{"id":122,"date":"2007-01-01T20:51:01","date_gmt":"2007-01-02T04:51:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2007\/01\/01\/stupid-dslr-tricks\/"},"modified":"2007-01-14T22:26:06","modified_gmt":"2007-01-15T06:26:06","slug":"stupid-dslr-tricks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2007\/01\/01\/stupid-dslr-tricks\/","title":{"rendered":"Stupid DSLR Tricks"},"content":{"rendered":"

As many of you know, most of my pictures come from a Canon Digital Rebel XT<\/a>. I’m very happy with the 18–50mm f2.8 lens from Sigma<\/a> that I’m using with it.<\/p>\n

As someone who (1) likes taking pictures and (2) is a geek, I’m always on the lookout for novel things to do with my camera. Over the last few days, I have been collecting links. I thought I should share them.<\/p>\n

Pinhole cameras<\/h3>\n

Pinhole cameras<\/a> are about as simple as you can get: film with a small hole allowing light in. But why limit yourself to little boxes and film when you have a perfectly good instant-gratification digital sensor lying around?<\/p>\n

As it turns out, you can make a quite nice pinhole camera with a camera’s body cap<\/a>. Throw in a toilet paper tube or two, and you can have a zoom pinhole<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n

Bellows<\/h3>\n

I’m sure most of you can picture olde-timey cameras with the lens on a set of bellows. Well, they make new ones too: they are view cameras<\/a> and are just the thing if you want full-control over the image you’re taking, and want to record on a large chunk of film for high detail. This may be a good time to note that a set of bellows will do at least as much as tilt-shift lenses<\/a>, including the fake miniatures<\/a> fetured on Boing Boing.<\/p>\n

Once again, why piss around with film if you don’t have to? I’m pretty sure my local London Drugs won’t process a 4×5″ negative anyway. You can buy a set of bellows for a regular SLR<\/a> that does the same job. For US$2500. Then buy an expensive medium-format lens.<\/p>\n

In the lower end of the scale, one can buy a Lensbaby<\/a> for US$150 or $270 (depending on the model). Or, the right kind of person can make a set of bellows<\/a> out of a toilet plunger.<\/p>\n

Panoramas<\/h3>\n

I have experimented with making panoramic images<\/a> before. The idea is to take a series of pictures from one location and stitch them together with software like Hugin<\/a> to stitch them together. The results can be quite impressive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Shooting panoramas of landscapes is easy, but when you get up-close, parallax<\/a> becomes an issue: you have to hold the camera still (over just the right point) while you turn it. A special tripod head is required to do this right. Panoramic heads<\/a> typically run US$400 and up and are probably worth it if you need to do that kind of thing professionally. A KingPANO<\/a> can be had for US$150 and looks like it might be fun to play with.<\/p>\n

Others<\/h3>\n

I have also run across AquaPacs for underwater photography<\/a>. On the other side of panoramas are object panoramas. You can buy an object turntable<\/a> or make one with Legos<\/a> to assist with this.<\/p>\n

I also ran across a couple of general camera-hack sites: DigiHack<\/a> and DIYPhotography<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So…<\/h3>\n

I don’t own any of these things (nor have I made any). I have been thinking about getting a KingPANO for a while, so I might order one of those some time.<\/p>\n

Another trend here is using the camera’s body cap to attach crazy stuff as a “lens”. I might stop by a camera shop and see if they have spare caps (from dead cameras or something).<\/p>\n

Anybody else got cool stuff to add?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As many of you know, most of my pictures come from a Canon Digital Rebel XT. I’m very happy with the 18–50mm f2.8 lens from Sigma that I’m using with it. As someone who (1) likes taking pictures and (2) is a geek, I’m always on the lookout for novel things to do with my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}