Having trouble getting consistent measurements in the workshop? In this episode, Harley gives seven woodworking measuring tips to improve your projects' success.
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.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 4.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"
Transcript
Are you having problems with consistent measurements on your projects?
Today, I have 7 woodworking measuring tips here at the House of Hacks.
If we're just meeting, I'm Harley and I believe everyone has a God-given creative spark.
Creativity involves connecting the dots in new ways.
The more dots you have, the more creative you can be.
Here at the House of Hacks, I try to show new connections and give you new dots for your own inspiration.
If this sounds interesting to you, hit the subscribe button and ring the bell notification icon and you'll be notified when new uploads are available.
The first tip is to square the ends that you're going to be measuring from.
This way, if there's any angle, it won't impact the final measurement.
Tip two is to use the same tape measure for your whole project.
This will eliminate any variation from one tape measure to the next, particularly on the ends that move.
Those holes may be slightly different from one tape to the next.
Tip number three is to use a sharp pencil.
This will help minimize any error from the mark itself, both when making the mark and also when lining it up for the cut.
And stay tuned to the end because there's actually a bonus tip at the end.
Tip number four is to use a "V" to mark your cut location rather than a straight line.
This will help reduce the amount of interpretation when lining up to make the cut.
Tip number five is to make one measurement, cut it, make your next measurement, cut it, and so forth.
This will eliminate any drift from the kerf width of the blade.
Tip number six is, if you're making multiple cuts that are the same length, use a stop block.
This way you only have to measure once, it speeds up your production and it also gives you much better consistency.
Tip number seven is to be consistent where you line up the mark with your blade.
The more variance you have in your alignment, the more variation you're going to have in your final product.
And bonus tip number eight is, if you're cutting multiple pieces that are the same length, in addition to using a stop block, if you make multiple cuts at the same time, that'll further reduce the room for error.
Thanks for joining me on this creative journey that we're on.
I'll see you in one of these videos over here that YouTube thinks you'll enjoy.
Ever wonder what's inside a hard disk drive? In this equipment autopsy, Harley takes apart an old hard drive to see what's inside and explain how they work.
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.
Wondering about the differences between lithium grease vs silicone grease? In this video, Harley compares silicone grease vs lithium grease, explains the differences, applications and uses of each.
What is dielectric grease and why should I use it? https://youtu.be/GXyRYArHryU
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, go subscribe and click the bell to get notifications.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: Hot Swing
Transcript
Are you like Jeremy and wondering what the difference is between lithium grease and silicone grease?
We're talking about that right now in this video.
[Introduction]
Hi. Harley here.
I recently had a comment asking about the difference between dielectric grease and silicone grease and also how that compares to lithium grease.
So let's talk about those differences today.
Lithium [grease] is:
generally petroleum based,
it adheres well to metal,
it's non-corrosive,
it's moisture resistant,
it handles heavy loads really well,
and it's resistant under high temperatures. It doesn't break down.
Silicone grease is:
of course silicone based,
it adheres to a wide variety of surfaces,
it inhibits corrosion,
resists moisture,
and comes in various formulations.
A couple notable formulations are ingestible ones where it's safe to be used in dental tools and plumbing for potable water.
Another formulation is dielectric grease where it's used in applications where you have high current and you need something that has insulation properties.
Because lithium grease is petroleum based, it's not recommended for use around plastics and rubber where it'll cause these to prematurely fail.
These applications are better served by silicone grease.
Silicone grease, on the other hand, works better in low temperature, low stress applications around plastics and rubber.
Common examples around the house for using lithium grease might be for garage door openers and hinges.
Whereas applications for silicone grease might be sliding doors and windows, seals around waterproof flashlights and plumbing fixtures.
So I want to get back to Jeremy's question about using silicone grease for brake caliper applications. In this case, neither lithium nor silicone grease is really ideal.
Lithium because it's petroleum based will cause decay in the rubber parts of the brake system and silicone grease isn't really designed for that high temperature/high stress application.
There are actually specially formulated greases for brake applications that are designed to handle both the high temperature and high stress and also coming into contact with the plastics and rubbers in the brake system.
Thanks Jeremy for the question and for everybody else for joining me on this creative journey we're on.
If you're interested in making things out of wood, metal, electronics, photography or other things like this in the workshop, hit the subscribe button and then hit the bell notification icon and YouTube will notify you next time I release a video.
Binary number division is simple and easy! In this short episode of House of Hacks, Harley shows how to divide binary numbers. This is one in the Bits of Binary series on binary arithmetic.
Are you interested in making things around the home and shop? You’ve found the right place. Here at the House of Hacks, we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, go subscribe and click the bell to get notifications.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Transcript
In this previous video, we saw how multiplying binary numbers is almost trivial compared to multiplying decimal numbers.
In this episode of the House of Hacks, I'll show how division is just as easy!
