Setup of single frame timelapse

Tomorrow I'm going to attempt to create a single frame time lapse with a DSLR camera. The camera will be controlled by a Raspberry Pi, which will not only control the shutter but also things like camera iso, exposure etc. with some simple image processing.

Here's a (bad) photo of the setup taken with my camera phone

In the process of setting up the system, I took a photo of my hand while I was using the laptop, and I quite liked it.

The quality isn't great after colour correction, and that's because I (think) the image processing library doesn't support raw format. If i'm mistaken then the new capture could be download from the camera, then calculate the new camera settings, upload the new settings to the camera and finally take another photo which would be left on the camera -- or something along these lines.

It's snowing! It's about time I used my DSLR and upload some photos that were on the sd card. Here are the results.

A random assortment of controllers -- It's just a random placement on controllers with good natural lighting.

Winter grass -- The first thing I saw this morning was my back garden. There wasn't a lot of snow unfortunately, but the cold and the little snow there was helped separate the blades of grass and point out the distinctiveness of each blade.

Rustic garden -- I woke up today and knew it was supposed to snow this morning. Unfortunately it wasn't the blizzard I was hoping for, but at least the back garden had a nice rustic winter feel to it.

Snow is falling -- It did start snowing again while I was writing this blog, and so I rushed out and tried to capture the snow in focus as it was falling. I took a lot of photos, but nothing was in focus in most of them. I ended up choosing this photos where at least the grass was in focus and a bit of the snow as it was falling.

First set of Nokia 1020 photos

Focusing on the Xbox 360 controller.

Exposure time - 1/5 a second

f-stop - f/2.2

ISO - 200

Exposure time - 1/2 a second

f-stop - f/2.2

ISO - 200

Exposure time - 1/2 a second

f-stop - f/2.2

ISO - 200

Tone mapped image created from bracketed images.

Exposure time - 1 second

f-stop - f/2.2

ISO - 400

(There should be a single lightbulb in this photo...)

Exposure time - 1/800 second

f-stop - f/2.2

ISO - 100

Photos from a photographer (kind of)

I just want to point out that I'll be posting photos from the DSLR and (new) Nokia 1020. I've taken some interesting images and uploaded them to facebook, but I want somewhere where I can post and comment and talk about the image, so this is where that place is.

Slipping Away

Every second I'm not doing what I want to do, makes me feel that I'm missing an opportunity.

Some of the decisions in life may initially seem like a good idea, but later it will turn out to feel to be the wrong thing. There's no way of knowing what the right route is. Or maybe there is a way of knowing.

Money is the first thing most people will think about before venturing into anything. It's also the thing that prevents most people from doing what they really want to do.

The important thing is that most of us can do what we want to do. We have to find time to do it. Whenever there is any spare time, just do what you wanted to when you didn't have any spare time.

Another thing that you need to keep in mind is not to tell people about your plan. Doing so usually leads to the feeling of fulfilment even before starting it.

What may help is finding someone who will help you in your venture. Even if you don't find anyone to help you directly, at least don't sit and work on your own while working. Again, don't boast about your results until you have results.

Modo fac!

Ubuntu 11.10

I've finally got Ubuntu working on my m1530 laptop!

So some issues i ran into:

Wifi - easy fix. I just went to Additional Drivers in the settings page.
Screen - Because the m1530's screen is dead/broken/unfixable i've had to change the xorg.conf file manually so that the right screen resolutions can be used for my dell u2412m monitor. First i had to run:

sudo nvidia-xconfig

to create a new xorg.conf file, then i ran:

gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

to edit the file itself. Here's is the final output:


# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig:  version 295.40  (buildmeister@swio-display-x86-rhel47-04.nvidia.com)  Thu Apr  5 22:33:07 PDT 2012

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "DELL U2412M"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 83.0
    VertRefresh     50.0 - 61.0
    Option         "DPMS"
    #Option         "Rotate" "Left"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

The most important bit was:

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "DELL U2412M"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 83.0
    VertRefresh     50.0 - 61.0
    Option         "DPMS"
    #Option         "Rotate" "Left"
EndSection

and this was the only bit which i edited.

Developed and uploaded my own game!

Hi all,

I developed a game called "Bubble Pop" for the Windows 7 phone. I have uploaded it on the Zune marketplace and it is free to download (for now). I'm going to be working on an update which should polish the game. You can download the game here.