip so you can get more battery life out of it. It has weather sealing so you don't have to worry about rain quite so much. It has more buttons to get direct access to certain features and it has more features built into the firmware for finer control of some of the features like auto-focus and micro-adjustments on lenses.

Some of the things I like about the 77D personally, coming from having shot with a 5D mark II previously... It has much better battery life than the 5D did. It does have less battery life than the 80D, but compared to the 5D it's much, much better on batteries. On the 5D I have a system where I can plug the camera into line power so I don't have to run off batteries because it runs through batteries so quickly. The 77D, I haven't had that problem with. I've always run batteries. I am thinking about getting an adapter, just on general principles, but I don't feel like I have a pressing need for it.

Another feature that I really, really like is when you hit the 4 gigabyte maximum file size, the 5D just stops recording. So you have no warning when it's run out of file space and stopped recording. It just stops. Whereas the 77D when it fills up a file, it just automatically creates a new file and continues going. Now it does only do this for 30 minutes. There is a 29 minute, 59 second cut-off that's mandated by some European legal standard somewhere. I'm not quite sure of all the details so this is a common limitation across all DSLR and mirrorless cameras that sell on the international markets. It's not a technical limitation. It's strictly to conform to a certain regulations. And the 77D does give you audible and visual feedback when it hits that limit. It displays a message on the screen and also the mirror pops up so you can actually hear it when it stops recording.

The 77D has an articulating screen and I love this feature. On the 5D mark II, the screen is fixed on the back and it was always a pain to try to focus and frame, particularly shooting solo with my videos. With the articulating screen on the 77D, it's a wonderful, wonderful feature.

And speaking of the screen, it's touch sensitive. This is really cool because you can direct touch on it to activate features and change options on it rather than have to use buttons and scrolling through menus. I really love the touch screen. Also, you can use it to zoom on your photos and move, pan around, as you're reviewing photos. It's awesome.

One cool feature that was kind of a surprise, kind of a sleeper feature, is if you don't have the battery in, the viewfinder as you're looking through it is really dim. It's some sort of mechanical overlay system where if the battery's not physically in and the door's not shut, then the viewfinder display is kind of a grey. You can kind of see through it, but it's very definite that there's a problem there. Just kind of a reminder of "oh, I don't have a battery in," I need to put one in and get the door closed.

Another cool feature about this that's common to I think all new cameras, is the wi-fi connectivity. You can control it from the phone or from a tablet, something like that, as long as you have an app for it, and this is a really cool feature. I need to use it more. I kind of forget about it at times and it would really make things a lot easier I think.

The 77D also has Bluetooth and NFC communications. I've personally never used those yet.

And finally, I want to talk a little bit about the auto-focus. It is really smooth. It works really, really well. I had it out shooting some video, just outside playing around, and as the subject moved through the frame, it would follow it. And if the subject moved out of frame and a new subject came into frame, it would just kind of nicely glide to the new subject and pick it up. Auto-focus worked really well, particularly compared to the old 5D system which was known for not being great on it's auto-focus.

And the other thing about the auto-focus is it has face detection. And that face detection is spot on. It works really, really, really well.

Ok, let's talk about the things I don't like. And this is a much, much smaller list.

The first thing really isn't the fault of the camera so much as the lens. Talking about auto-focus. I'm using a 24-105 L lens and it is really loud when it focuses. It makes the audio that's recorded on the camera completely unusable. You can use it for syncing to, but you definitely wouldn't want to use it in your video if auto focus is being used. Of course, you can put it in manual focus and you wouldn't have that issue.

Another thing that I really don't like about it is the CR2 format for this camera is unique to this camera. And so my older software that I use requires an upgrade and in order to get the upgrade, I have to pay money and you know... it'd be nice if, and this is kind of a pet peeve of mine is... file formats should stay the same. Let's design a file format so that raw files can be saved and not have to have new formats internally every time a new sensor is developed. I'm not quite sure why they can't come up with a file format that's parameterized such that when a new sensor comes out, just the parameters can change but the format can stay the same and that give you backward compatibility on all the old software. I mean I understand from possibly a business standpoint, but from an end user satisfaction standpoint, it's really, really annoying that files are not forwardly compatible.

OK. I'll get off my soapbox now.