[Intro]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.
Here at House of Hacks I hope to inspire, educate and encourage people who like to make things with a mechanical or technical bent to them.
Binary numbers are the foundation of much of our modern world and fall into the technical side of things.
This is one in an introductory series on binary numbers where I talk about how to read them, count in them and do basic math operations on them.
In this video we're going to be looking at division.
First a refresher for terminology.
Division involves dividing a dividend by the divisor and getting a quotient.
Remember in grade school how we had to memorize this multiplication table to know how to multiply and divide decimal numbers?
And remember how in the last episode we found out binary number multiplication was just these four elements of that table and how that made multiplication really easy?
Well the same thing holds true for division.
Let's get into this with some examples.
We'll start with 21 divided by 7.
Written as long division that looks like this.
Because our multiplication table only has two result values, one number can only be divided by another one 0 or 1 times.
This means a simple size comparison is really all that we need to look at when calculating the quotient.
Working through this, 111 is obviously larger than 1 so we start with 0.
111 is larger than 10, so we write down another 0.
111 is larger than 101. And again we write down 0.
Finally, 111 is less than 1010, so we write a 1 in the quotient, put the 111 under the 1010 and subtract.
The subtraction result is 11. Now we bring down the other 1.
And 111 is equal to 111 so we write a 1 in the quotient, put the 111 under the 111 and subtract.
Of course this is zero and we're done.
The resulting quotient is 11 which is three.
We know 3 times 7 is 21, confirming that the process works.
Let look at another example of 1011 divided by 10.
10 is greater than 1, so we start with a 0.
10 is equal to 10, so we put 1 in the quotient and 10 underneath and subtract giving us 0.
We bring down the 1 from the dividend.
10 is greater than 1, so we put a 0 in the quotient and we bring down the next 1.
11 is greater than 10, so we put a 1 in the quotient and 10 underneath, subtract, giving us 1.
There's nothing left of the dividend to bring down so we have a couple options that are the same as we have with decimal remainders.
We can either write the remainder as part of the quotient.
Or we can write the remainder as a binary fraction.
Or we can place a radix point and continue the division.
If we do this, we place a dot in the quotient and bring down a 0 next to our remainder giving us 10.
10 is equal to 10 so we place a 1 in the quotient and subtract the dividend from the working value.
The result is zero and we're done.
If the result was greater than zero, we'd bring down another 0 and continue expanding the radix part of the quotient, just like we do when working in decimal.
In the next episode of Bits of Binary, we'll take another look at subtraction by introducing negative numbers.
If you're interested in making things with a mechanical or technical bent to them, consider subscribing for future videos showing DIY projects, home and shop tutorials and other things related to wood working, metal working, photography, electronics and similar materials.
Thanks for joining me on our creative journey.
Now, go make something. Perfection's not required. Fun is!
Continuing the Bits of Binary series, this episode of House of Hacks shows how to multiple binary numbers. Harley shows how binary number multiplication is as easy as 1 x 1 = 1 and 1 x 0 = 0.
This is the fifth in a series dealing with binary numbers. All the videos in this series can be found on the Bits of Binary playlist.
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 on YouTube.
All music by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com and under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: Hot Swing
Transcript
Do you want to multiply binary numbers together?
In this episode of the House of Hacks, we'll look at how easy this operation really is.
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-It-Yourselfers. Harley here.
The playlist up here contains previous episodes where we looked at what binary numbers are, how to count in binary, how to convert between the more familiar decimal base 10 numbers and binary, and how to do addition and subtraction on binary numbers.
In this episode we'll look at multiplying binary numbers together.
Back when we learned how to multiply decimal numbers in school, we had to memorize a table that looked something like this.
If you know this table, you already know everything there is to know about multiplying binary numbers.
The cool thing is multiplication in binary is exactly the same as decimal except you only use these two rows and columns from the table you've already learned.
And the process is exactly the same too.
Let's take a look at a couple examples and then a couple short cuts.
Let's take seven times three.
Just like in decimal, we first multiply the units and write that down under the equal bar.
Since we're multiplying by 1, we just write down the first number.
Then we add a zero placeholder and multiply by the next column.
Since we're again multiplying by 1, we write down the first number again.
And finally we add the two numbers together to get the total.
1 and 0 is 1.
1 and 1 is two, which in binary is one zero, so we write the 0 and carry the 1.
1 plus 1 plus 1 is three represented in binary as one one, so write the 1 and carry the 1.
Again, 1 plus 1 is 10 so write the 0 and carry the 1.
1 and 0 is again 1 so write the 1 and we're done.
Let's double check this by converting the result to decimal.
Remember each column is a power of two and we add the column values that contain a one.
Looking at the values of the columns we have 16 plus 4 plus 1 which is 21.
Let's do another one. Five times five.
Starting with the units, we multiply by the first number times one and write that down.
