The finished product…
Details to follow… including footage, and build instructions…
Categories
Tag: cameras
Categories
Time Lapse Bot
Behold… Time Lapse Bot!
No, this is not a wikibot… it’s the Time Lapse Bot, built out of old, recycled material, it is capable of doing time lapse captures using a sophisticated Apple iMac Computer, with an XLR8 InterView USB Video Capture Device connected to an old JVC Video Camera sitting on an old chair base which allows it to easily wheel around (within the length of the power cord.)
I actually spent $0 putting this all together, if you don’t count the fact that I paid about $499 for the video camera 10+ years ago, and $99 for the InterView back in 2005. Pretty much everything else was somehow attained for close to nothing. I could add wifi to this thing if I had a USB hub lying around, which might make it just little bit more neat-o, but hey, It’s a work in progress…
I’ve been testing it a bit this weekend, but the real test will come at BarCampMilwaukee4.
Categories
Canon Mini-DV Camera & Firewire Bug
I spent way more time than I should have trying to figure out why my Canon ZR800 wasn’t being seen by my Mac. I tested the Firewire cable, I rebooted, I re-installed QuickTime. The Sony PD150 worked fine, but the Canon was a no-show.
Finally I dug up this Camcorder HQ post by Doug Van Doren
Actually, there’s one HUGE caveat with that: the new Canon ZR’s 800-850 will NOT work with a Mac that has another FireWire device plugged into it. If you have an external hard drive, your iPod or anything plugged into one of the other FireWire ports on the computer and then you plug in a Canon ZR800 series camcorder and launch iMovie or FCP or FCE, it will crash and freeze the Mac OS.
This is a huge bug I recently discovered when I bought a new Canon ZR-800 and ended up crashing all three of my Macs (I tried it on them all just to make sure).
It was a nightmare. Here’s the technical article from Apple:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61603
It does not mention the ZR800’s specifically, but trust me, it applies to them as well.
If there’s nothing else plugged into the other FireWire ports, it works fine. The only trouble with that is that most people like to use an external firewire drive to put their digitized footage on. This is a big problem if that’s what you’re trying to do.
Luckily I did not experience any real crashes, just the fact that iMovie and Final Cut sort of ‘stuck’ while the camera was turned on, and then resumed when turned off. The System Profiler also failed to show any Firewire device when the camera was on. Everything is fine when no other Firewire devices are connected, so there is a workaround… Still, it’s an annoying bug I hope can be fixed in the future.
Categories
BarCampMilwaukee JerryCam
Here’s my first video: BarCampMilwaukee: Time Lapse. Actually it was a collaboration with Jerry, who set up a webcam while he was there…
Thanks Jerry! Hope the drive back to Iowa wasn’t too rough…
Categories
Olympus Rides Again!
There have been no photos posted recently. This is due to the death of our digital camera. Countertop. Children. Floor. You can put the pieces together…
So we never quite got around to replacing it, I mean, isn’t the cost of technology supposed to go down? It never seems to, you just get more for the same price. A good Mac will always cost around $2000. Six years ago that got you a 233 mhz PowerMac G3 with 64 MB of RAM, and today you still pay $2000 but now you get a Dual 1.8 ghz PowerMac G5 with 256 MB of RAM. Six years from now you’ll get a 20 ghz PowerMac G8 with 2 terabytes of RAM, and you’ll pay about $2000… (Ok, the numbers might be off, but you get the idea…)
Anyway, I was secretly hoping the upcoming holiday season would help out with this problem, when a friend of mine gave me an old Olympus camera to use. I mean, how often does someone give you a $1000+ camera? Well, when it’s 6 years old! ;) (I should add a sidenote that this friend is the same one that I got my old Wallstreet PowerBook from, and it too was state-of-the-art in 1998. Thanks Friend!)
I’m not complaining, I’m quite thankful actually! It uses SmartMedia cards (of which I have about 5 or 6 now, some from the old Olympus, some from the Rio 500.) It’s a huge camera! It’s not gonna fit in your pocket unless you are a kangaroo. No matter, I can again take pictures! Of course with the 8 MB card it seems to hold only 4 images in “Super High Quality” mode. I’m hoping it can use the 64 mb card I have…
The test images seemed a little soft… Hey, just think of the Dischord inspired photos I can take now – Flickr here I come!