OK. And the last thing that is kind of a downer about this, and again this is almost a soapbox kind of issue, is I'm not sure why, in this day and age, Canon can't put 4K video in all their SLRs. I mean we have point and shoots with 4K video. Our phones have 4K video in them. Why can't, on a $1000 camera, we have 4K video?

In fact earlier today I saw and was handling a Panasonic GH5 and the owner had the same lens on it that I have right now on my Canon, the 24-105 L glass. He was using an adapter to use that glass with that body. So, I don't know, I may be looking at other camera systems for my next body. The Fuji X-T20 has adapters that will work with the Canon lenses, so I'm going to be seriously looking at that. One of the reasons I got this camera was because I'm heavily invested in the Canon ecosystem and I didn't want to change systems at this point in time. But given that Canon's reticence about getting into 4K and the extra flexibility you have shooting 4K, my next camera purchase may not be a Canon even though I may still continue to use Canon lenses.

And I want to talk about two other points someone else has brought up in a review that I read.

One is that the LCD screen can be kind of dim if you're out in bright sunlight. Personally, I've never shot out in bright sunlight, so I haven't really run into this problem. But it is a consideration if you're thinking about one of these cameras.

And second, while this sensor was a big step up from some of Canon's previous offerings, it's still not as good as some of the competition. Particularly Sony and Fuji, they're using the same sensor, are just really killing the rest of the competition in terms of dynamic range of the sensor. And Canon just doesn't quite live up to the competition in this regard. So if you're shooting in high-dynamic range situations, where you want to capture a lot of detail over a broad spectrum, this may not necessarily be the camera for you.

One thing that was a big surprise for me was I use highlight alert. And I'm used to going into them menu system and turning this on. And I went through the menu system when I got this camera and I couldn't find it. I was kind of surprised that it wasn't there because my old XTi has highlight alert on it. So I was surprised it wasn't included as an option. But then I started reading through the manual about it and it is an option... well... it's not an option... it's always on. You can't turn it off. Which for me is just fine. I never want it turned off. But if highlight alert is something that you find distracting, just be aware you can't turn it off. It's always on.

And that's pretty much it for this quick review.

Thanks for joining me on this creative journey that we're all on. I hope you enjoyed this and find this review helpful.

Until next time, go make something.

Perfection's not required. Fun is!

How to quickly isolate a subject on white using the histogram

Description

The histogram is a powerful tool for the photographer. In this tutorial, Harley shows how to use this feature found on most cameras to quickly and easily setup lighting to isolate a subject on a pure white background. Properly done, a subject isolated on a white background is simple to cut out to composite into another image.

Histogram playlist
Photography playlist

Special thanks to my wife Diane for being the test model and my buddy Rich at Studio 020 for letting me use one of the rooms.

Overhead diagram created by the Online Lighting Diagram Creator.

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Incidental: "Sweeter Vermouth" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Sound effect: living-room-light-switch by alienxxx at http://freesound.org

Transcript

Today at the House of Hacks, I’m going to talk about an impulse purchase I made several years ago that’s turned out to be one of the most used tools in my workshop.

[Intro]

Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.

A number of years ago I had an Amazon order that I needed to fill out to get free shipping on. So I ended up purchasing one of these inexpensive digital calipers. It was just an impulse purchase. I figured it’s cheap enough that if I never use it or I don’t like it, no great loss.

As it turned out, this little thing has… I use it on almost every project. It measures up to six inches and anything under six inches I’m pretty much using this to measure with.

It’s just really, really handy.

There’s a whole bunch of these on Amazon. This one I picked up for around 37 or so dollars. It’s one of the more expensive ones. I’ve seen them on, just searching before this video, I was searching and saw them for under ten dollars. They’re so inexpensive, I’ve seen people buy them new, cut them up to use the measuring device in things like jigs and things like that. So, they’re really inexpensive for whatever purpose you want to use them for. Like I said, I use them for almost every project whenever I need to measure things.

They’re great for measuring outside measurements using these big calipers. Using the smaller inside calipers you can measure inside measurements. And on the end you can measure depth.

They have a zero button on them so you can zero it out. You either close the jaws, zero it out and then you get an accurate measurement. Or, you can use it to get the difference between two measurements. Take one measurement, zero it out, take another measurement and that gives you the difference between the two sizes. That can be really handy.