We put down a zero placeholder for the next column but notice we're now multiplying by zero.
So we ignore that column since zero times anything is zero, and add another placeholder and move to the next column.
We're again multiplying the first number times one and write it down.
Now we're ready to add.
One and zero is one.
Zero and zero is zero.
One and one is two, so write down the zero and carry the one.
One and zero is one.
Finally zero and one is one.
Giving us the result 11001.
Again, we can verify this by converting to decimal.
So we have sixteen plus eight plus one giving us 25.
There are two shortcuts we can observe.
First, since we're always multiplying by either zero or one, the numbers we're adding together are always nothing for zero or the first number shifted by the column that contains a one in the second number.
So this is a really mechanical process of just writing down the first number multiple times shifted as needed and then adding the numbers together.
As an example, we'll take this random number and multiply it by this random number.
We write down the first number with the units under the second number where the columns contain ones.
We can add placeholder zeros if it makes it easier to keep track of the columns.
And then just add.
The second shortcut is related to multiplying by powers of two.
Let's go back to decimal for a minute.
You probably know the shortcut for multiplying by a power of ten.
For ten, one hundred, one thousand, and so forth, all we have to do is add the appropriate number of zeros to the number we're multiplying.
Three times ten is thirty.
Three times a hundred is three hundred, and so forth.
Binary has a similar concept except it's related to powers of two: two, four, eight, sixteen and so on.
Every time a zero is added to the end of a number, it's the same thing as multiplying by two.
So if we are multiplying by two, we add one zero.
If we're multiplying by four we add two zeros, and so forth.
And since powers of two in binary look just like powers of ten in decimal, we really don't have to think about it.
All we have to do is add zeros and we're done.
In this episode, we looked at how binary multiplication is using all the same ideas as decimal multiplication we're already familiar with.
We also looked at two easy shortcuts to mechanically handle the multiplication and multiplying by powers of two.
Binary is a common non-decimal numeric base, but really, any number can be used as a base for a number system.
Leave a comment below if you've worked with number bases besides decimal and for what purposes.
If this is your first time here at House of Hacks: Welcome, I'm glad you're here and I'd love to have you subscribe.
Through these videos I hope to inspire, educate and encourage makers in their creative endeavors.
In spite of this series, usually this involves various physical media like wood, metal, electronics, photographs and other similar materials.
So subscribe and I'll see you again in the next video.
Need to replace a dishwasher? In this episode of House of Hacks, Harley shows how to install a Bosch 500 series dishwasher after first removing the existing dishwasher. Knowing how to remove and replace a dishwasher is useful information for a home owner. It’s not intimidating once you see how easy they are to install under a counter top.
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 on YouTube.
All music by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com and under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: Hot Swing
Incidental: Beach Bum, Guiton Sketch, Happy Alley and Pump Sting
Transcript
Need to replace an old dishwasher with a new one?
Today at the House of Hacks, we're going to do exactly that!
[Intro]
For the last six months or so, every once in a while we'd come home and the dishwasher would have leaked. It was a random occurrence. It only happened on rare occasions.
It was pretty frustrating to find. I spent quite a bit of time trying to track it down. I actually went so far as to pull the dishwasher out from the cabinet and put it up on 2 x 4s for a week and we ran it that way to try to isolate where it was leaking. And of course, in that time it never leaked and my wife finally got frustrated with having it out in the middle of the kitchen and asked me to put it back.
Last weekend we came home from running errands and found it had leaked again. It had finished shortly before we got home and I thought maybe it was still wet where it had been leaking and so I immediately pulled it out from the cupboard. I couldn't find any leaks. I was able though to trace the water back from where it was wet on the floor and where it wasn't wet on the floor to kind of get the general region and did some more investigation. I pulled a flashlight out and I did find the tell tale signs of leaking water where you have that white, dried, crustiness from dried water that had been leaking and had since dried. And in tracking it down I found a seam in the tub that had some discoloration in it and that was right where the water was coming out on the other side. And so obviously there's rust through in that seam and there's really no repairing that kind of thing from a practical standpoint. I could kind of hack it with some epoxy or silicone gel, but that's just sort of a stop gap measure and eventually I'm going to have to replace the dishwasher. So I decided to go ahead and do that.
To do this project, I think it's going to require three tools. I may be wrong, but thinking through the project, I think there's three things we're going to need. There's a screwdriver that we'll need to disconnect it from the counter top and also, if there's electrical connections that have screws, they're probably going to be Philips. I think that's the only thing we need Philips for.
The water inlet is probably a compression fitting which will use a 5/8ths inch open end wrench. If it's not a compression fitting, it's probably a hose clamp which again will use the screwdriver.
And finally, I believe the drain has a spring clamp that we'll remove with pliers.
I think that's all we need. Three tools.
If any more are required, when I get into it, I'll talk about that in the process of needing them.
