RasterWeb!
Despite what appears to be confusion in this photo, I really do know how to assemble and operate a RED ONE camera… Really. You need something shot? Let me know. I mean, it’s not like you’re going to shoot it on your Scarlet. Of course, if you’ve got an EPIC, we’d make a great second unit.
Photo by Mike Krukowski (Thanks Mike!) Processing by me and Photoshop CS5.
Did you see this Wooden Camera Gift Set over at Photojojo? It’s pretty damn cute. I mean, a wooden camera…. who would come up with that!?
But wait… I present to you… a Wooden Camera!
This isn’t a “Wooden Camera Gift Set” but it is a “Wooden Camera Gift” because this is the present that my kids gave me for my birthday back in June.
I’m pretty sure they never saw the “Wooden Camera Gift Set” mentioned since: 1. Photojojo mentioned it in October, and 2. They don’t subscribe to the newsletter. Why do they not subscribe? Heck if I know!
This camera is black, which means it’s a “professional camera” and it shows a photo of me from my younger days (possibly taken by senator dingdong) which depicts me shoving something into my face. Probably birthday cake. Also, mine came with a case, which is also black, which means it’s a “professional case” obviously.
Whenever my kids ask what I want for my birthday, I usually respond “Whatever, you don’t have to buy me anything, just make me something!” so I’m glad that they finally did make me something… and, they also made me proud. :)
(consider it cc:by)
This camera is a color camera… not only does it shoot in color, it is full of colors. It’s bursting with colors! I was slightly inspired by RED who makes cameras that are typically black in color, but shoot in RAW mode for the best possible capture of color. Every now and then I use a RED ONE camera. (In fact, there’s one behind me right now…) Enjoy your color camera!
I give you… Time Lapse Bot 2!
This is an upgrade for the original Time Lapse Bot, although we lose a few things, we gain some others… specifically, better mobility and a lighter weight Time Lapse Bot.
We’ll be testing this guy out at BarCampMadison…
Update: See the result: BarCampMadison: Time Lapse Video
We’ve got a Sony PD-150 video camera which uses these “InfoLithium” batteries, and over the years, these batteries have given us a hard time, but no more… (We hope!)
See, when these batteries go “bad” they tell the camera not to work. When you power it on, there’s an error message: “For Infolithium Battery Only” which is the camera telling you it doesn’t like the battery. It should be noted that we’ve had the camera for about 9 years, and we’ve used third party batteries for years without issues, but hey, Sony is Sony, you know how they are.
Turns out the battery has a processor it in, and when things are not quite right, it tells the camera, and you get the error message. Don’t worry, the battery is not dead, it’s just very sick. :)
We got this error with one of our batteries, and since we still had one good one, I tossed the bad one in a drawer and forgot about it for about 9 months. Then our good one did the same thing, so I decided to pull out the bad one and give it one more try. Amazingly enough, it worked! Seems that since it was sitting dormant for so long, it must have lost enough charge to reset itself, and it was back to normal. (So now the bad one was the good one, and the good one was the bad one…. you follow?)
So the fix is to let your battery sit in a drawer unused for 9 months.
Or… I guess you could manually discharge it.
I’ll provide the warning that if the phrase “manually discharge” scares you, you might not want to do what is described below. (If you’re careful, it’s really not that dangerous, but people love disclaimers.)
I initially did some searching, and came across this page on Infolithium Batteries which held the secret. The whole page is worth a good read.
With knowledge in hand, er, in head, I stopped by Radio Shack and picked up a two-pack of 10 ohm/10 watt resistors. (Cost was about $2.00)
Photo by Mike Krukowski.
The idea is to short the battery with a resistor (do not try it without the resistor!) so that the battery can drain its charge and reset the processor. This took quite a while for the battery I had, and when you read that part about the resistor getting very hot I hope you were paying attention. It actually started to melt the MiniDV cassette case I had it sitting on. It’ll definitely burn skin. Put it on a safe surface that can take the heat!
I was warned by local robotics enthusiast Royce Pipkins that I should perhaps not let the battery drain all the way, as that might render it useless. So at this point I was letting it drain and checking the voltage every now and then. Here’s where I screwed up and left it on too long, and I thought it drained completely. (I assumed the voltage would continually get lower and lower, but I don’t think that happened.) Luckily, even with the battery completely drained, I was able to charge it and the camera recognized it, so I guess it worked!
Anyway, even though the Infolithium Batteries page has been around for years and years, I figured I’d add my 2 cents about the issue, since, you know… that’s what the Internet is for.
Enjoy your (like) new battery!
