Tag Archives: DSLR

A Compact Star Tracking Tripod

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The next giant leap for mankind is to the stars. While we are mostly earthbound — for now — that shouldn’t stop us from gazing upwards to marvel at the night sky. In saying that, if you’re an amateur astrophotographer looking to take long-exposure photos of the Milky Way and other stellar scenes, [Anthony Urbano] has devised a portable tracking setup to keep your photos on point.

When taking pictures of the night sky, the earth’s rotation will cause light trails during long exposures. Designed for ultra-portability, [Urbano’s] rig uses an Arduino UNO controlled Sanryusha P43G geared stepper motor coupled …read more

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Kinect and Raspberry Pi Add Focus Pulling to DSLR

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Prosumer DSLRs have been a boon to the democratization of digital media. Gear that once commanded professional prices is now available to those on more modest budgets. Not only has this unleashed a torrent of online content, it has also started a wave of camera hacks and accessories, like this automatic focus puller based on a Kinect and a Raspberry Pi.

For [Tom Piessens], the Canon EOS 5D has been a solid platform but suffers from a problem. The narrow depth of field possible with DSLRs makes it difficult to maintain focus on subjects that are moving relative to the …read more

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Building a Full-Spectrum Digital Camera on the Cheap

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The sensor on your digital camera picks up a lot more than just the light that’s visible to the human eye. Camera manufacturers go out of their way to reduce this to just the visible spectrum in order to produce photos that look right to us. But, what if you want your camera to take photos of the full light spectrum? This is particularly useful for astrophotography, where infrared light dramatically adds to the effect.

Generally, accomplishing this is just a matter of removing the internal IR-blocking filter from your camera. However, most of us are a little squeamish about …read more

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