The way this model dishwasher is held in is there's two screws on the top that hold it to the counter top and there's a dust panel on the bottom by the floor that needs to come off so we can move it around.
A total of four screws to pull out and then it should just be able to slide right out.
Let's get to it.
[Turn off the water]
[Turn off the power]
[Loosen dust cover]
[Remove screws]
[Double check there's no power]
[Disconnect drain]
[but put down a towel first]
[Disconnect water supply]
[Access electrical]
[Disconnect wires]
[Remove old machine]
So you saw with the old dishwasher, it had a built in junction box in the bottom front corner that the electrical ran into.
The new one has a separate junction box that is supposed to be mounted away from the dishwasher and then it has this cord that has an end that plugs into the dishwasher.
From a mechanical standpoint, this is a lot easier because I can... I'll have to cut off the old knarly ends and get some new wire here, but there are some screw terminals in there that I'll just screw right into. It'll be quick and easy. But I don't have a good place to mount this. The way the cupboards are designed, the closest place to mount this where it's going to be accessible is further away than the length of this cord. And so, it's just going to float around in the back there.
Let's get this hooked up.
[Trim off old wire]
[Strip insulation]
[Affix strain relief]
[Attach wire to terminals]
[Tighten screws]
[Put on cover]
The water hook up has been a little bit more challenging than I expected.
The dishwasher has a 3/4" MPT fitting on the back of it and my plumbing has a 3/8" flex pipe. So it didn't work directly in there obviously. So I had to go buy a fitting specially for this project that is a 3/4" MPT fitting to a 3/8" compression fitting.
I'm going to put this on and first of all I need to cut off the old compression fitting on the piping because it can't be used again.
[Install fitting]
[Connect water supply line]
OK, now we're going to connect the drain.
This comes from the dishwasher and it has a section for either 1/2" or 3/4" drain pipe.
This pipe is 3/4" so we're going to put the hose clamp on the 3/4" section and push this in there until it's good and seated.
And that's I think as far as it's going to go.
It seems like it should go a little bit further... but maybe not.
Now we put the hose clamp on.
And tighten it down.
I must say I really like the old hose clamp where it was a spring clamp.
It was so much more convenient.
[Install the mounting clips]
[Push the dishwasher under the counter]
OK, now we get the joy of leveling it.
It seems to be in there OK.
All the water and drain stuff, electrical seems good.
It's pretty well centered.
Now it just needs to get leveled and needs to get lifted up actually.
I've got probably almost an inch gap here at the top.
But that's what the leveler feet are for.
OK, to turn this, turn the feet on the right and left to level it side to side.
And to level it front to back, there's a screw right here in the middle you turn to get the front and back level.
[Screw in mounting screws]
[Attach dust panel]
OK. Well, I finally got it done and in.
That was a lot more work than I expected.
The last dishwasher that I'd taken out was one I had also installed 10 years ago or so probably. Maybe 12 years ago.
It was really pretty simple. It was just straight forward: take out the old, put in the new and it was done.
This one there was "some assembly required" as they say.
I had to pick up that part from Home Depot.
I had to wire in things, it was just a little bit more involved.
It was just more work.
It took a lot longer than I expected.
And it took more tools than I expected.
So the final tools:
Scissors to open packaging.
Level to level it.
Tube cutter to cut off the old compression fitting that I didn't need.
A couple adjustable wrenches to level it.
A Philips and a straight screwdriver.
Wire cutters to trim up the wiring.
And a box knife to trim the insulation.
And a 5/8ths inch wrench to tighten up the water connection.
And pliers to put in those little clips. The clips on this particular dishwasher you can put either on the top or on the sides so you had to install those. Use pliers to do that.
That was it. All in all, not a tough job. It just took about 4 hours to do, and that included having to film and setup.
So that slowed it down a little bit. Probably a good 3 hours to do this even if I hadn't been filming.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Transcript
Do you have a crusty, frozen, broken shut-off valve that needs to be replaced?
Today at the House of Hacks, we're going to do just that.
[Intro]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers.
Harley here.
Today we're going to remove this old shut-off valve that doesn't work anymore and replace it a bright, shiny new one.
To do this should required just a few minimal tools.
First off, I've turned off the water and drained all the taps so there should be minimal water in the system.
However, there will still be a little residual water that will drain out when we cut into the pipe.
So, I have got a pile of towels to soak up any water that does come out.
We have a couple wrenches we will need.
This is a 15/16th inch open end wrench and this is a 5/8th inch open end wrench.
And we have a tubing cutter that we will use to remove the old one.
And we have our new valve.
Now these valves have compression fittings on them so they just slide on and then you tighten down the nut.
However, once a pipe has had a compression fitting on it, you don't want to put a compression fitting back on the pipe in that same location.
So on the old pipe, we are going to just cut it off since even if we did try to remove it and take off the compression fitting...
