Bam-zine

Back up and running

Guess who forgot to pay the bills…

IMG_7304

IMG_7304, originally uploaded by Bambi_72.

Not posted any nice pics recently

PC vs H2O

Started on version 2 of my camera controller, I suppressed the geek for a while but you can’t hold it back for long.

I have built a ‘working’ visual basic app that can send data (settings) to an arduino board and have the board send back modified data (settings) to the application. So no more fiddling about with up and down value settings via a cool, but not easy menu system, just a nice easy windows application.

I am going to future proof myself and have lots and lots of outputs for solenoids, cameras (stereoscopic images) and flash guns.  I should be able to get the timing down to the microsecond level, but not sure how accurate this will be.

Updates to follow.

Camera Controller Update

I have finally gotten my camera controller script updated.

You can read more about it here.

E.D.L & Unite Against Fascism Protests – Luton

Ever since I heard about the EDL’s planned protest and march to be held in Luton I was in two minds whether to go down with my camera and try my hand at some reportage photography.  I couldn’t make my mind up after hearing so much local gossip regarding the violence and non EDL members just turning up for a good ol’ riot. including Luton’s own MIGs. When Unite Against Fascism announced they were going to hold a counter demonstration my mind was made up to attend this if nothing else. I know the EDL say they are not racist and only want Muslims in England to follow English laws and respect English customs, but  many of their members probably are racist and just don’t like foreigners being here. I don’t agree with their views, but I do strongly believe that everyone has the right to their own beliefs. Everyone should have the right to protest against anything they don’t believe in, however distasteful the majority may find it, and to give EDL members on this march some credit, at least they have the balls to stand up and be counted, rather than sitting at home saying how bad it is and not going out and shouting.

So anyway, I went and I took my camera along with a healthy dose of apprehension. I made my way to the UAF demonstration first and was shocked how dead Luton was, its was literally like a ghost town, at least until you hit the town centre when there was an army of police, ready for WWIII by the looks of things. There were more police per yard in Luton than I think there were for the Anti Iraq war march in London. I got a few shots of the massed Police vans, and headed on to the UAE demo, there were a few people there, maybe 2-300, but I was an hour or so early. All of the side streets in town had been closed off by 8 foot metal barriers and lines of police, it felt very strange, like being a rat in a cage. It then took me a while to find an open route round to the other end of George Street where the EDL march was due to end up for speakers and some music. The whole of St, Georges Square was surrounded by steel and boarded up shops and bars, there were a handful of locals and several real journalists and press photographers there. Unnervingly, most of the press photographers were carrying or wearing hard hats, I felt like a total amateur. I had a chat with some fellow photographers and a few of the police, many of them were not local and didn’t know the area at all, all of them were very friendly, and helpful and seemed quite relaxed. I found out where the march was due to enter the square and bagged a good spot. After about 30 minutes one of the police said they were about 4 minutes away, so everyone got in place and waited. The first thing you could see was a line of mounted police followed by a row or two of riot police with St. Georges Cross, and EDL flags waving over their heads, along with the dull chant of ” E!  E!  E-D-L! “, which I think is line 1 of their manifesto. It all started to get exciting now, there was an elderly Asian man walking slowly about 15 yards in front, being escorted by several plain clothed police. (You could see the ear pieces in the photos) I am not sure who he was, but I assume he was making a personal protest against the protesters. Then the masses descended, carrying numerous banners and placards all stating how evil Islam is and repeating line 1 of the manifesto over and over. I also heard a rather delightful chat of “Allah, Allah, Who The F*** is Allah?” which is just plain sickening coming from these educated political minds…..  I wish I had recorded that on video.  I grabbed a few nice shots at this point as I was only a yard or two away from the marchers, and got quite a bit of verbal abuse, apparently these people don’t like other people knowing their opinions, which is quite strange.

After the march had arrived in the square  I was feeling a lot bolder, even more so after spotting a guy I know from my local pub amongst them. If it did go all tits up, a least I knew 1 guy,  so I decided to get in there and grab some more pictures. There were several characters in the crowd but I felt a bit odd snapping close ups in such an alien territory to me, I was the only ginger hippy in there that’s for sure. I got several crowd shots before I plucked up the courage to ask a skinhead if I could take a picture of his bull terrier who had a very spikey harness and looked very mean indeed. He just looked at me and said “Sure!, hey look at the man with the camera… look…good girl…” Nice photo cheers. So don’t brand everyone an ass-hole just because they hold some views you don’t agree with. Hmm this is turning into a bit of a rant isn’t it.

