Large format photography fun

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The bellows camera arrived today. It’s awesome. This is the third picture I’ve taken with it. It came with a Lomograflok back which lets me take large format pictures straight onto Instax Wide film. As you can see, it mostly works. The picture is of some Spintronics components. It turns out that by extending the bellows nearly all the way out you can make a pretty good close up camera. I’ve just noticed that the copy of the image I took above is a bit messy because I just grabbed a snapshot of it with the phone. Sorry about that. If you are wondering, this is how you take a picture:

  1. Clip the ground class screen onto the back of the camera with the Lomograflok spacer between it and the camera.

  2. Open the shutter.

  3. Set the aperture to F5.6 so you can see a faint image on the ground glass screen.

  4. Adjust the focus until the image looks sharp, and then frame the picture.

  5. Use a magnifying glass to make sure that the image really is sharp.

  6. Close the shutter.

  7. Use a light meter to get the shutter speed and aperture and set them on the camera lens.

  8. Cock the shutter.

  9. Remove the ground class screen.

  10. Turn the Lomograflok back on.

  11. Slide the Lomograflok back onto the camera and clip it into place.

  12. Remove the dark slide (a metal plate that keeps light off the film) from the Lomograflok back.

  13. Trigger the shutter.

  14. Put the dark slide back into the Lomograflok back.

  15. Remove the Lomograflok back from the camera.

  16. Eject the photograph from the Lomograflok back.

  17. Wait for it to develop.

I’m not going to show you pictures four and five that I took because I forgot to put the darkslide back into the camera Graflok back (step 14) after taking the shot, and ruined them both...

At the moment it is taking me around five minutes per shot. Perhaps I will improve with practice. Then again, perhaps not. I’ve got some film holders that you can also use with the camera, enough to hold four shots. I don’t think I’ll be taking many pictures with it, but I think they are going to great fun.

Intrepid Rob

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As a follow on from Ivan’s lens of yesterday, today I ordered a complete which I manged to get second hand at a very attractive price. It’s a 4x5 bellows camera made by Intrepid It is even harder to use than the hardest camera I’ve ever worked with. I’m really looking forward to it arriving. And if it seems that for the last few months I’ve done nothing more than write book chapters and buy cameras you’d be completely correct. And I don’t care.

Serendipity in the waste bin

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I decided today that the blog needs to be updated. I keep a diary of what I’ve been up to and the every now and then I sit down and write all the posts. I’ve no idea why I do this, it is just that I feel happier doing it than not.

Anyhoo, today I was creating the posts and I thought it might be fun to add a picture of the bottom of the boat that I tried to print earlier. It came off the print bed as it was printing so that all I had was a small chunk of the bottom of the keel and what looked like a ball of wool. Beautifully printed though. I’d dropped it in the waste paper bin so I had a little look to see if I could find it. I didn’t find it, but I did find an Aibo memory stick for the robot dogs that must have fallen off my crowded desk into the bin at some point over the last week. I’m really pleased I found this, they are quite hard to get hold of and very expensive. Plus it contains a tiny bit of “dog personality” that I really don’t want to lose.

So at least my blog is useful for something.

Dog company

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I’ve taken to letting Bluey the robot dog wander round while I have my break. I’m sure he’s not a patch on a real one, but it is rather nice to watch him go through his paces while I drink my tea. The only problem is that if I put him on this mat he goes kind of nuts, because for him the colours of the squares match the ball. So he thinks there are balls all around him. This makes him very happy, but also somewhat confused.

The Trombone Controller Lives!

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My trombone controller article is now out in the latest edition of Hackspace Magazine. It was great fun to write, even though I made a disastrous design decision half way through. If you want to control your mouse using a trombone action, you should grab a copy.

Update: If you can’t be bothered to download the magazine (although you should - it’s a great read) you can find the article on Raspberry Pi news here.

Space, the universe and everything at Hull Minster

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Tonight we went to see “Space, the universe and everything” at Hull Minster. It was great. A set of huge sound and light installations placed around the minster space. I didn’t take a camera, but it turns out that the iPhone is actually pretty good at capturing low light pictures. The pictures and the sounds were glorious and the venue just can’t be beat. If you can get to see this in Hull you should go. I think they are doing shows in other places too, if you get the chance you should definitely try to get there. Wonderful stuff.

Ancient Pictures

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The battery arrived for my Panasonic Leica camera and so we took it out for a walk yesterday. The pictures turned out rather well. The resolution is not great, but colours look pretty good. I was looking back through some of the pictures I took a few years ago and they are around the same resolution (4 megapixels or so) so it turns out that size isn’t everything. The camera is great to use. It has an optical viewfinder that zooms in along when the main lens, which is rather impressive. Performance in low light is pretty appalling but it does have a flash.

There are lots of buttons and dials on the back

The only thing I really don’t like is the way they’ve used “soft touch” plastic around the viewfinder. Over the years this has turned into “sticky touch” plastic that is rather horrible. But I think I can live with that. I’m going to see what other kinds of pictures it can take.

Little Red Geo

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The Little Red Geo that I ordered over the weekend arrived today. It’s lovely. It is just like a Surface Go, but a ton cheaper. It has the same processor as the ultra cheap laptop I got last year, but this time it is paired with a 128G proper hard disk. Yes it is a bit slow sometimes. But the internal disk is now faster, which improves things quite a bit. It has a really nice little screen (although the bezels are a bit big) and the keyboard and pen complete the package nicely.

The only real pain I had was with the Windows 11 installation. When I reached the point where I set the access PIN the dialog was hidden behind another part of the screen and I couldn’t get to it. I could see it using ALT-TAB but not actually get to enter anything. Super frustrating. I rebooted a few times, got stuck at the same point and eventually it let me past that bit. The tablet does have a fingerprint sensor too which I laboriously set up the first time the process got stuck, but skipped past during the retries.