First of all it is going to be really difficult and second of all, even it we got it off, we would not be able to use that section of pipe.
So we are just going to cut it off.
It does have plastic lines going into it, so we will remove those plastic lines because those can be reused.
If you have plastic or braided lines going into the output side of the shut off valves, then those can be taken off and reused.
But if you have got hard, solid lines going in there, then again, those need to be cut off as well.
For this particular project, I will be removing the two plastic lines and then cutting off the valve from the main input line.
Put down a towel before opening up the lines to catch any water that might still be in them.
Then a 5/8" wrench loosens the connections until they can be removed by hand.
A small tubing cutter makes quick work of removing the old valve assembly.
Let the towel wick up enough water from the pipe that it won't make a mess when putting the new valve assembly on.
A cleaning brush makes sure we have a good connection to help prevent any leaks at the joint.
Put on the compression nut and then the compression ring.
Fit the valve assembly and make sure it's oriented the way that works best for your environment.
Thread the compression nut onto the valve and tighten it down.
It should be good and tight but you don't need to strong arm it.
Make sure the valves are closed and turn on the main water.
OK. That was a bit exciting.
I made sure before I turned the water on to have the valves all turned off because I have not hooked up the inputs on this yet. Or the outputs.
And I turned on the water because I wanted to make sure that this main input here was tight and did not have any leaks on it.
What I failed to do was turn off the faucet up above and it was turned on in the middle position.
So when I turned the water on, the cold water side got pressurized, went through the faucet, out the hot water side and came out through the unconnected connection.
So, lesson learned: remember, before you turn the water on, to turn off the faucet here if everything is not tightened up and buttoned up down below.
But the good news is we do not have any leaks down here.
And a good way to test that is to use a piece of tissue paper.
Tissue paper soaks up water really easily and just the tiniest drop will cause it to swell up and also change color.
So it is real obvious if there is a tiny leak, even if you can not see it or feel it, it shows up on the tissue paper real well.
And if I run this around here and get it up in the crack of that seal and run it around the top, it's completely, perfectly dry.
There is no change in it whatsoever.
So that tells me that this first connection has a good seal on it.
So let us continue with the last two connections.
OK. A lot of times plastic line on the end here has triangular shaped end on it that is designed to kind of go inside the pipe and provide a good seal on it.
This one does not though.
This one is just straight pipe and then has a compression fitting on it.
You should not really reuse compression fittings once they've been used once.
So I am going to cut this off and then use the new fitting that came with this to connect this up.
And in this case, for the other end, we have braided line, and that has a rubber seal on it, so it can just thread right back on.
And on this rubber stuff, you do not need to really torque it down.
You just need to get it snug.
And again the tissue paper test.
And everything is nice and dry.
And now we have everything connected down below and the valves turned on and we can see we have water on the cold side and water on the hot side, so everything seems to be good.
I didn't see any leaks with the tissue paper.
I like to leave it sit for a couple hours and then test again with the tissue paper because sometimes you have a little bit of seepage that you want to double check a couple hours later just to make sure that there is no leakage.
But I do not think there is going to be a problem with this.
It is rare that I have problems with this side of the plumbing.
Usually when I have leakage problems it is on drain sides, with p-traps, not on pressure sides, interestingly enough.
I am not sure why that is, but that has been my experience.
I believe everyone has a God-given creative spark and this involves making things with a mechanical or technical bent, and sometimes repairing them.
If this sounds interesting to you, I encourage you to check out the rest of the channel and see if this is something you are interested in, and if it is, go ahead and subscribe.
Click the bell notification icon and YouTube will let you know next time I have a video uploaded.
What is dielectric grease? Why should I use dielectric grease? How do I use it? Dielectric grease is something used on automotive electrical connections. It is relatively unknown and has some misinformation floating around regarding it. In this House of Hacks video, Harley talks about the what, why and how of using it.
With Tomahawk DIY, Mike is building a business dedicated to helping people Build Better Lives. A substantial portion of revenue is donated to organizations that focus on helping people build better lives in some of earth's most dire circumstances. Visit his About page to learn more about the mission of Tomahawk DIY and use this Amazon Affiliate link to help support that work: Buy Dielectric Grease.
Hey, I wonder if Harley knows his brake light is out. That could cause a real problem.
[Door slam]
Hey Harley.
Yeah.
Did you know your brake light's out?
No, I didn't know that. There's a car store right around the corner. Why don't we go get some parts.
Yeah, it's a really easy fix. I'll show you how.
Awesome. Sounds great!
[Buying parts]
Today at the House of Hacks, we're going to talk about replacing light bulbs and using dielectric grease.
[Music]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.
This is Mike from Tomahawk DIY and we're going to be talking about two things. One on his channel about how to replace a brake light and on my channel this videos going to be about what dielectric grease is and why you should use be using it.
