How to photograph splashes every time!

Description

Interested in photographing splashing water? In this episode, we'll see how to take splash photography and capture the image every time. As demonstrated by Peter McKinnon, capturing high-speed events can be achieved by repeatedly doing the action and using your camera's burst mode. This doesn't take much equipment but does take quite a bit of time. Today, Harley shows how a little bit of inexpensive equipment can enable getting the splash every time, allowing you to fine tune the image to get it perfect.

Resources

Peter McKinnon’s video: https://youtu.be/1t3iTjAe2Fw
Hiviz: https://hiviz.com/kits/kits.htm
Neewer flash triggers: https://amzn.to/38wv1nk (affiliate link)

About

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 photograph splashes every time!

Here's a list of the tools I use.

Clock video by Jason H Austin from Pexels.

Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 4.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"

Transcript

Want to learn how to take splash photos?

Is an hour for one image to long for you?

Want to get this image...
every...
single...
time?

Stick around and I'll show you how!

\Welcome to the House of Hacks!
If we're just meeting, I'm Harley.
I make stuff and I show you how to make stuff too.

I love Peter McKinnon's work. He's both inspirational and informational in the photography related videos that he makes.

Recently he did a video regarding splash photography where he made some really cool product portraits. The way he did this was to just take a whole lot of images and hope one of them turned out in drive mode. This is kind of a spray-and-pray method if you will.

The advantage to this is it's very inexpensive. Beyond the basic photography
equipment that you probably already have, there's nothing new required.

The disadvantage is it's very time intensive. I think he said it took him an hour to
get one good usable image. Well, if it's taking you an hour to get an image, if
you're trying to dial in on a specific look, it might give you quite a while and
a lot of patience. Or you might settle for something that's not exactly what
you're looking for.

I'm going to show a high speed photography setup that I use to get very repeatable results when dropping things into a water tank. Every time you drop something it's going to show up in the same place in the frame every time.

The equipment that I have is pretty old and it's no longer available but I've left links in the description below for equivalent systems that are available now. The total cost for this is less than $100. So while it is a little bit of investment, it's not very burdensome.

Today I'm going to cover two topics: 1) the equipment and how to set it up and 2) how to set your exposure to get the right images.

To do these splash images, there's really three things that are required: a photo gate which is a light based trigger so when something interrupts a light beam this sends out a trigger signal, and then there's a delay unit because you don't want the flash to go off when the beam is interrupted but rather when the object has had time to drop down into
frame where you want it, so you need a delay that's measured in like milliseconds.

A number of years ago I found these HiViz kits online and when I got mine they were just getting developed and were pretty rough. I got one and it was basically just some components and a schematic. I wired that together on a little point-to-point circuit board and put them in these cases so they're nice and neat and easy to use.

Since that time they've really refined their kits quite a bit and now you get a
whole assembly where you can assemble the kit and put it inside the control
panel that comes with it and the box that comes with it so you get a complete
package.

And then you need a way to trigger the flashes. I'm using a wireless system by
Cactus. These aren't made anymore but there's a new model by Neewer that
looks like it does pretty much the same thing. You don't need all the fancy TTL
stuff that drives up the price on these. You just need a simple on/off switch
because we're going to be running these in manual mode.

You could also, instead of using a wireless system, get one of those little devices that goes on the hot shoe that has a remote trigger input on it. That would work just as well.

First of all, the light beam needs to be set up across the opening of the tank so when
something falls in, it interrupts the beam and sends off the trigger.

The kit came with an infrared LED laser but I found that to be very hard to use
because being infrared it's invisible and trying to get it lined up this
distance so that it could trigger things was very very difficult. I found that a
normal red LED laser works just as well and is much easier to set up since you
can see it. I've got the laser on one side and I've got the sensor on the
other and that's going into the photo gate controller.

The wireless trigger just slides on to the bottom of the flash and now whenever the trigger is put off the flash goes off.

We could take the output from the photo gate and plug it directly into the transmitter for the wireless unit. The problem with this is we'd get an image when the object immediately hit the laser beam and not when it actually got into frame so we'd never see anything.