I’ve loaded it up with all the software I’ll need and there seems to be plenty of disk space left over at the moment. Battery life seems to be showing four or five hours, which for a small tablet is not too bad. At the price it represents incredible value. If you want a bit more power they do a Pentium Silver (whatever that means) powered version for another fifty quid. But I’d save my cash and make do with this. I can use it for all my travelling duties. It has a micro HDMI video out plus USB C. I’ve popped a 512G micro SD card in the slot for any large scale storage duties. The kickstand works very well, as does the pen. The keyboard is tiny, but all the keys are there and they are OK to type on. The trackpad is a bit small, but then so is the computer itself. I’ve just paired a Bluetooth mouse which works fine. If you are looking for a super cheap portable solution you should take a look at this.

A digital Leica of my own

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I’ve always fancied owning a digital Leica camera. Like I fancy owning a Porsche. But different. Anyhoo, a while back I discovered the Leica Diglux 1, which was produced in conjunction with Panasonic in the early days of digital photography. It looked really cool, but I couldn’t really afford one of those either. Then I discovered that as part of the joint development Panasonic actually made their own version. So I managed to find one at a price I could afford. When it arrived I took a brief look at it, discovered that the battery was broken and popped it in the loft.

Today I found it again and took a proper look. It has a very rare feature for a camera like this. You can plug in a mains adapter and power it directly. I did this and it worked fine. So I’ve ordered a battery. I’m not going to get super high resolution pictures from it, but I’d love to have a proper go.

Cheap Surface Clone

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I’ve bought another computer. I’ve rationalised this because even after all this time I don’t have a machine running Windows 11. And today someone asked me if some of my code would run that platform. And I rather wanted to give them an answer.

I don’t want to upgrade my present machine from Windows 10 for several reasons. The primary one is that I have no need to. The second is that it would cost a lot of money. The third is that I’d have to replace pretty much everything which would mean a complete reinstall of all the software, some of which I don’t think I have licence keys for any more.

I’d much rather spend my cash on something with just enough power and disk space to do what I want with Windows 11. Which is where I introduce the Geotab 110. For less than the price of a Surface Go type cover I can get a complete tablet with keyboard and pen. I’m not expecting the earth when it arrives, but I am looking forward to discovering what kind of tablet PC you can get for 120 quids.

Double Z axis trouble

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I’ve been working on breaking my 3D printer. It’s going quite well. I’ve fitted a new direct drive printhead (which was really easy) and added a second lead screw for the z axis (which was really stupid). The principle is simple enough. Initially the printer had a single motorized screw on the left hand pillar which lifted the print gantry up and down. Thing is, when the print head moves all the way over to the right it is less well supported, so the gantry sags a bit. I thought it was a good idea to put a motorized screw on the other gantry so I bought the kit and fitted it. Which was a stupid idea. The problem is not so much with the drive system. That works fine. The problem is that if the two lead screws get out of sync (which they do) then the gantry tilts. When the printer is powered up the two screws are locked together by the stepper motors but when the power is switched off the weight of the gantry turns the two lead screws different amounts, putting the alignment out of whack.

The solution is to add a synchronisation belt at the top of the lead screws. This is what the latest printers have. So I’ve ordered one.

MOT time

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The cube in shinier times

Here in the UK we have this thing called the MOT (Ministry of Transport) test which we do to cars every year. Back in the day I used to take my old Mini for an MOT every Christmas and then spend a chunk of the festive season putting right all the things that had been found to be wrong with it. Particular highlights include replacing a leaking petrol tank with another leaking petrol tank, swapping a brake master cylinder with a clutch master cylinder and making a car with around a half an inch of brake pedal travel, taking the entire rear suspension to pieces and hefting it from dealer to dealer in two carrier bags until I found someone who could drill out the radius arms and fun with petrol blowlamps when we set fire to the grease in a kingpin and then broke the “special tool” that was supposed to take it apart. Then there was the time I painted the car, a good portion of the garage and probably my lungs a racy shade of “Daytona Yellow”. Happy days.

Anyhoo, the Cube passed with only a few advisories, which means that we are good for another year of square motoring.

Dentist fun

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Well, the boiler man couldn’t make it today, but the dentist yesterday was broadly OK, except for the filling I now have in my future. I’ve gone from “You’ve got good teeth” to “You’ve got good teeth for your age” to “You’ve got teeth?” in what seems to be a few short years. I was even complemented on my brushing technique. I was hoping for a lollipop or at least a sticker but I don’t think they do them for my age.

Direct drive 3D printing

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My 3D printer has been working reliably for ages. I can go from an idea to a printed artefact with a minimal amount of messing about. So I’ve decided to upgrade it. It turns out that I can get a complete direct drive print head for a very tempting price. I was thinking of changing the nozzle, so I might as well change everything. The replacement head arrived today. You really do get everything, rollers, heater, thermocouple and wires.

The idea behind direct drive is that the filament feed mechanism (the bit which pushes the filament into the heater) is right next to the head itself. In the current configuration the feed motor is mounted away from the head and the filament goes through a tube (called a bowden tube) to the head. This adds friction and elasticity to the filament feed. Doing away with the bowden tube should improve print quality and let me print more exotic filaments.

It looks like an easy fix so I’m going to make it more difficult. The one thing I’m not happy about is the way that the print head now weighs a lot more than it did because it now has the drive motor on it. So I’ve ordered an extra Z axis drive screw so that the bar the print head moves along can be supported on both sides, rather than just one. It should arrive later in the week.