Hasta La Gadget!

For panorama-obsessed French photographer Steven Monteau, every photo is better if lengthened or widened with others. For him, even exposing a single, elongated image spanning a good six inches of 35mm film and spilling out across the sprocket holes is not enough. No, Steven would only be happy stretching three lengths of film out in parallel, and shooting onto all of them simultaneously. Still not crazy enough for you? Then why not make it a pinhole camera?

Above you see the result of Steven’s crazed concept, dubbed the Battlefield because it looks like, um, a battleship. It is constructed of cardboard, tape, aluminum foil (for the pinholes), plastic tubes, nails and bottle-tops. The three reels of film run along the length of the box, and its odd shaped ends are due to the three 35mm cartridges being offset to get the film strips close enough together. The results are stunning:

Inside, the mechanics are complex, as you’ll see if you follow the step-by-step tutorial Steven has written for DIY Photography. While one crank winds all three reels forward, and a neat rubber-band-and-nail assembly keeps the film in tension, there are three separate knobs to rewind the film.

I’m not sure what I like most here. The meticulously-made camera, the crude and beautiful images complete with sprocket holes and the mix of different films stocks, or the intricate and detailed illustrations accompanying the how-to. One thing I do know: I want one.

The Battlefield Pinhole Camera [DIY Photography]

Photos: Steven Monteau/Flickr

See Also:

• DIY Card Pinhole Camera Overpriced — We Find Free Version
• Almost Free Pinhole Digicam Hack
• Turn a Flatbed Scanner Into a Giant Camera
• How To Make a Scanner Camera

You are left-handed. You use a DSLR camera. Do you consider it easier to a) just use your right index finger to fire the shutter and adjust the dials – after all, you’re used to living in a right-handed world by now – or b) screw an aluminum strip to the camera, flip it upside-down and try to fire it with your left pinky?

If your answer is “b” then you are either a masochist or somebody who favors the political over the practical. You are also in luck, as inveterate camera-hacker bertus52×11 has posted a how-to over at Instructables. The hook lets you support the camera with your left thumb whilst firing the shutter with the little finger.

Granted, this hack is meant for righties who may want to show their right hand in a picture, so they won’t have to deal with adjusting settings. Unless you use full-auto, then you left-handers will probably end up twisting off a finger using this method.

For limited or emergency use, we like this inventive solution. What really rocks, though, is bertus52×11’s plaid coffee-cup lens hood. Go “check” it out.

Take photographs with just your left hand [Instructables]

There’s more than one way to shoot a cat, as Will and Matt Burrard-Lucas proved when they went on safari to Tanzania. Instead of loading up on giant lenses to project their eyes artificially into the middle of the animal action, the brothers chose to get their cameras up close to the African wildlife. But how to do this without a Siegfried and Roy style disaster? The BeetleCam.

The brothers wanted to shoot close up with wide-angle lenses, but waiting for animals to approach hidden cameras is slow, boring and requires luck. So instead they built a tough, off-road remote control buggy to carry a camera and couple of flashes to help fill the shadows of the harsh African sun.

If you are loading up a remote control buggy with a DSLR, a heavy lens and a couple of strobes, you can’t just pick something up from Walmart. Instead, the boys built their own, and from the start it was designed to last:

We […] ordered the most powerful motors we could find and large off-road tires. BeetleCam had to be able to operate for long periods without being charged, so we stuffed the vehicle with the biggest batteries we could squeeze in.

Once built, the brothers figured out how to trigger the camera remotely using the same controller that drives the BeetleCam, and they loaded it up, covered it in protective camouflage gear to keep the dust out, and headed off to track down some big game.

The rig worked great. There were some surprises: Elephants, for instance, were “impossible to sneak up on” due to their super-sensitive hearing. Parking up in front and then waiting for the giants to walk by proved to be the solution.

Some things were less surprising. Lions attacked and mauled the BeetleCam, completely trashing the on-board Canon EOS 400D, although miraculously they managed to “retrieve an intact memory card from the mangled Canon 400D body”. They got the shot. Try that with film.

A quick MacGyvering later with string and wood and the BeetleCam was back in action, this time with the second (much more expensive) expensive body, an EOS 1D MkIII. The bigger camera managed to survive the rest of the trip.

The guys have gotten some fantastic shots, photos which would be impossible any other way, at least without putting themselves in the same lion-bait position as their poor 400D. And this project also points to the new ways we can take photos with digital, not least because you can destroy a camera without exposing the film inside, and that you’re not limited to just 36 shots.