And it’s also good for transferring distances. You can use the ends, they are sharp so you can scribe a little bit. Measure one thing and then use it to scribe.

It does have an on/off switch which doesn’t really work all that well. All it does is turn on and off the LCD display which really doesn’t draw much power. If you’re going to leave these sitting around unused for a week, you really should take the battery out and that’ll give you much longer battery life on it.

That said, the batteries are 357 button cells. Little things that you can get at Walmart, Target, places like that for a couple bucks a piece. They’re much cheaper on Amazon if you buy them in bulk. So I recommend buying them on Amazon because I think they’re less than a dollar a piece whereas the cheapest I’ve found locally is like a buck fifty, two bucks, something like that.

They have a units switch that switches between millimeters, inches as decimal and inches as fractions. So that can be handy depending on what it is you’re measuring and you’re comparing it to other things and what units you’re most comfortable with.

The device also came with a plastic carrying case. Just kind of inexpensive, but it does protect it. And inside it has a foam cutout for the calipers and two places for batteries. So if you’re carrying it around, that kind of protects it and keeps it from getting beat up.

A really, really handy device. I really recommend getting one.

So that’s it for today. I’ll leave a link down in the description for an affiliate link if you’re interested in helping support the channel.

Until next time, go make something. Perfection’s not required. Fun is!

How to use the histogram to reduce noise in your photos

Description

Noise in photos can be a problem at higher ISOs, particularly in older cameras. In the episode, Harley talks about how shooting to the right of the histogram and then adjusting the exposure in post processing can help minimize noise. Topics covered include the reason this technique works, how to make the image in camera and how to adjust it in post-processing.

Special thanks to Rich Legg at Studio o2o for letting me use his remodeled lobby for the example shots. Studio o2o has great photography studios available for rent in the greater Salt Lake City, UT area. See their web page for more details.

Histogram playlist

For a written transcript, go to How to use the histogram to reduce noise in your photos

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Sound effect: living-room-light-switch by alienxxx at http://freesound.org

Transcript

Perhaps you’ve heard you should "shoot to the right."

What does this really mean?

And why should you think about doing it?

I'll try to answer these questions today at the House of Hacks.

[Music]

Hi Makers, Builders and Photographers. Harley here.

To "shoot to the right" refers to the right side of the histogram.

If you're unfamiliar with the histogram and how to use it, I have other episodes in this playlist where I talk about these topics.

In general, with an average scene, a proper exposure looks something like this one on the histogram.

The black side starts small, it increases through the grays and then drops off again approaching white.

The camera’s computer will try to make every scene fit somewhere in this curve.

The problem comes when you have large dark areas in your images.

These areas are more susceptible to having problems with noise coming from the sensor.

Here's an example of noise. See these odd blotches in what should be a smooth dark area?

Noise actually happens over the whole image, but it's mainly visible in the dark areas. Let’s see why.

Noise causes small random changes in the value the sensor detects for a given pixel.

Because the changes are small, and dark areas have small values, the noise is a greater percentage of the actual image data in the dark areas as compared to the lighter areas.

Just for the sake of argument, let’s say the noise is variations between plus and minus 10 values from the actual, ideal image pixel value.

Let’s say this area of the image ideally should have values around 20. When we add noise, a swing of 10 represents a change of 50% from ideal of 20.

If you have a two adjacent pixels that both ideally should be 20 but one has +10 noise and the other as -10 noise you end up with a 100% difference from the ideal between the two pixels.

Conversely, if we look at a bright area of the image where the values are around 200 a change of 10 represents only 5%, a much smaller relative change.

And so, because the noise represents a large percentage of the dark area’s values but only a small percentage in the bright area, it’s much more noticeable in those darker areas.

So what does this mean for the topic of “shoot to the right?"

The idea is that you should adjust your exposure compensation to shift the "ideal" exposure for gray to the right as much as possible but without clipping.

If you're in an automatic mode, you do this using the exposure compensation feature of your camera.

And if you're in manual mode, just simply adjust one or more legs of the exposure triangle to get what you want.

Use the histogram to determine when you have arrived at the correct point.

First, take a test image at what the camera says is the "correct" exposure and look at the histogram to see how much room you have.

Then dial the exposure compensation up to increase the exposure. The idea is to move the peak of the image to the right of the histogram.