In Mike's video, we put some dielectric grease in the fitting before putting in the new bulb.
In this video, I want to talk about what dielectric grease is and why we used it.
While shooting the bulb changing video, we ran into a problem that is a great example of why dielectric grease really should be used.
We'd taken the old bulb out, put the new one in and put the socket back in the tail light assembly.
When we tested it, it didn't work. After some checking, I found corrosion on the socket connectors.
Dielectric grease helps inhibit this type of corrosion.
If these had grease put on them at the factory, they wouldn't have corroded this way.
So what is dielectric grease?
It's a silicon based grease that is non-curing and non-conductive.
Coming out of the tube, it has a, well, greasy type consistency, and being non-hardening, it maintains this consistency.
It stays this way and doesn't get hard or setup.
Here I have the multi-meter here setup to measure resistance.
When I put a drop on the probes, we can see it is non-conductive until I press the probes together and they make metal-to-metal contact.
Bare metal will have a chemical reaction to the oxygen in the air, called oxidation or corrosion.
Oxidation is less conductive than the metal, causing the flow of electricity to be reduced.
If there's not much oxidation, the reduction isn't enough to cause a problem.
However, in the harsh, sometimes wet, environment of a car, oxidation can build up over time to be a problem.
At best, it will decrease voltage causing lights to dim and other devices not to work properly.
In extreme cases, it can cause increased heat as the current attempts to break through and cause plastic to melt, shorts and sparks and, in the worse case, a fire.
Dielectric grease does a couple things to help combat these problems.
First, it's an insulator and helps prevent arcing between air gapped metal.
In high-voltage situations, this can help reduce voltage leakage, like in the engine's ignition system.
But in the low voltage situation of lighting, this isn't it's primary benefit.
In normal use, any place there's air gapped terminals, the air is sufficient insulation.
It's primary benefit comes as a non-hardening sealant.
When it's liberally applied to an electrical connection, it coats the metal and surrounds the terminals.
But being squishy, it is pressed out of the way on the metal-to-metal contact points.
This creates a sealed electrical connection that prevents both air and water from getting to the metal.
Keeping the water out of the connector helps eliminate short circuits and keeping the air out limits corrosion from happening.
It also helps the plastic and rubber parts of the connectors.
The oils in the grease help minimize gassing off of the plastic's oils.
This in turn helps prevent the plastic from getting brittle.
It also lubricates rubber fittings to let them seal better but not fuse.
All these things combined make the connector easier to take apart next time the bulb needs to be replaced.
I've seen some more expensive cars with dielectric grease on fittings from the factory.
And I've heard of people who will go through their vehicle when they first get it and put grease on all the connectors.
Usually these are people who put their vehicles in unusually harsh circumstances, particularly off-road or marine environments.
Personally, I use it whenever I replace something, but I don't go out of my way to take things apart specifically to add grease to them.
But given this most recent situation, I may rethink that.
If this is your first time here at House of Hacks: Welcome, I'm glad you're here and would love to have you subscribe.
I believe everyone has a God-given creative spark.
Sometimes this manifests through making things with a mechanical or technical bent.
Through this channel I hope to inspire, educate and encourage these types of makers in their creative endeavors.
Usually this involves various physical media like wood, metal, electronics, photography and other similar materials.
If this sounds interesting to you, go ahead and subscribe and I'll see you again in the next video.
Thanks for joining me on our creative journey.
Now, go make something. Perfection's not required. Fun is!
Valentine's Day is tomorrow. Here's how to make a digital card to capture the heart of your sweetie. Well, OK, that might be overstating things a bit, but Harley does show an algorithmic way using trigonometry to generate a beating heart animation in an easy to use programming environment called Processing. This was inspired by a video LeiosOS posted last week.
Today at the House of Hacks we're going to make a high-tech Valentine's Day greeting.
[Music]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.
I recently ran across a new-to-me programming channel who's name I won't even begin to try to pronounce but I will link to in the cards and description below.
He did a video about drawing a heart where he used a bit of C code and his own graphics library.
I want to take his idea, expand a bit on why it works and show how to use the Processing programming environment to do the same thing.
First let's look at generating shapes...
Many people get overwhelmed by the thought of trigonometry with its sine and cosine, angles and other related things, but at its core, it’s really pretty simple.
Remember the old cartesian graph from math class?
It had an x-axis and a y-axis and points could be located on this graph using just two coordinates.
On this graph, let’s draw a circle with its center at the origin with a radius of one.
Now, let’s imagine a line starting at the origin and going through the circle.
We can draw this line at any angle from the x axis.
If it is on the axis it will be 0 degrees.
Regardless of where we draw it, it’s going to intersect the circle at only one place.
That one place will have an x and y coordinate that, by definition, is the value of the cosine and sine functions at that angle.
So, for 0 degrees, the place where the circle intersects the x-axis, cosine will be 1 and sine will be 0.