I decided to leave after about an hour and was politely informed by the police that the road was closed and I would have to wait. I tried several exits out and was told the same thing at every exit, this was lesson two learned, a press ID will get you out. So I sat tight for another couple of hours and tried again to leave, this time near the main exit by the station, again I was told the same thing, but this time he told me to hang about as they were letting people out in ones and twos when it was quiet. After about 5 minutes a man, his wife and their little girl and a friend of theirs arrived from the station to be told the same thing, and it was obvious the girl and friend where petrified, by this time the EDL were starting to return to their trains and coaches, still chanting and being generally intimidating, so good on you EDL boys, you can scare women and children. Anyway the police let us all thru eventually and I got back into the shopping centre, which was reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead, there were that many life like people in there, just the odd alcoholic, pensioner and security guard. I exited by the Unite Against Fascism protest to see how it was going and there were so may more people there now, not as many as the EDL protest but about 1000 according to the news. As I was late and my wife was picking me up I had to leave without getting any more photos and realised how relaxed and satisfied with myself I felt. It was definitely an experience and I recommend everyone who is into photography to try and record a protest or public demonstration, you can capture so much emotion in peoples faces, well those that aren’t masked that is.(yes I know this was probably some clever statement about the Burka).  And those of you that are not into photography, go out there and protest against something that pisses you off. Politics isn’t about not bothering to do anything,and about getting up and letting people know you are pissed off, if you do nothing the other side wins.

Digital Drops Flickr Group

I have started my very own new Flickr group for drop heads who have taken things beyond manual water drops. Digital Drops is a group for people who use some kind of electronic timing when taking water drop photos. This can be anything from one of the basic hiviz delay kits to a high end retail kit like a Stopshot or a Mumford Time Machine, or even better, a homebrew project you have built to do exactly what you want it to. There are only a few members at the minute, but don’t let that put you off, come and join us and share the knowledge that allows us all to take these wonderful pictures.

Getting better

Mushroom, originally uploaded by Bambi_72.

The pictures keep getting better and better.
More to come, I have 100′s of them already.

Camera Controller Project

When I first got my digital camera I got interested in photographing things that we see but don’t see every day, from macro insect shots to high speed events that are gone too quick for us to take in. This led me down the path of water drop photography, starting off with a drinking straw, a glass and the need for 4 hands. I quickly graduated thru to a marioette syphon, tubing and remote flash triggers. Still not satisfied I started to drool over a Stopshot or a Mumford Time Machine, but I just couldn’t justify the expense.
Then I discovered hiviz.com who sell various breadboard kits for high speed photography projects. They are also a very good source for information and all round good ideas.
While I was debating whether to order on of their kits I found a link to a blog by Louise, who had made a very fancy camera controller using an Arduino board, with an LCD and keypad interface. This threw hiviz out of the window, sorry guys. Louise has gone to the trouble of listing all the components you will need along with suppliers, to go with a comprehensive guide on building your own, along with laser trip wire sensors. After a few more hours googling and researching I had ordered an Arduino and downloaded their software, and e-bay were sending me countless packets of components thru the post.

The Arduino board is basically a computer on a circuit board with loads of input and output pins to send or get signals to and from the cpu. This runs scripts(while look a little like C+) to make the magic happen, and Louise has written a very script that runs several different timing modes for different situations. In a nutshell you have two inputs to your program, which can be any sensor you can thing of that will run from 5v. Then there are two output channels which can control your camera and or flash guns. You can set your magic box trigger your camera and flash at different timed delays after one or both of your sensors have been triggered. It will also run as a time lapse controller taking pictures every second. minute, hour etc. The possibilities are only limited by what you can think to do with it, water drops, ballistics, wildlife shots.

I am entirely self taught when it comes to computers and programming, I have dabbled as a computer nerd since BBC Basic days, but never really understood what I was doing. It took me several lunch breaks at work to get my head round a printout of the program, the menu system did my head in for a while. The same go’s for the electronics side of things, I had not done any electronics since 1988, let alone solder anything.

While I was waiting for parts to arrive I looked at ways to edit Louise’s script to enable me to control a water solenoid valve, so I could control precisely timed drips of water. Google took me to Jens , who had used an Arduino to control a solenoid to make water drops, his posts helped me work out how to add it to Louise’s design. Well about a week later I had failed several times to get this right, then I had the light-bulb moment and I was back on track. Menu system sussed, I could now edit variables to control the solenoid valve. You can chose the number of drips released, the size of the drip, and the delay between the drips. This is still all theoretical mind, and I am waiting on parts at this point. While reading up on Arduino scripts and examples I managed to add a backup restore section, so you can save up to 4 different sets of settings.
Anyway the basic parts arrived and I plugged them all in as per Louise’s instructions, sexy blue lcd screen looks nice, I used LED’s to test the outputs and a laser trip wire as a sensor, and bloody hell, it worked! Probably the first time in my life, something I have built worked first time. When I say it worked, the bits of the script I hadn’t added to worked, mine took several evenings of drinking and swearing to get it right. Now my ‘solenoid’ led light up when it should have done, and everything triggered as it should have done with a manual break of the laser beam, happy days.
More bits kept arriving from e-bay, and few trips to Maplins, the kitchen was looking more and more like a workshop, but progress was being made. I now had everything apart from the solenoid, which I had found a supplier for in the UK. The Shako Solenoid I had decided on came at the recommendation of Kev ,who I stumbled across in a few flickr water-drop groups, and Scantips.com, I even got 15% off when I ordered it. The valve is stated as having a maximum open/close time of 20ms, but I have got it to work at 7 or 8ms, and at 10ms with a 30ms delay between drops, so its a nice valve. The valve runs from 12-24v, so I was planning on running the Arduino board from an old 15v supply I had kicking around and using the boards V-out pin to power the solenoid with 15v, this wasn’t to happen. The valve worked, but it wasn’t reliable, I couldn’t get it to open and close with more than 1 drop every time. This meant a little redesign of the breadboard and a separate 24v power supply, but now things worked perfectly. I managed to fry the Darlington transistor I was using to switch the 24v supply first time, told you I was self taught, and its mistakes that learn us,