Take another test image. And then repeat this process until the image is as bright as possible without clipping.

When you do this, the dark areas of the image move up into brighter areas where noise isn’t so much of an issue.

The problem now though is the dark areas will no longer be their proper dark color, they will be a washed-out grey. And the medium areas will be much too bright.

It just simply won't look right, but this can be fixed in post-processing.

Here's our image in Photoshop, a bit too bright since it was shot to the right. There are several ways of adjusting this.

The curves adjustment layer can be used to move that area that's too far to the right back into the center.

Just drag the black point at the bottom left of the curve over to the right but don't go so far that you start clipping your blacks.

You may also need to adjust the curve down to darken the overall image.

Another option is to use a levels adjustment layer to move the black point to the right, causing the overall exposure to be lowered and evening out the curve.

A third option is to use an exposure layer to simply lower the exposure.

Regardless of the method used, since the dark part of the image was captured outside the noise range, when the image is adjusted, the area the noise is in will be crushed and made much smaller, resulting in significantly less noise in the dark areas.

Here's the example scene shot with the exposure as the camera decides it should be.

And here it is shot to the right.

Finally, here's the shot to the right example with post processing.

Notice the difference in noise in the dark areas.

In conclusion, I’d love to hear in the comments if you have any opinions on using this technique. I know in some places it’s a bit controversial and in newer cameras noise is much less of a problem.

If this is your first time here at House of Hacks: Welcome. I’m glad you’re here. We’d love to have you subscribe.

Through these videos I hope to inspire, educate and inform makers in their creative endeavors.

Usually this involves various physical media like wood, metal, electronics, photographs and other similar types of materials.

Thanks for joining me on our creative journey. So subscribe and I’ll see you again in the next video.

Now, go make something. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just have fun!

How to get a perfect exposure using the histogram

Description

This is the second in a series where Harley talks about histograms as they’re used in photography. Having problems getting a good exposure based on the preview image of your camera? In this episode we look at how to use the histogram to get the exposure you want for your images.

This episode looks at exposure as it relates to the histogram: what is "proper" exposure, how different types of images impact exposure and the histogram and finally how to see exposure problems on the histogram and what to do to correct them.

Previous video: How to easily read a camera's histogram
Playlist of histogram related videos.

For a written transcript, go to go to How to get a perfect exposure using the histogram

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Light switch effect: http://freesound.org/people/AlienXXX/sounds/151347/

Transcript

Struggling to get the exposure you want? Today at the House of Hacks we’ll look at how you can use your camera’s histogram to get the perfect exposure.

Hi Makers, Builders and Photographers. Harley here.

The histogram is an important tool to understand the actual exposure of an image. When working with people in classes and workshops, I've noticed many of them look at the picture on the back of their camera trying to evaluate the exposure but don't have the histogram turned on. The problem is the image displayed on the back of the screen does not represent the actual exposure saved in the raw file. This preview is filtered based on several camera settings such as picture mode and white balance. Also, that screen is tiny and uncalibrated. It's really only a rough approximation of the actual image. Now don't get me wrong, the preview is a valuable tool; it’s great to see the overall composition. However, it's nearly useless to evaluate the exposure.

In this previous video, I explained what all the information on a histogram means. Today we'll look at the exposure as it relates to the histogram: what is "proper" exposure, how different types of images impact exposure and the histogram and finally how to see exposure problems on the histogram and what to do to correct them.

Somewhere in the history of photography, someone decided a "proper" exposure had a histogram that looks like this. It assumes that on average the majority of the luminance information is in the center of the image. Another way of saying this is that 50% gray will make up most of the image.

So, the exposure computers in cameras look for a peak in the image and try to adjust camera settings to put the peak in the center of the histogram. And this works well if you have an evenly lit, average subject. In an image like this, this rule works.

But this isn't necessarily valid for images that fall outside of average. And for artistic purposes, it’s not at all unusual to want something intentionally different.

For example, in low-key images, where a large percentage of the image is dark, this peak should be skewed to the dark side of the histogram on the left. But the exposure computer will try to push it to the center, making what should be dark, a washed out grey. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and in a future video I’ll talk about why you might want to intentionally do this. However, if you try to get the exposure correct right out of the camera, it doesn't give you what you really want.