As the angle increases, the x value decreases and the y value increases until we get to 90 degrees.
This lies on the y axis where cosine is 0 and sine is 1.
As the angle continues to increase, the x and y values continue to change, always between 0 and 1, always on the circle.
And that’s the fundamental theory behind trigonometry, everything else is derived from this.
Now let’s plot these points a bit differently.
On the x axis, let’s plot the angle and on the y axis, let’s plot of value of sine remembering that sine is the y value on our original circle.
At 0 degrees, sine is 0 so we start at the origin.
As the angle increases, sine increases until we get to 90 degrees and reach 1, then it starts decreasing as we move into the second quadrant of the circle.
At 180 degrees sine is back to 0.
As the angle continues to increase, the y coordinate of our circle drops into the negative values in the third quadrant until it reaches -1 at 270 degrees.
Finally in the fourth quadrant, we see y coming back up to 0.
After this, the cycle simple repeats itself as higher angles are duplicates of the previous angles.
Now, doing the same thing with cosine, at 0 degrees, cosine is 1 since it represents the x value on the circle.
As the angle increases, x decreases to 0 at 90 degrees, -1 at 180, back up to 0 at 270 and finally 1 at 360 degrees, the place we started.
These functions are great for describing a lot of things that are periodic in nature, things that fluctuate between two values.
If we multiply the results of sine or cosine we can make these graphs fluctuate by a different amount.
For example, here’s the result of multiplying the sine by 2.
And if we multiply the angle by a value, the frequency of the fluctuation will increase or decrease.
Here’s what it looks like if we multiply the angle by two.
Things can get really wild if we start adding these two curves together.
Or subtracting them.
Or multiplying them.
Or doing anything else really.
Sines and Cosines are the basis for a lot of things in our modern world.
Today we’re going to see how they can be used to send a message to our sweetheart.
Processing is a programming environment that was developed about 15 years ago and designed to teach the basics of programming within a visual context.
Since it was designed with a visual context in mind, it’s great for experimenting with graphics and drawing things.
The Processing.org website has free installers for Windows, Linux and Macs.
Just download the installer and run it.
This gives us a a Processing environment that, once started, we can start writing programs in.
Let's look at a simple program to draw a circle.
We first define the size of our canvas, the color of our background and the color we want to draw in.
Then we’re going to define a variable to scale our circle by and an offset for the x and y coordinates.
These are needed because sine and cosine return values around the cartesian origin but the coordinate system of the Processing screen is based with 0,0 in the upper left corner of the canvas.
Then we’re going to define a loop from 0 to twice PI, going in small increments.
We used twice PI here because in computers cosine and sine typically use what are called radians instead of degrees as their inputs.
This is just fine though because there’s a one to one mapping between degrees and radians where PI is 180 degrees and two PI is 360 degrees.
Inside the loop we set x to the cosine value of the loop variable and y to the sine value of the loop variable.
Then we’re simply going to plot that point, offset and scaled by the previously defined values.
Let's save our work at this point.
When we press the arrow button in the top tool bar, our program runs and we get this nice circle.
Now that we have the basics of creating a circle, how’s this help us with our Valentine Day project?
A web search for “heart drawing formula” leads us to the Wolfram site that has a number of different formulas for drawing a heart shape.
The sixth one in particular lends itself well to the program we have for drawing a circle.
All we have to do is change the assignments to x and y to get something that looks like a heart.
One of the cool things about the Processing environment is it works well for animating things.
If we put the statements before the loop in a function called setup they will get called one time when we run our program.
Then if we put the loop inside a method called draw, it will get continually called over and over again.
But because we’re drawing the same thing over and over, it's not going to be too exciting.
So before running this, let's add a line to change the scaling each time the draw method is called and adjust a control parameter to keep the scale between a couple values.
Finally, move the background call from setup into draw so it happens every time draw is called. This will clear our canvas each time.
Now let’s run this.
Ah, a nice beating heart.
This is cool and all, but it’s hard to show our special someone.
By adding a line to the end of our draw method, we can tell Processing to save our drawing to a file.
Now let's run this for a little bit, stop it and go look at where we saved our program.
We can see a bunch of individual snapshots of each frame of our animation.
In one last step, we can go to Processing’s Tools menu and select Movie Maker.
It gives us a dialog where we can select the directory containing the shots of our animations and press the Create Movie button.
This compiles our individual images into a MOV file that we can e-mail to our intended.
[Music]
If this is your first time here at House of Hacks: Welcome, I’m glad you’re here and would love to have you subscribe.
I believe everyone has a God-given creative spark.
Sometimes this manifests through making things with a mechanical and technical bent.
Through this channel I hope to inspire, educate and encourage these types of makers in their creative endeavors.
Usually this involves various physical media like wood, metal, electronics, photography but sometimes other things, like programming.
