Andrew built a DIY HDR Panoramic camera rig and documented the project with a thorough 2500-word tutorial, with photos and all necessary files included.
If Andrew Hazelden continues churning out such great content, we'll have to rename the News section on our site into "Hazelden Times", "Hazelden Inquirer", "Hazelden Gazette" or whatever. Yesterday we covered his SpeakUp tutorial. Today's update is for photography enthusiasts.
The hardware part of the project involves taking apart a Canon DSLR battery grip, drilling a hole through it and soldering some jumpers to the flex ribbon cable inside it. The other end of the jumpers are attached to a mikromedia for PIC32.
The mikromedia for PIC32 is fitted with firmware that lets you control the camera over the 320x240 touchscreen. Andrew wrote the software in mikroC and designed the interface (with a nice big SHOOT HDR button) in VisualTFT.
Andrew points out that the code (available on Libstock) can be repurposed. You could enhance the rig with click boards and have, for example, motion click to trigger the camera shutter. Or, as it occurred to one of our guys reading Andrew's tutorial, you could pair it with Thunder click to catch stunning photos during thunderstorms.
You'll also pick up some nifty hacks along the way, like the way Andrew uses velcro to keep track of his lens cap while out in the field.
We're not sure what impresses us more: the concept and all the possibilities for expanding it, the detailed write-up documenting the project, or the photographs themselves (click on the photo to get the entire gallery).
Yours sincerely,
MikroElektronika