Conversely, in high-key images, where a large percentage of the image is bright, the histogram should have the peak skewed to the right. But again, the computer will try to push it to the center, making what should be bright look dingy. Frequently you’ll encounter this problem shooting bright scenes outdoors, like at the beach or in the snow.

Unless the overall dynamic range of the scene is greater than your camera, generally both these problems can be fixed in post-production. However, both these problems are easily detected and corrected in-camera using the histogram. If you’re aware of the conditions you're shooting in and the look you're trying to achieve, you can know where the peak is supposed to be. Knowing where you want it, you can look at the histogram to know if it's in the correct spot or not.

If you find it’s not where you want it, and you’re using an automatic mode, use the exposure compensation setting on your camera. It allows you to tell the camera to adjust where the peak rests relative to center. By setting it to the plus side, you're telling it to move the peak to the right to brighten the image, or from the camera's perspective, you want to overexpose the image. By setting it to the minus side, you're telling it to move the peak to the left to darken the image, or, again from the camera's perspective, to underexpose the image.

If you’re in manual mode, simply adjust one of your exposure settings, f/stop, shutter speed or ISO, to make your image brighter or darker. If you're using your camera's exposure meter, the computer’s “perfect” exposure will be with the indicator right in the middle. If the image with this exposure is too dark for your scene, adjust your settings to move the indicator to the right. Or if the image is too bright, just move the indicator to the left.

Once these adjustments are made, make another image and re-evaluate the histogram. Repeat this process until the peak is where you really want it.

A significant problem in digital photography, that wasn't so much an issue with film, is clipping. With digital imaging, once a part of the image gets to a certain brightness level, it can't go any higher and is simply cut off. Everything brighter than that level is set to that maximum. It's clipped off. This causes a loss of information. The same type of thing happens in the dark regions. There's a level that means "black" and once that level is reached, anything less than that is set to black.

Imagine a number line that's really big in both directions. This is reality. But a digital sensor can only capture a region of this infinite line that has 256 values. Anything less than 0 is treated as 0 and anything greater than 255 is treated as 255. The number line is just cut-off, chopped, or clipped. Within a certain range, using exposure controls and ND filters, you can adjust where on the line this camera defines the start and end points, but you can’t change the size of the window.

Fortunately, clipping is easily detected by the histogram. If you have a tall vertical line on the extreme left or right edge, that image was clipped. If you see this, and you know you shouldn't based on your subject, you need to adjust your exposure either up or down, depending on which side of histogram the problem lies. Some cameras will flash areas of an image that are over and underexposed.

Just keep in mind, there are some cases where this can be expected to happen. A landscape image with the sun in it, or something with specular highlights, will probably have a small amount of clipping. This is normal and to be expected since these are the brightest areas of the photo. But if it's a wedding dress or white shirt, that's definitely a bad thing because any clipping will result in a loss of detail in these areas.

In conclusion, I’d love to hear in the comments below about how much you’ve actually used the histogram in the past. And, if you have used it, how it’s helped you.

Here are two playlists. One has all my photography related videos and the other contains other histogram related videos.

If this is your first time here at House of Hacks: Welcome. I’m glad you’re here. We’d love to have you subscribe. Through these videos I hope to inspire, educate and inform makers in their creative endeavors. Usually this involves various physical media like wood, metal, electronics, photography and other similar materials. Thanks for joining me on our creative journey. So subscribe and I’ll see you again in the next video.

Now, go make something. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just have fun!

How to easily read a histogram

Description

The camera’s histogram can be intimidating if you don't understand it, but it's actually really simple. In the first of a short series, Harley introduces this powerful tool to facilitate photographers' quests for the perfect exposure.

For a written transcript, go to How to easily read a histogram

Music and sound effects under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod

Photo credits for Creative Commons license 2
Illusive Photography: Photo
Alessandro Valli: Photo

Sound effects credits for Creative Commons license 3
fasten: Slide projector
VlatkoBlazek: Mechanical Whirring
leosalom: Fire

Transcript

[Click]

Besides the basic controls for making an image, I find the histogram to be one of the most used features of my digital camera. Today at the House of Hacks I'm going to explain what it is and the meaning of what it shows.

[Music]

Occasionally I work with people in photography related teaching situations. Many times I've found individuals trying to evaluate an exposure based on the preview image on the back of their screen.