If this sounds interesting to you, go ahead and subscribe and I’ll see you again in the next video.
Now, go make something. Perfection’s not required. Fun is!
Histograms can be found in Photoshop for use in post-processing, not only on the back of our cameras when making the exposure. In this final episode of the Histogram series, Harley shows the different places histograms show up and what they represent within the image.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"
by Kevin MacLeod at Incompetech
Sound effect: living-room-light-switch by alienxxx at FreeSound
Transcript
Histograms are an important tool when making an image in-camera. They also have their use during post-processing. In this episode of House of Hacks, I talk about how they work in Adobe’s Photoshop.
Hi Makers, Builders and Photographers. Harley here.
This is one in a series of videos about understanding and using the histogram. The others can be found in this playlist. I also have a playlist of other topics related to photography.
Today, we'll look at histograms in Photoshop. In this application, histograms tell us the same information as they do on the back of the camera but instead of just one histogram, Photoshop has several because of the different ways to view the image.
First off, if the histogram isn't visible, go to the Windows menu and select Histogram or you can click this icon.
By default it shows a little view like this. Click on this option drop down and select "All channels view" to see multiple histograms, one for each channel.
In many images all the channels will be very similar. But in some instances they might be quite different.
The split channels can be useful in situations where one color is predominant in your image. They help you see how adjustments to the image impact each color to help you know when one channel might start clipping, losing detail in the final image.
There's also this combo box that controls what is displayed in the top histogram. Personally, I like to show luminosity.
These histograms show the information for the image with all the adjustment layers applied. It’s the final histogram for the processed image.
As you turn adjustments on and off, you can see the histograms change accordingly.
Histograms also show up in some adjustment layers such as levels and curves.
The histograms that show in adjustments are the histogram for the image as that layer sees it, taking into consideration the original image and any layers below the current layer. This means adjustment layers above and below the current layer may have different histograms than the current layer.
As an example, this levels adjustment layer has a histogram for the original image.
If we make some adjustments and then add a curves adjustment above it, the curves layer shows a histogram based on the changes made by the levels adjustments.
If we make some adjustments on the curves layer, we can see the main histogram shows the results.
Also, if we make adjustments in a particular color channel, we can see how those changes impact that channel in the global histogram view.
If our adjustments are too extreme, we can see in the channel’s histogram that we start to lose details in this particular channel without the typical clipping showing in the main histogram curve.
In conclusion, I’d love to hear in the comments below about your experiences with the histogram, particularly during post-processing.
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 this channel 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 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!
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.
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!
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.
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!
Fluorescent tubes flicker because of their inherent design. LED lights may or may not flicker depending on how well their power supply is designed. How do you measure the amount of flicker? In this episode, we quantify the flicker in the fluorescent tubes and after an LED light conversion.
How to easily convert fluorescent tubes to LEDs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YROz2AekkA
Electronupdate video: Measuring Light Bulb Flicker with Nothing More Than a Cell Phone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qym5-126BDY
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Transcript
After seeing last week's episode about converting fluorescent lights to LEDs, David Terry asked "do they flicker the same way fluorescent tubes do?” I wasn’t sure, so let's measure and find out, today at the House of Hacks.
[Music]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.
Fluorescent tubes are powered by AC current and flicker based on the speed of the power cycles. Here in the United States, our power cycles at 60 hertz. This means the hot lead varies between positive voltage and negative voltage 60 times a second. The tubes don’t really care about positive or negative values, just the absolute value and so will flicker at twice that rate, or 120 times a second.
This is too fast to bother most people, but a non-trivial segment of the population are affected by this and have problems working under fluorescent lights. The flicker can also cause artifacts when shooting video at certain frame rates. And, as the bulbs age, they may not go on and off at every cycle, causing the flicker to slow down and become more noticeable.
To measure the flicker, I've got this simple setup. I have just a solar cell and the oscilloscope. The flicker in the lights will cause the output of the solar cell to oscillate in sync and the scope allows us to see that variation. At 120 times a second, we expect to see each cycle to be around 8 milliseconds so I have the scope set to 10 ms per division.
Now I'm going to connect the scope to the scope to the solar panel. And we’ll see what we have here… and that's exactly what we expect to see; each cycle is about 8 milliseconds.
So now I'll go over into the room other room and check it out with the LEDs.
I still have exactly the same setup as I had before. Let’s connect the scope to the solar panel and see what we get.
Ah, a straight line. So, to answer David’s question: no, there is no flicker with these LEDs. Thanks David for asking the question.
And coincidentally, a couple days ago an electronics channel I subscribe to, electronupdate, uploaded a video showing how you can use a cell phone to detect this flicker. I thought you might find that interesting.
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 this channel 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. If this sounds interesting to you, go ahead and subscribe and I’ll see you again in the next video.
Thanks for joining me on our creative journey. Now, go make something. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just have fun!
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.
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!