To solve this problem we use a delay unit that will delay the trigger signal by a
couple milliseconds that it takes to fall from the laser beam to where we
want it in frame and then the output from that delay unit then goes into the
transmitter for the wireless system.

Putting this all together, this is the equipment setup. We've got the LED going to the sensor for the photo gate. It's wired into its control module. The control module for the photo gate's output is wired to the input of the delay unit and the output of the delay unit is wired to the wireless trigger for the flashes.

So now whenever the light beam is interrupted the flashes go off.

Now for the exposure part of the setup.

To freeze action, a high shutter speed is required. And to get high shutter speed, a
lot of light is required. Peter used a combination of a nice light and high ISO.
On modern cameras, a high ISO isn't usually a problem. But without expensive
lighting, getting enough light on the object can be a problem.

An alternative is to use flashes. Speed lights work well for this. An interesting fact about speed lights is the lower the power, the faster the flash. This isn't necessarily
true about standard studio lights. With both studio lights and speed lights on
high power, typically the flash is long enough that motion will blur on you.

An interesting point when using flash is shutter speed isn't very relevant. Most,
if not all of the exposure, is from the flash, not ambient light. So if ambient light is low enough, shutter speed can actually be quite long.


Putting all these facts together, using a low power on the flash, combined with low
ambient light, and also combined with shutter speed in the order of seconds, we
have enough time to be able to trigger the camera and then drop the object. As
long as the shutter speed is long enough for us to do that operation, we're good.

So I have my camera set to two seconds for the shutter speed, f/10 to get a decent depth of field and ISO 200. The flashes are set to 1/16 power.

Once the equipment is set up then we're ready to dial things in. The photo gate
has a sensitivity setting that I find mid-range works best. If it's too
sensitive, random things in the air will cause it to trigger. We want it to be
reliable though when the objects that we're dropping really do pass through
its path.

Then there's the time delay that we need to set. My unit will work in
seconds, milliseconds or microseconds time ranges. I find that for dropping
objects in a set up like this, milliseconds works best. The range that
you'll use will depend on how far the trigger is from where you want it in
frame and how fast the object is moving. We'll dial this in through a series of images with kind of trial and error once we start making photos.

So let's start making them.

When I set up for this shot, the first image captured the item just before it hit the water.

I adjusted the lighting and tried again.

The lighting was better and the item was exactly the same place.

See how repeatable this is?

I then adjusted the delay in one direction and tried again.

This time the flash went off before the item was even in the frame.

I dialed the time the opposite direction and tried again.

This time it was exactly what I wanted.

As we can see from these subsequent images, once it's dialed in, the object will be at the same place in the frame every time.

These images are all sequential. They're not cherry picked from a bunch of different ones.

It's important when dropping things that they're dropped from the same height every time. But things of different weights can be dropped each time without changing the height. You will get a bigger splash though.

As you've seen, every time I drop something, the item is in the same spot in the image.

Over here is a playlist of other photography related videos and down here is a video that YouTube thinks you'll enjoy.

Remember when making things, perfection's not required, fun is!

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]

Movable wall mounted boom arm (redesign)

Description

Need to wall-mount a boom arm? In this episode, Harley looks at a movable wall-mounted boom arm redesign. An overhead adjustable boom arm is a useful piece of photography studio equipment. Previously he showed a design for wall mounting a boom arm that didn't work so well. Today he will present a better design. Overhead boom arms can support many things in a photography studio: hair lights, soft boxes, overhead remote-controlled cameras and many other things. The Impact 7' wall-mounted boom arm has simple holes in it to mount directly to the wall. Harley shows how to mount it to a bracket that can be positioned in many places in the studio.

Horizontal toggle clamps used: http://amzn.to/2GIl2h8 (Affiliate link)
Heavy duty horizontal toggle clamps: http://amzn.to/2EdXX7K (Affiliate link)

Unboxing of the boom arm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-c8o-rsZ5I&index=1&list=PLWmDBD9Srrwl_aVNC0VjXj3uigC0-FxLo&t=1s
Video of the first design for the mounting bracket: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgWHtRdMG4M&index=2&list=PLWmDBD9Srrwl_aVNC0VjXj3uigC0-FxLo

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.