This is a really bad idea. Chimping is great to evaluate the composition and relative exposure but there are many factors that control how the image is displayed that make it a poor representation of the actual exposure.

The histogram is a powerful tool in the photographer's arsenal to evaluate an image for proper exposure. And it's one of the few features that can't be duplicated on a film camera.

The closest we can get in the film world is an exposure meter. But in the digital world, the histogram provides a whole lot more information. In this episode, my goal is to explain the basics of what the histogram is and the meaning of what it shows.

In future episodes I plan to show how to use it when making an image. They'll be added to this playlist when they're posted.

Simply, the histogram is a chart showing the various brightness levels of an image. The left side of the x-axis represents black and the right side represents white. The values in between are levels of gray from dark to light. The y-axis represents how much of the image is at each value on the x-axis.

Let's look at some simple examples. To make things a bit easier, let's visit an alternate universe.

[Finger snap]

In this world, things are much more pixelated with higher contrast and fewer colors so our histograms can be smaller. When the sun goes down everything goes to black and white and a couple shades of grey.

Here's a nighttime image. Let's construct a histogram for it. First, we'll draw the x- and y- axes.

Since our image only has four values, black, white, dark grey and light grey, the x-axis has four points.

First we count the number of black pixels. Then we draw a bar that high.

Then we count the number of dark grey pixels and draw a bar that high.

We continue the same process with light grey and white.

And there we have it. A histogram for this image.

Let's change the image a little... and see how it changes the histogram.

More grey in the image increases the grey column of the histogram and decreases the white side.

Here is the same scene during day... with it's histogram.

A color image can be treated as a black and white image, with many shades of grey.

In this case, the histogram just has more grey levels on the x-axix.

Let's look at a couple generated images to get an intuitive feel for how the image impacts the histogram.

Previously I've shown simplified histograms with just the number of items on the grey scale x-axis as there are in the image. From now on, the histograms will be configured to have 256 values on the x-axis from black to white.

This black and white image gives us two bars in just the black and white columns on the two edges.

This black and white image gives us the same histogram because the relative amount of black and white portions of the image are the same.

It doesn't matter how we divide this up, as long as we have the same number of black and white pixels, the histogram remains the same.

Similarly, if we have this black and white image with one-third of the image white and two-thirds black, we can see the black side is twice the size as the white because we have twice the number of black pixels.

And again, we can divide those pixels up anyway we want, but the histogram doesn't change.

Now let's look at this gradient image.

Its histogram is a straight light.

Does this surprise you?

If we look at the image, we have a black band and a white band and all these grey bands that are the same size. So the graph reflects this with a straight line.

If we move the black and white start points, then the histogram will have taller ends with a dip in the middle.

But if we move the black and white start points off the image, then the histogram will shorten on the ends and rise in the middle.

[Finger snap]

And the default histogram on your camera works exactly the same way. Each image is treated as black and white and then the histogram constructed from that.

I don't know about all cameras, but all my Canons have two types of histograms: luminance and RGB. The luminance histogram is a single chart that shows the combined luminance values for the overall image. The same thing as what we’ve been looking at here.

The RGB histograms work exactly the same way except there are three charts showing the intensity in each of the color channels.

The default is to show the luminance but it can e changed to the RGB histogram by changing a custom setting in the menus.

This can be useful in situations where you have colored lights or part of your image that is more predominant in one color than the others. In these cases, one channel might become overexposed but it won't be obvious in the luminance histogram. However, when you change to the RGB histogram it becomes quite obvious.

And that's how you read a histogram. The left side shows how much black you have and the right says how much white you have and everything in the middle indicates shade of grey.

In future episodes I plan to show how to use this information while making an image and what it means to shoot to the right. If you want to be notified when that, or any other maker related episodes, are released, hit the subscribe button.

Thanks for watching. If this helped you, I'd appreciate knowing about it with a "like." If you have any other questions or other comments, I'd love to hear them in the comment section below.

Until next time, go make something. It doesn't have to be perfect, just have fun!

How to operate an old camera

Description
In the follow-up to cleaning an old camera, I show how to operate the Graflex Series B. Then I reveal the results from the first roll of film through it in five decades after processing the film using the negative to digital conversion steps from a previous episode.

