posts tagged with the keyword ‘cameras’

2012.11.19

I heard you like cameras…

GoPro Mount

Yo dawg, I heard you like cameras, so I put a camera on your camera so you can take pictures of taking pictures…

Occasionally 3D printing is accused of being useless, or worse, silly. Well this is anything but silly, and it’s certainly not useless.

GoPro Mount

By combining the hot shoe mount I recently printed along with this Female GoProHD Mount we’ve got the camera-on-a-camera thing down like nobody’s business.

GoPro Mount

So yeah, camera on camera action, courtesy of 3D printing. Yeehaw.

But seriously folks, one of the great things about open 3D printing is that combos and mashups are quite common, and since we’ve first jammed a piece of chocolate into a hunk of peanut butter, sometimes things just go better together.

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2012.05.09

Nikon D3200 – Start!

Hey, we got a Nikon D3200 in the studio… how does it work? Just fine. I mean, there hasn’t been a ton of evaluation time with it yet, but I’ll mention one thing.

When we got in a Nikon D3x a few years back the biggest pain point was that we could not open the NEF files without using Nikon’s ViewNX software. (At least not until some software updates.) My workflow is built around using the Adobe Camera RAW converter in Photoshop, so that sort of sucked. Things got solved over time, but right now with the NEF files created by the Nikon D3200, I’m out of my simple NEF -> Photoshop workflow.

DNG 7.1 Converter

The solution for now is to grab the Adobe DNG Converter “Release Candidate” software, which lets you convert NEF files to DNG files so you can open as RAW in Photoshop. (And yeah, I’m still running Photoshop CS 5, btw.)

The version I got says “7.1.0.342 beta” and when you launch it you see that it will expire in June. (We assume a new release, or worse-case a new beta, will be out by then.)

DNG Expires

The Camera Raw plugin you see listed on that page? It didn’t work for me. In fact, before I could install it I had to install the Adobe Application Manager, and then it told me it couldn’t install again. I dug through the install files, and while I did find support files for the Nikon D800 (which we’ll get in soon… I hope!) there are no files for the Nikon D3200.

DNG UI

So for now I’ll just stick with converting NEF files to DNG files, and then opening those in Photoshop. It’s another step, and it’s a PITA, but it could be worse. And while Nikon’s new ViewNX2 is a big improvement to the crash-worthy ViewNX, I still don’t care for it as part of my preferred workflow.

So here’s hoping Adobe gets that RAW plugin updated soon, and that it’ll work with Photoshop CS 5.

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2012.02.16

Cameras I’ve Owned

Cameras

My daughter interviewed me for a school project, and we talked a lot about cameras… specifically, the cameras I’ve used and owned. So here’s a quick visual guide to the cameras I’ve owned.

Kodak Disc Camera, Olympus D150, Nokia 7610, Nikon Coolpix L4, Nokia N75, Nikon D40, Apple iPhone 3G, Apple iPhone 4S.

I’m sure there were a few others along the way, but this is what I could remember, or dig up through EXIF data. And yeah, the fact that 4 of them are phones does seem weird, or maybe not weird enough nowadays. When I had the two different Nokias, those were actually my primary cameras at the time. The camera in the iPhone 4S is pretty darn good, but yeah, I’m still rockin’ the D40 after 3 years, and it’s still working well, though I’m eyeing up some other Nikons as I’m contemplating the DSLR video stuff. And hey, how about that Kodak Disc Camera? Crazy stuff, with those silly discs instead of rolls of film. (And I mean discs of film, not discs of data.)

I think I’d like to create another image with all the cameras I’ve used at work added in, because that should be a pretty extensive list of gear…

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2011.12.06

The iPhone 4S Camera

I’ve been meaning to do some iPhone 4S camera tests for a while now, and rather than wait and wait while I come up with a scientific method, I thought I’d just do a few shots and post them here. Early and Often, right?

Each photos links to the Flickr version you can view it at various sizes. None of the photos have been retouched at all.

iPhone Test 01
Normal iPhone 4S photo with direct light.

iPhone Test 01 (HDR)
HDR iPhone 4S photo with direct light.

iPhone Test 02
Normal iPhone 4S photo with soft light.

iPhone Test 02 (HDR)
HDR iPhone 4S photo with soft light.

For each shot the iPhone was on a tripod, and an overheard light consisting of a single bulb was used. (It’s a large high wattage bulb from an old photostat machine.) For the soft light shots, I put an umbrella in front of the light. I used Apple’s default Camera app that comes on the iPhone. All were shot on the white sweep I use for all my tabletop stuff. (If you’ve seen my Flickr stream, you’ve seen plenty of shots on that sweep.)

iPhone Tripod Mount
Experimental iPhone Tripod Mount

This photo of my “Experimental iPhone Tripod Mount” was taken (handheld) with my Nikon D40. If you wanted to compare the two, the iPhone 4S is supposedly an 8 Megapixel camera, while the Nikon is a 6 Megapixel camera. Size isn’t everything of course. Well, the Nikon does have a bigger lens, so that helps quite a bit. The Nikon also shoots in RAW, and yes, this shot has been edited quite a bit, but hey, that’s what I do with RAW photos. (And I mainly took this shot to show the set-up I used.)

When I get ambitious again, I’ll set up two tripods, one with the iPhone, and one with the Nikon, and do duplicate shots of various objects. Until then, enjoy these… I’m off to work on my Experimental iPhone Tripod Mount Version 2.0

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2011.07.06

A DSLR you can bank on!

DSLR Bank

From our pals at Photojojo comes this awesome DSLR Bank. And why is it awesome? Well, first of all, it looks like a real DSLR camera. In fact, it looks so real, you could use it as a prop, and that’s cool. Heck, maybe someone will get one of these and mount a real camera inside of it! (Personally, I’m waiting for the Nikon version.) Oh, and it’s also amusing that you’d hide your money in something that (if it were real) would probably cost 500 times the amount of money you have hidden in the thing. I mean, if I were a thief, I’d grab a DSLR because they’re expensive, and then HA! the joke is on them because they’re only getting $8 in change instead of a nice camera they can sell for some quick cash.

Nikon D40 + Vivitar 285

By the way, for comparison, here’s a photo of a real camera… or is it!?!?

P.S. Photojojo is hiring! If you love photography, it looks like an awesome place to make awesome things happen.

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