In fact, a BeetleCam-Lite could make a great weekend project, using that cheap Walmart car we mentioned earlier and a cheap old compact rigged for remote-shooting. It might not survive the Veldt, but it would certainly be a lot of fun.

The Adventures of BeetleCam [Burrard-Lucas via Flickr]

From what we know of Anssi Vanjoki, he’s a great guy and one that isn’t afraid of admitting his company’s mistakes. Alas, now we can also add to that dossier the ignominious fact that the fella doesn’t seem to know how professional cameras work. Talking about the rapid improvement in cameraphone technology during a speech in Helsinki yesterday, Vanjoki said that very soon “there will be no need to carry around those heavy lenses.” He’s really enthusiastic about HD video coming to phones, which he predicts will be here within 12 months (if you ask Sony Ericsson, it’s here already), but we just can’t let that spectacular line about lenses slide. The glass you shoot through is, for a lot of people, the most important piece of photographic equipment and there are genuine reasons why said lenses are heavy, elongated, and typically unfriendly to pockets. Then again, this dude also thought the N-Gage was gonna be a success, so don’t start selling off that glass stockpile just yet.

CE-Oh no he didn’t!: Nokia’s Anssi Vanjoki thinks cameraphones are about to make SLRs obsolete originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Apr 2010 05:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wildlife photographers will risk life and limb to get the perfect close-up, but a few ingenious hacks can make the process easier.

Shutterbug Will Burrard-Lucas and his brother Matthew rigged up a four-wheel-drive, remote-control buggy called BeetleCam that has a DSLR camera mounted on top. Almost Wall-E like in its appearance, the BeetleCam can click photos of African wildlife from a ground-level perspective.

“We like to get really close to the animals with a wide-angle lens,” Will Burrard-Lucas told Wired.com. “That’s the photo we really enjoy getting.”

Conventional photographers use either a telephoto lens or camera traps — stationary cameras triggered to click when an animal breaks an invisible infra-read beam — to get close-ups of wild animals. But while telephoto lenses zoom in on the animal, they cut out the beautiful landscape, while camera traps require a great degree of patience and more than a fair share of luck.

A remote-controlled buggy with a wide-angle lens could offer a new perspective, says Burrard-Lucas.

“We can find the animals and use BeetleCam to approach it and we wouldn’t have to fear for our lives,” he says.

To build the BeetleCam, the Burrard-Lucas brothers used a Lynxmotion robot chassis and a Hitech 6-channel radio control. They reinforced the chassis and replaced the wheels with bigger, sturdier versions, then added a tripod plate.  Two 7.2 Volts Ni-MH 2800mAh battery pack also from Lynxmotion offers day-longer power to the device. Tweaks ensured that the camera, a Canon EOS 400D, would interface with the same controller used to drive the buggy.

They also put together a split ETTL off-camera flash cord that would allow the camera to control the output of the two flashes on board the BeetleCam. To have the camera take an exposure, they use the remote control to activate a relay switch that tells the camera to fire.

BeetleCam’s biggest challenge has been getting over the uneven terrain in Tanzania’s national parks with a heavy camera, lens and flashes on its back. But the buggy did pretty well, says Burrard-Lucas, capsizing completely only about twice. The duo are always about 50 meters (approximately 165 feet) away in a land rover trying to make sure that the BeetleCam’s view is unobstructed by the grass or flipped over. They have chronicled their adventures with the BeetleCam on their blog.

Once on the ground, Burrard-Lucas says Beetlecam offered some interesting lessons. Elephants, for instance, turned out to be very tricky to photograph using the buggy because they are wary of unfamiliar objects and have extremely sensitive hearing. But putting the BeetleCam in front of the animals and letting them walk up to it worked well.

Lions were tricker. On the BeetleCam’s second day in the jungle, the device was mauled, smashed and carried off into the bush by a pack.

“We were extremely lucky to retrieve an intact memory card from the mangled Canon 400D body,” says Burrard-Lucas.

The photos from the card survived the wrath of the lions and a few pieces of string and wood later, the BeetleCam was on the ground once more.

This summer, BeetleCam will be back in action in Kenya, says Burrard-Lucas, but with a less expensive camera. “We will use a Canon 500 or 500 D,” says Burrard-Lucas. “We don’t want the camera smashed again.”

Check out some of the photos shot by the BeetleCam:

To see video clips of BeetleCam in action and more of the resulting photographs, check out the BeetleCam project page.

Photos: Burrard-Lucas.com