More about this camera: http://www.hookedonlight.com/2012/10/treasures-from-time-graflex-rb-series-b.html

Transcript
In this episode of the House of Hacks I'm going to show how to operate this old Graflex camera.

Hi Makers, Builders and Photographers. Harley here.

In this previous episode I first showed this new-to-me camera that explained how the light travels through it and did a little cleaning on it. I mentioned in that video that I was going to be taking it out, run some film through it and report back on how it turned out.

I tried taking video out in the field but it didn't work out too well logistically so I'm going to do this episode here in the workshop.

Today I'm going to talk about the actual operation of this camera. I'm going to talk about how to load the film, how to set the exposure, both the aperture and shutter speed, how to take a picture and finally take a look at some of the first images out of this camera in over fifty years. If at any time you want to skip to a specific portion of this video, just click the appropriate menu item over here.

This camera model had available to it different backs. Each back took a different type of film which allowed you to change film types from one image to the next. You could also have multiple backs of the same type and put different types of film in them. This allowed you to shoot the same type of film but different varieties. Like black and white and color or different film speeds. Mine came with a carrier for 120 film which is really nice because 120 film is still made and manufactured. It's readily available. Amazon carries it. You can get it at your local camera store.

To start loading the film you move this little bar which frees up the carrier, the back to come off. This is what a 120 back looks like. To open this up you pinch these silver bars together and it just opens up like this. Inside here there's a film carrier, like so. There's a place for the supply reel. The film comes around here, this is what faces the shutter, rolls around and goes onto a take-up reel. The take-up reel, when a roll of film is finished, just free-rolls forever, like this. When you want to put in a new roll of film, you just manually click this over to the "S" position, you can hear that click, and now you're ready to load a roll of film.

So, we'll take this film out of the box. It comes in air-tight, light-tight packaging to keep the film fresh. There's a piece of tape here, you just break the seal across here. Sometimes it's easier said than done. Oh, this one just peel off, that's kind of nice. Different brands of film will do that a little differently.

The film goes in here, and it's just spring loaded, so you just put it in like so. You want to make sure this is in such that the film emulsion, the black part, is coming out from the bottom like this. This is so when it wraps around like this it's facing into the camera. It then rolls around and you put this little piece of flap in the slot like so and you just wrap it up. See how that slipped out? I've had that happen before. You want to make sure that when you start rolling this that it's actually engaged. There's nothing more frustrating than to think you've shot a whole roll of film only to open this up and find it's still at the start. There we go. Once we have it loaded on about one roll like that we want to put it back in here like so. And then we want to roll this around until it gets to "1." It stops when it gets to "1" and this is now -- put it right back on the back of the camera. The camera is now loaded with film and ready to shoot.

Exposure is made up of three things: film speed, aperture and shutter speed. This is commonly called the exposure triangle. We're going to talk about how to set this on the Graflex.

First, film is measured in ISO units that typically have values of 100, 200, 400 and so forth. Kind of powers of two. In digital cameras you can change this on the fly from one image to the next and you can also have partial settings on the ISO numbers between those power of two numbers. With film, each roll of film has a specific value and so once you put a roll of film in the camera that's what you have to work with until you take that film out. On the Graflex this is a little bit different because the backs are interchangeable so if you have multiple backs you can put different film in each back and change the backs from one image to the next, if you so desire.

The second leg of the exposure triangle is the aperture. This controls how much light comes through the lens and is measured in units called f/stops. Each f/stop either doubles or halves the amount of light coming through the lens. The larger the number, the smaller the hole and the less light that comes through but the greater the depth of field. On the other hand, the smaller the number, you get a larger hole that lets more light through but you have a shallower depth of field. The aperture blocks off this light with vanes that are controlled by either rings or levers that outside around the lens. Different lenses have different ranges. This particular lens opens up to f/5.2 and closes down to f/22.