Multiplying binary numbers
Bits of Binary playlist

There's a playlist containing videos talking about the House of Hacks' values.

And here’s the most recent video.

For a written transcript, go to Movable wall mounted boom arm (redesign)

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

• Clipper
• Cool Blast
• Iron Bacon
• What You Want ver 2

Transcript

Today we're going to look at the failure of this moveable wall mounted boom arm bracket and look at the failure reasons and come up with a new design. Hopefully, one that works.

[Introduction]

Hi! Harley here.

If you're new and are interested in making things out of wood, metal, electronics and other similar types of materials, hit the subscribe button and then hit the bell notification and YouTube will let you know next time there's something released here at the House of Hacks.

You know, sometimes you have a great idea, but the execution of it just doesn't work quite right.

Well, that's what happened last summer. I made a video up here about making a moveable wall-mounted bracket for this Impact 7' boom arm that's used in a photography studio.

And the idea was we'd have a piece of metal that's mounted to the wall and this bracket could be mounted anywhere along that metal to provide adjustability for where the long arm boom arm is mounted.

The idea was there'd be a couple pins here that drop in to holes in the metal and there's a cam activated lock here that keeps it from shifting around while it's being used.

There were a couple problems with this design.

First, of all, the pins that were epoxied in place in here didn't have enough depth to them, into the wood, and so they fell out fairly easily.

The second problem is this cam lock is asymmetrical in the way that it was providing support.

The boom arm can swing to give you adjustability on your position of whatever you have mounted to it. And if you swung one way, this worked fine. But if you swung it the other way, the whole mounting bracket would have a tendency to tilt because it didn't have support on both sides.

So, in this redesign, I'm going to address both these issues.

OK. The new game plan is to replace the pins that fell out with some bolts that will go through the wood all the way. The bolts are longer than this wood and so the bottom of the bolt will drop into the holes in the perforated tubing that's going to be on the wall to hold it in place.

To hold the bolt in the wood, I've got some T-nuts that will just go in like so, so it'll be flush on the bottom where it mounts against the wood, or against the metal and it'll just be held in like so.

To lock it in place, I've got some toggle clamps. These are inexpensive. I picked them up on Amazon, a four pack for less than $9. I was really surprised that I could get some this inexpensively. And I'll leave a link to it down in the description in case you're interested in something like this.

They're rated at 100 pounds each. I'll have two, one on each side. So that should be able to hold it in without any problem. I'll cut a couple pieces of wood, this size, to mount on each side here to mount this to and I'll set the spacing such that when they're open, there's enough room to drop it into place and when it's closed, it will lock up tight against the metal on the wall.

So, let's start putting this all together.

[Project work]

OK. After I got the bolts in and tried test fitting it in the holes, the clearances were just such that there was a little bit more interference than I would have liked. And so I took the bolts off and put them on the lathe and just filed off the ends of the bolts.

(You can probably see it a little bit better with the contrast.)

So the part of the bolt that sticks out of the T-nut is filed off but the threads that thread into the T-nut are still there. So it will still go in just fine this way and, as this gets bottomed out and tightened up, we can see there's just enough extra room for those to fit in there just fine.

So now I'll go put this back on the mounting bracket and figure out where the toggle clamps go.

[Project work]

So, I mounted the clamp on the wood such that the fixed part of the clamp is fairly flush with the end of the wood. There's some adjustability in here so I wasn't looking for exact precision, just kind of got in the ballpark.

And the bolts that are coming out of the T-nuts, extending beyond, is less than the total throw of this bolt on the latch. So, the difference between the closed position and the opened position is a certain measurement. And that measurement is greater than the length of the bolts that are extending out the bottom of the T-nuts. So, in theory, I should be able to set one of these clamps in the locked position and put it right up here against the perforated pipe and mark the block's position here on the mounting bracket. And when this is mounted in, when it's closed, it should be locked and when it unlocks there should be enough movement to be able to pull the bracket up off the perforated pipes. That's the theory. We'll put it together and hopefully everything works out.