Thanks must go to my mate Rich, for helping my mount all of the wiring spaghetti in a nice heavy duty desktop case . It took a few evenings in the freezing cold of his garage to drill and cut out holes in the case using his pillar drill. Not to mention a morning of filing 2mm ally that the neighbours wont forget.

Everything is now taking shape, I have a boxed Arduino and breadboard, complete with spaghetti wiring and dodgy soldered jack sockets, a laser trip wire sensor, that is bloody accurate when lined up right. I opted to aim the laser directly at the sensor, rather than reflect it back, as Louise did, but this is a sensor specifically for water drops, soon to be mounted in a box with a hole cut for drops to pass thru. The last thing I was waiting for was my water reservoir, which I had decided, in a moment of genius, was going to be a fishing float storage tube, three quid from e-bay for two. This is connected to the solenoid via a brass hose nozzle and some 12mm tubing, with a 3mm tube from the top cap making a marioette syphon.

Well this weekend I finally, after about 2 months, of research, drilling, filing, soldering, swearing, getting SO frustrated, and having several moments of, if I say so myself, genius, everything come together. I have a Magic Box, which is officially known as ‘The Project Mk III’ up and running and taking spot on photos. I have managed to take a sequence of shots using a 5ms delay increment every shot to make a very crude animation of a collision of two water drops. This was after taking 4 photos for the very first time using the box, see magic I tell you.

High Speed Nerdiness Pt. III

Its finished, boxed, and working!
At least without any water involved so far, still waiting on my nozzles to connect up the plumbing. Managed to get the solenoid to open and close down to about 10-12ms, and its able to repeat this every 20-25ms, so about 25 drops per second flat out, which is enough by anyone’s standards.
The script now has solenoid control, load & save settings, and canon camera support, you can grab a copy here.
Extract the contents of this archive to your Sketchbook folder and have a read of the readme file inside the folder, for ore details of the changes I have made. You will still need the lcd library that Louises script uses and the EEPROM library, as this is used by the load and save settings function.

Finally I need to thank a few people for their help during this project, firstly Louise who did all the original hard work, my mate Rich, for the hardware advise, pillar drill rental, and inspiration to ‘do things right’. Also cheers to the Arduino community, flickr members, drip nerds, Martin Waugh for demonstrating perfection, Jens for the wiring diagram for the solenoid, Kev for the photosbyhim, and most importantly my wife for putting up with me stressed, components all over the kitchen table and numerous e-bay deliveries.

Sit tight for the pictures, got a week off soon

Got hold of a few more bits of plumbing today and ran a quick test with water, it drops drips

High Speed Nerdiness Pt. II

Well, I got my head round the script eventually, and got most of the parts I need to get things built. I managed to tweak the script to include a Drip Mode, and settings for the solenoid. I also added the ability to save all of your settings to the EEPROM. I have changed the IR camera trigger code so that it now works with my Canon 500d, but I plan to put the original code back in and have it as an option to chose the remote style.
I am still waiting for the parts to build my sensors, but they should be here in a day or two, and I still haven’t heard back from the solenoid shop, its difficult to phone them during the day…. Testing with LED’s and voltmeters everything seems to be doing what it should, so finger crossed it will all work once its stuck together in its sexy box and blue LCD screen.
I am not happy with the way I have the menu system at the moment, I need to move the save/load settings to the settings menu, and maybe add the ability for more sets of saved settings.
I have done a little test with a piezo sound trigger, but I cant seem to make it very sensitive, it requires a fairly loud clap to trigger my flash guns, maybe I need a different piezo..

“Update*
I managed to order my solenoid today, and they gave me 15% off! So I will plug them, http://www.solenoid-valves.com/
Time for my friend with a lathe to knock me up some nice nozzles, while I borrow his pillar drill.