Photography - Photo stacking

I've been reading a bit about photography, and discovered this thing called "photo stacking".

It helps you create super close ups that have everything in focus.


Normally in a photo, you get some bits in focus, and some out of focus.

This can be a good thing, because you don't always want, for example, the background to be sharp.

Sometimes things look better when you cant see them.

But sometimes you want to see it all.

I'll drop a series of seven photos here with each one seeing a different section in focus.

This first pic of a 300mm ruler is taken at a focal length of 10mm.

This next pic is at 20mm

You can see that the section that's in focus has moved a little further back.

This one at 50mm

 Here are three more in the series with each one seeing the focal length change through 100mm, 150mm, 200mm, and 300mm.

I would have preferred to use increments of 5mm all the way through, and take 60 photos, but this camera I have only deals with those photo lengths when used in manual focus mode. 

There is software that is free and open source, that can take the best bits of each photo, and knit them all together to make one photo. 

Apparently it's possible to do this in a graphics program, but I dont have the skill set, and the software seems to work. 

There are a few different software packages, some that cost and some that are free. The one I'm playing with is called, CombineZP. All you have to do is select the photos (New), then chose something that I dont understand called, "align and balance used fra..." (the title of this function is cut off because whoever made it doesn't respect my inalienable right to resize whatever window I want, and my screen size isn't the same as theirs), then click something that makes perfect sence that says GO.

After a few seconds wait, the end result is pretty good for a first attempt, and might just prove to be a very useful tool in trying to capture extreme close up shots. 

I'm guessing it would be perfect if I just had a camera that could deal with letting me chose where to focus all on my own. 

Even without respecting my free will, the result is quite good. You can see in the photo below, some bands of blur where I couldn't divide the focal length and add another frame. There's an obvious blur between the "k" and "i", and another at the "3" in 300. Another at 250, but they are all errors caused by my camera not letting me take pictures in between the ones I took. 

'Tis an interesting bit of kit, and I thoroughly recommend trying it if you are taking macro shots. 

 

The result...

120 Things in 20 years - I love discovering new things like photo stacking for macro shots, and I love discovering that there are only 6 photos in my series of 7. I deleted one, and have no idea which one it was, so I moved on. 

I'm also without confidence that I'm using the words "focal length" properly. 

Aquaponics - Electronics - Digital demand fish feeder

The water temperature in my aquaponics fish tank is today sitting at around 20c This means my silver perch are back to feeding like crazy.

I suspect they would eat a lot more if I fed them 20 times a day, so I rummaged around in the darkest depths of my house, and found my demand fish feeder project.

When I made it as part of trying to learn electronics, I happened to be on lots and lots of morphine because I had a rock festering in my kidney. At least I think that's what it was for.

Geology is interesting and all, but who wants to grow rocks in your kidney.

Anyway, it seems that whatever you learn when your brain is in an opiate fog stays in that fog. At least it did for me.

Every now and again I've discovered this poor little open source project, and tried to figure out what it does, and why it doesn't do what it should do, and it always ends in my just putting it back into the darkest part of my house, and leaving it there until for some new reason I think I'll understand it again.

Yesterday I looked at it and it made sense.

Only a bit, but that's a bit more than usual, and I wasn't even on morphine.

I traced everything from the pins to whatever input or output  (switches or lights) devices were attached, and almost all of it seemed to do something. The three adjustable gizmos (pots) in the top right are not connected, but I looked at my code, and worked out what they should be connected to (they adjust food amount, total food allowed in a day, and light sensitivity to trigger the dawn reset.

There are also these four resistors that dont seem to do anything.

I'm guessing they are either, connected to the potentiometers (adjustable gizmos) or have something to do with the second circuit that I found.

The second circuit looks like this, and I'm pretty sure it was meant to be mounted like this.

It has a button and a switch.

I remember making a water proof override switch so I could give the fish a dose of food when I visited them and wanted to see them hit the demand lever and get fed.





Now the four resistors might be for the pots, but I cant remember if they needed resistors. They are, after all, resistors.

I think.

But some things need resistors so they don't feed ambient static into the chip, and give false readings that look like button presses or whatever.

Who knows, but it feels a bit like I'm almost, right on the edge of nearly being back on track.




120 things in 20 years Aquaponics - Digital demand fish feeders are sometimes better off recycled and started from scratch.

Electronics - PICAXE Fish feeder

I'm slowly learning this electronics caper.

I think it's week five now, and I've learnt quite a bit.

I can program a chip just well enough, and almost know enough electronics to make my new improved fish feeder.

It looks like this so far.



What we are seeing here is an incredibly lifelike cardboard fish, acting the part of the hungry test subject.

Currently my prototype allows the user to set how much feed will be delivered by adjusting the length of the pulse to the motor (simulated with the green light).

The user can also adjust the length of time between feeds.

A flashing light (not shown on the video) flashes out long flashes for 10's and short flashes for 1's to indicate the number of feeds so far today. ie 23 would be     long long   short short short (actually very easy to read)

A red light comes on indicating the fish can feed. This will be placed near the lever so as to condition them to the feeding routine. If they attempt to feed when the light is off, they wont get any food.

Eventually there will be a lever in the water that the fish hit when they want feed (tested and working fine - it takes them around 4 or 5 days to work it out)

A light will come on when they can feed, and will be off when they are being too greedy.

There will be a method of adjusting the times between feed, the total number of feeds, and the amount delivered each feed. (probably with a screwdriver so you cant do it by accident)

There will be a switch that reverses the motor, and delivers one days worth of feed via the back of the feeder so you can put a bucket under it and test any adjustments you have made. This test feed can then just be returned to the hopper.

It will have a hopper.

The feed will be delivered via a small geared down motor turning at around 36 rpm, and a screw of some kind.

It's an open source project, (software, hardware, and actual device) and will all be offered freely to make as you see fit. If I can work it, I'll even make a solder-less version that you can put together with a screw driver.

I'll make sure everything I make it out of is easy to find pretty much anywhere.

If all goes well.

not just Electronics - PICAXE Fish feeder - 120 things in 20 years

Animation - Bell siphon

I've decided to learn how to make animations so as to be better at communication.... And stuff.

Earlier attempts I have made were created frame by frame, but I recently nabbed a copy of Synfig Studio.

From what I've seen so far, It looks the goods. Its free to download and use and its all open source. Yet again the open source community has exceeded my expectations. All these people who contribute are truly amazing. Thank you all.

Here is my first attempt that actually worked. Depending on what I can offer, I might make animation or visual communication a "thing" because I'm sure I'll need the skills more and more, no matter what I do in the future.

The bell siphon is running with a continuous inflow of water. The siphon triggers when the standpipe fills with water. The grow bed (terracotta colour) floods and drains automatically, creating tide-like conditions for plants. The bell siphon is commonly used in aquaponics as a method to flood and drain grow beds. The water drains back into a fish tank, where a pump cycles it back to the grow bed.

A bell siphon (in yellow) triggering and draining via the standpipe (in green)

The real things looks like this from an earlier post called "Aquaponics - Glass bell siphon"



I just re-read this post and it doesn't sound like me.
But it is.
There, that's settled that.