[Project work]

OK. I'm much more pleased with the way this works. It's much more sturdy. It seems much more secure. I think it's going to work much better.

As you may have noticed, I was making some adjustments to this. The way this works is there's a barrel that moves in and out in this bushing and in the end of the barrel, there's a screw that has a rubber tip on it and a lock nut, so you can adjust the length of the screw that's coming out of it with the rubber bumper on it and then you can lock it in place with the lock nut. And that's what I was doing with the pliers, was just kind of getting that tightened down and adjusting that. So now when you lock it in place, there's just a little bit of resistance before it locks in and so it holds it pretty secure. And I did that on both sides.

Like I said, these are rated on the web site at, I think, 99 pounds of force that they should take. So, both of them combined is 200 pounds and that should be plenty sufficient, I think, even with the leverage that this will have when you put a light on it.

But we won't know until we really get it in place in the studio. So, let's head over to the studio and see how it works in real life.

[Driving]

OK. That looks like it's going to work pretty well. It's a whole lot more sturdy than it was before particularly when it's out on the outer edges which is really where we had the problem last time. Like I said last time, it would have a tendency to torque this base sideways when it was out at the far angles and not having any problems like that now. It's really, really good and solid.

So, I think this is going to work. We'll now put it in practice here in the studio and let people use it and see how it works in the real world. Hopefully this will be the last time I have to address this issue.

Thanks for joining me on this creative journey that we're all on.

Until next time, go make something.

Perfection's not required.

Fun is!

How to photograph a burning light bulb filament

Description

Need abstract photography ideas? Light bulb without glass? In this tutorial, Harley shows how to photograph a burning light bulb filament. A burning light bulb filament creates a dramatic abstract image. This video covers how to setup the photo how to prepare the light bulb without breaking the filament, how to configure the camera, how to take the shot and how to do the post processing. Inspiration of this photo came from an article on the DIYPhotography.net web site.

Time codes for this video:

• What’s needed for the shot: 2:06
• How to setup the shot: 4:27
• How to prepare the bulb: 5:09
• How to setup the camera: 5:59
• How to take the shot: 6:43
• How to do the post processing: 7:40

Resources:
Bulbs used in this video (Affiliate link)
Exposure and the Histogram explanation video
Original inspiration at DIYPhotography.net
Rich’s post that hit the front page of digg.com
Engineer guy has a great video about making incandescent bulb filaments
The Action Lab shows what happens when you put a broken bulb in a simple vacuum
Wikipedia a history of the incandescent bulb

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.

There's a playlist containing videos talking about the House of Hacks' values.

And here’s the most recent video.

For a written transcript, go to How to photograph a burning light bulb filament

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

Transcript

Are you interested in making some abstract photos of lightbulbs burning up?

Today at the House of Hacks, we’re going to look at creating these types of photos.

[Intro]

Hi Makers, Builders and Photographers. Harley here.

Today I’m going to revisit making a photo my buddy Rich and I first did just over 10 years ago.

In February of 2007, I ran across this idea in an article on DIYPhotography.net and knew I wanted to try it.

I had some spare parts in the basement, threw them together and called Rich.

He came over and we made some pretty cool images that ended up on the front page of Digg.

Today I’m going to show:

• What’s needed for the shot
• How to setup the shot
• How to prepare the bulb
• How to setup the camera
• How to take the shot and
• How to do the post processing

I’ll leave links in the description to each of these areas if you want to skip directly to one section.

And you’ll want to hang around to the end to see some images from this session as well as some slow motion video of the burning bulb.

If you want to learn and be inspired to make things out of items such as wood, metal, electronics and photos, subscribe to the House of Hacks channel and ring the bell to get notified of more free videos in the future.

Before we get into the details of the shot, let’s talk a minute about two things that are happening.

First, fire needs heat, fuel and oxygen to burn.

incandescent light bulbs work by running power through a small wire, causing the metal to glow white hot.