The last leg of the exposure triangle is the shutter speed. This controls how much of the light that's going through the aperture actually makes it through to hit the film. In most cameras, there's a dial that you turn to set the shutter speed to what you want it to be and the camera just takes care of the rest. The Graflex however is quite different. It has a long piece of fabric in it with four different slits in it of different sizes. This fabric is rolled up on rollers that are then attached to some springs. The spring can have variable tensions set on them. So to set the shutter speed, you look on the side of the camera on a chart that has all the different shutter speeds on it. You find the shutter speed you want and read across to the left side to find the slit to use and read up the column to find the tension to use. There's then two controls on the camera that you set to these two values. To set the slits value, first of all make sure this lever is in the down position. That puts the mirror down and also engages the latch for the winding mechanism. Next, wind this knob until the value that's indicated by the chart shows up in this little window. If you find you've gone too far, you can use this release lever to back up to previous settings. To set the tension value, simply turn this knob on the bottom of the camera. If you find you've gone too far, you can back up by pressing this little release knob.

To determine the proper exposure values to use, you usually use a light meter. This is an older model that's very simple. It has a photosensor and a meter in it. The meter has a little red indicator on it. To use it, simply point it at the scene and rotate this dial to line up a green indicator to match the red indicator. You then set the film speed to match what you have in your camera and then directly read out on the chart here that tells you what shutter speed to use for which aperture you want to use. Very simple to use. Never fails. No batteries required. This is a newer version of the same thing. It's bigger. Requires batteries. But it also has a few new features. It does have a manual mode on it though so you can set the ISO on the film and find out what aperture and shutter speed to use to get a proper exposure. However, when I'm out in the field taking pictures, I'm always going to have my SLR with me and it has a built in meter so I just use it. I set it to manual mode, set the ISO to match the film I have loaded in the camera, and then center the needle on the meter by changing the f/stop and the shutter speed to be what I want it to be. I can then take a picture to make sure I have the correct exposure that I want in the camera and then I can just take those three values and apply them on the Graflex and be ready to go.

Once you have your exposure values, you're ready to make your image. The first thing of course to do is to frame and focus. I find it's best to do this with your aperture wide open so you can actually see what you're doing. Focus is controlled by this knob on the side which all it does is move the lens closer or further away from the film plane. To do both your framing and focusing, you use the viewfinder here on top and just look down through here, adjust your frame and then do your focus. Once all that's done, then you can dial in your aperture to what's appropriate for this particular image. Once all your exposure values are set, your shutter speed and aperture, you already have your film in there, you're ready to take your image. I find this works best as a four step dance. You just do each step right in sequence after the other without interruption. Step one is remove this plate from the film. This exposes the film to the inside of the camera. Two is to press the shutter release that's over on this side. Three is to put the plate back in. And four is to advance the film. I find that if I don't do this each and every time that I'll forget a [step] -- usually to either take this plate out, which results in no image, or I'll forget to advance the film, which results in double exposure, neither of which you really want. Once all the film has been used, it'll all be on the take-up reel; none will be left on the supply reel. Unlike 35 mm cameras where you reverse the film back into the canister, you just leave it on the take-up reel in this one. Take the back off to a darkish location, just like you used to load the film, open up the back, and on the end of the film will be a moisture sensitive adhesive. Lick that and stick it to the film. That'll keep it from unwinding, coming off the roll and ruining your film. Keep it in a dark location as you take it to your film processor for developing. And finally, take what used to be the supply reel that's now empty, take it off, put it in the take-up reel position and put in a new roll of film and you're ready to go again.

I ran a roll of film through the camera and took it to a local lab for processing and scanning. I had no idea what to expect since this is the first film that had been through the camera in over fifty years. I didn't know if it might have light leaks or some other problem with the camera that had caused it to fall into disuse. I received the scans via e-mail and opened them up and found them to all be identical. This was pretty surprising since I'd done exposure bracketing from one frame to the next and expected to have different exposures. I picked up the film in person a couple days later and sure enough they did have different exposures from one frame to the next. So the camera was working just perfectly. As it turned out, the scanner was in auto mode and it had adjusted the exposure on each frame to be what it thought it should be, negating the exposure bracketing I'd done. So, lesson learned is next time I need to have them turn off auto mode, if I've done exposure bracketing, in order to get the proper exposures on each frame.

I used the negative to digital conversion process I described in this video to get digital images that had the correct aspect ratio and exposure values. I'm very pleased with the way these images turned out.

[music]

I'll probably be doing more with this camera in the future. I may even do some developing if I do a lot with it.

If you have any questions or comments, leave them in the comments section below. And subscribe if you're interested in maker related videos. And here's a play list of other photography related videos that I've made.

Until next time, go make something. It doesn't have to be perfect, just have fun!