To keep the wire from burning up, light bulbs' glass bulbs keep the oxygen from the hot wire.

If oxygen gets to it, the wire will quickly burn up.

We’re going to remove the bulb to allow oxygen to get to the wire and capture the briefly burning wire.

Second, the exposure.

When dealing with things that use bright flashes, whether it’s studio or strobe lights for photography, or in this case, burning light bulbs, there are two exposures involved.

There’s the exposure caused by the flash of light and the exposure of the area we’re in, called the ambient exposure.

If there’s enough difference between these two, the ambient exposure can be ignored because it’s not providing any light to the image.

This can be used to our advantage, both in the studio and in these shots today, so we don’t have to work in the dark.

With those explanatory details out of the way, the items needed for this shot are

An area without much light.

We’re going to be using an exposure that needs a fair amount of light so an area that isn’t too bright allows us to work without the need for pitch dark.

A room lit just with lamps at night or an interior room without windows work well.

A light base.

This could be a table lamp with the harp removed

or I took an inexpensive bare bulb holder that you can get at a home improvement store and screwed it to a piece of scrap wood.

Then you need a way to plug the light base in.

If you’re using a pre-made lamp, it will already have a plug attached.

Since I was using a light holder, I took a piece of romex and wired it between the lamp holder and a switch.

Then I took the plug end of an extension cord and wired it to the switch.

A plug strip with an on/off switch or an extension cord.

You need to plug and unplug the lamp between each shot, so having an outlet near the setup makes things much easier.

And you need to turn the lamp on while pressing the shutter, so having a switch somewhere makes things much easier.

Several plastic bags.

They need to be on the larger size, so not sandwich sized lunch bags.

Plastic grocery bags work well.

They will contain broken glass, so make sure it has no holes.

A way to break a light bulb.

Slip joint pliers work best for this as they’re adjustable and have long handles.

Large Vise-grips also work.

In a pinch, a hammer may be used, but it’s not as ideal as it’s easier to break the bulb’s filament and ruin the bulb.

Gloves and safety glasses.

You’ll be breaking glass, so personal protection for your hands and eyes is a good thing.

Bulbs. You want to be sure to get incandescent bulbs with filaments in them. LEDs and fluorescents will not work.

Get the cheapest ones you can find. You’re going to be destroying them, so you don’t want to invest a lot of money in them.

As far as wattage is concerned, there are two things to think about.

Lower wattages burn faster giving a more dramatic image whereas higher wattages burn slower giving you more images per bulb and a greater chance of getting a good image.

So it’s sort of a trade off.

If you have a camera with a slower frames per second in drive mode, a higher wattage might be better.

If you camera has a higher frames per second in drive mode a lower wattage might give a more dramatic image.

Or you could get some of both and experiment. I’ll leave a link to Amazon for some we used in this session.

A camera that can be set to manual exposure and has a shutter release drive mode.

A tripod. The camera needs to be on a sturdy setup.

Optional: a trigger release for the camera.

To setup the shot, you want to prepare the light bulb holder.

A table lamp with it’s shade and harp removed is one option.

As I showed earlier, I put a light socket on a piece of wood and wired it to a switch and plug.

In a room that doesn’t have much light, place the lamp on a table at working height.

Run an extension cord to be near the setup and plug the power strip into it.

Plug the lamp into the power strip and put a normal light bulb in the lamp.

Turn on the switch to make sure the light works and everything is ready to go.

Turn off the power switch and unplug the lamp.

Setup the camera on the tripod so the base of the light bulb is at the bottom of the frame and there’s enough space above the bulb to capture the flame and smoke.

Vertical orientation works best with the top of the bulb just below the half way point of the frame.

And now remove the light bulb.

To prepare the light bulbs put on the gloves and safety glasses.

You’ll need the plastic bag and pliers for this operation.

Adjust the pliers so when the jaws are closed, they are just a bit smaller than the base of the light bulb.

We want them smaller than the outside of the bulb but larger than the glass support with the wires running through it on the inside of the light.

Put a light bulb between the jaws of the pliers.

Wrap the plastic bag around the bulb and pliers and squeeze the pliers closed.

The bulb should shatter inside the plastic bag without breaking the filament.

Carefully remove the pliers and light bulb remains from the bag.

Take care not to break the filament or spill the broken glass.

Alternatively you can put the bulb in the plastic bag and strike it with a hammer, but this takes much more finesse.

The goal is to break the outside glass without breaking the internal structures of the bulb.

It’s more efficient to break a number of bulbs all at once.

Now we’re ready to configure the camera.

Put it in manual mode.

The exposure settings I used as a starting point were f/4 at 1/640th of a second and ISO 100.

Start with this and adjust as desired.

Then set the shutter release to Drive mode.

This will allow us to take multiple shots in rapid fire succession.

If you’re using a shutter release, configure your camera to use it.

Make sure the power switch is off and the lamp is unplugged.

Put one of the broken light bulbs in the lamp.

You don’t need to screw it in tight, just enough to make electrical contact.

And be careful not to cut yourself. Using the gloves might be a good idea.

Focus on the filament either using auto or manual focus.

Once you have focus, make sure the camera is in manual focus mode.

We don’t want the camera hunting for focus when we actually take the shot.

Now we’re ready to make the images.

Double check that the power switch is off.

Plug in the lamp.

Simultaneously press and hold the shutter release button and flip the power switch to on.

The light will briefly burst into flames and then burn out.

This will take about a second to a second and a half.

Let go of the shutter release button and turn the power switch off.

Unplug the lamp.

And review your photo and make any exposure adjustments as desired.

The histogram is a good way of evaluating exposure.

I have a video explaining exposure and the histogram up here as well as a number of other histogram related videos in the playlist.

To reset for the next shot, verify the power switch is turned off and the lamp unplugged.

Carefully remove the burned out filament from the lamp and use one of the plastic bags for waste.

Put in another prepared bulb.

Double check the power switch is off.

Plug in the lamp.

And make another image.

After you’ve done this to your heart’s content or you’ve run out of light bulbs, you’re ready to process the photos.

Let’s go to the computer and see what we can do.

I’ve copied the photos off my card into my computer and am now looking at them in Bridge.

As you can see, there are quite a few black ones. These are the images where we’re just getting the ambient exposure.

There are two cameras and two types of bulbs here.

These exposures are with my slower 5D and a quick burning 25 watt bulb. You can see I only got one or two shots per bulb.

These exposures are with my faster 77D and a slower burning 70 watt bulb. Here you see I usually got several more shots per bulb.

I’ll quickly go through and mark the images that are not black so we can look at just the ones that have some interest to them.

Now I’ll look at each image and decide which ones I find most interesting and want to process.

These I pull into Photoshop to do final post processing.

I shoot in RAW which is typically a tad bit soft. So the first thing I do is add a sharpening layer.

There are a number of ways to sharpen an image.

Personally I use a high-pass layer. I feel it gives me more control over the process.

Leave a comment below if you would be interested in a video detailing how to do this.

Next I add a layer to adjust the contrast. I like using a Curves adjustment layer for this.

The brightest portion of the image is already slightly blown out and we don’t want to blow it out any more, so we won’t change the top right corner.

But the smoke part is in this mid-range area so I’ll pull that up a bit to make it a bit more obvious.

Finally, I want the blacks to be darker to increase contrast and so will pull this lower part down.

Next I add a layer to increase saturation. I use a HSL adjustment layer for this and just bump up the global saturation a bit.

Those are my standard adjustments. You can either leave it as is if you’re happy with it or start adding additional effects.

One thing that can be done is add some color to the smoke.

One way is to add a color layer and change the blending mode to only color the white areas.

Then a layer mask can be used to only color the smoke area.

Another thing that can be done is change the flame color.

Add another HSL layer and move the hue slider. It will change the flame, that is typically in the reds and oranges to other colors.

Or you can combine these effects or do your own.

If you make some images like these, please share links to where I and others can see them in the comment section below.

I’d love to see what you come up with.

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 you in your creative endeavors.

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

If this sounds interesting, 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!

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

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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!