Quarantine photo thread

[snacksthecat]

With the COVID-19 stuff going on, I have gobs of free time that I used to spend doing productive things. So having all this extra time on my hands, I thought it would be a cool idea to post an interesting photo/video each day. Well at least that's my plan. I have a couple of novel ideas, but not sure how quickly those will dry up. But for the time being, that's my goal. And feel free to post your own photos as I would love to see them. Anyway, hope everyone is good during the weird times.

I did a couple of random timelapse videos for fun/practice, and this is the first keyboard related one. I'm sorry it's not super interesting, but I have to get creative with the "moving stuff" element of these videos. I set my lights to slowly change color, included myself doing random tasks in the background, and shot the video on a panning tripod head. Unfortunately my camera died toward the end and I forgot to reconfigure the panning head thing so it doesn't end very smoothly but now I know to triple check the settings before hitting "Go" in the future.

[Raumfahrer]

this is a nice idea, just pair with some good background music and you can give those lo-fi channels a run for their money
different keyboards each video

[SneakyRobb]

I want to check all my keyboards now for the date of manufacture. Then as they come up, I will post birthday photos

[ddrfraser1]

I want to check all my keyboards now for the date of manufacture. Then as they come up, I will post birthday photos

That's awesome

[snacksthecat]

I want to check all my keyboards now for the date of manufacture. Then as they come up, I will post birthday photos

That is also a great idea

This is the photo for Friday I suppose. Much simpler than the timelapse but still a task to set it all up. It is very difficult to drop a handful of keycaps right where your camera is focused. I think these came out pretty cool though. Couldn't decide which one I preferred out of these two so here they both are.

[snacksthecat]

Well, yesterday's shot was a total bust. So I'll write a little explanation of what I was trying to do, and we'll call that yesterday's photo.

I was trying to do a panning timelapse of a cup of keycaps + ice melting / eventually floating to the top once all the ice melted.

I recently got a cool little camera gizmo that I thought would help with this type of thing, but was very dissapointed to find out that that is not exactly the case. The device is called CamRanger 2 and it advertises several features, among which is the ability to control a panning camera head in conjunction with the camera shutter to create a panning timelapse. I played with this thing for hours, digging into all the individual features to find where the heck is this capability hidden. I eventually contacted their support who got back to me very quickly with this response.

Hi [me],

The automated panorama feature is implemented and can be used to create a shoot move shoot sequence. We of yet have not added the controls to be able to directly enter values. That control resulted in a lot of confused and frustrated customers as they could not work out how to use it.

- [support]
CamRanger

So basically it's "there" but customers can not take advantage of it because there is no where to enter the settings and kick it off. Oh great, that's 50% of why I bought the thing.

So next I tried to implement a crude workaround using their panorama feature. The panorama feature also uses the panning head to take a sequence of shots, but you do not specify the time interval. So in my workaround, I set my camera to delay a few seconds. My Canon EOS RP can do timed shots with a delay of either 2 seconds or 10 seconds. So not the most flexible solution but I saw it as workable.

And it did in fact work, but was very finicky since this is not what the panorama feature was meant to do. The feature is meant to take a handful of shots, like 10, which can then be stitched together to create a singe image. So I attempted my workaround twice and hit a dead-end both times. First of all, I was setting the thing to take 3,000 shots (I wanted a roughly 30 second clip at 60 fps = 1800, plus I did not know how long it would take the ice to melt so I added in a huge buffer). Well apparently setting 3,000 shots for a single panorama because, while it did take all the photos, it did not pan at all. I think when it calculated the panning increments, it was too small a value so the panning head didn't move as a result.

Fast forward to 12am, I had the idea that I could take matters into my own hands, and trigger both the camera and the head with a microcontroller. Lucky for me the panning head is quite, how would you say, entry level quality; so this was fairly simple to interface with once I found some info about how the remote sends movement instructions to it. Similarly, imitating a wired camera remote also turned out to be pretty easy as well. So I slapped the whole thing together and tested it out around 3am and it worked perfectly!

So here we are now, back attempting this for a third time. Luckily the sun is out and *should* melt my ice before the camera battery dies. I set the thing to take shots at 13 second intervals with a panning interval of 20ms. I'm worried about this 20ms panning time. Not sure if this is again too small, as I didn't test it set that low. But I'll post the result regardless because I'm not trying this a fourth time

Here's the current state of affairs on my back porch (stairwell). Hope my neighbors don't get upset with this weird looking thing out there. Please don't judge the appearance of this contraption; I am not good at attaching things to other things

[snacksthecat]

Well here it is, the pain in the butt timelapse that isn't even that cool in the end!

Couple of things, (1) I didn't mean to have such a bad glare. (2) the glass was actually hot glued (lol) to the wood for a few days, during which time I attempted this video multiple times and had to fish out the keycaps with my hand. So there are a bunch of smudges on the glass that I didn't notice until it was all done. (3) the keycaps were supposed to float to the top at the end. I was using some late model wyse keycaps but then switched to some Model M keycaps yesterday when I was going to try this indoors with a bunch of IBM stuff in the background. That never panned out and I forgot to switch back to the floaters.

As much of a pain this was, it was fun do do the little arduino controller hack. I'm going to clean it up and make it more portable and less wiry.

[snacksthecat]

And here's today's submission. I was mostly just playing around with time remapping and trying different intervals.

My turntable I use for photogrammatry scans moves too quickly to really be viable for timelapse photography, but there aren't many slow moving things sitting around my apartment (well, aside from myself). Still kind of pretty though.

[SneakyRobb]

These are great and very aesthetic.

I really like the falling keys. And the timelapses are good. I don't have too much commentary, but I want to make a comment that I am really liking this series

[snacksthecat]

Thanks Robb, I'd like to do one where I'm tossing something at the camera (keycaps, switches, etc.) but haven't nailed it quite yet.

In the meantime, here's yet another timelapse. Watch me clean in the background while a dripping wet Russian keypad pans and tilts in the foreground!

My goal with this was to test out the arduino sketch that I made to control the panning camera head. Why is the camera not on the camera head? I'm not sure, for some reason I thought it would be more interesting this way Really though, it's a bit difficult to plan out something where the lens is going to be in focus when it's panning and tilting all over the place. I also don't have a good handle on how to accurately control the head. It's not like you program it to move a certain number of degrees at a time, you program it to move at a certain speed for a certain amount of time. For example, inbetween shots, move left for 20ms. So I just whipped something together based on the current shot count through guess work to see what it would turn out like. Oh and the keypad is wet because I wanted to add another element to the timelapse (i.e. drying over time).

It actually turned out pretty cool IMO. Kind of trippy with everything going on.

Side note, if you look very closely at the lamp right in the middle, you can see my poor cat hiding in fear of the vacuum. My other cat was in the bedroom and I kept leaving to keep her company because she threw up after dinner and wasn't acting like herself. She's all good today though it seems.

[snacksthecat]

Here's today's photo. It only took me like 20 tries to do.

[ddrfraser1]

Here's today's photo. It only took me like 20 tries to do.

Ha! That's awesome!

[snacksthecat]

Here's today's weird creation.

Special thanks to SneakyRobb because he

Spoiler:

sent me the 3D print, along with a few others

[snacksthecat]

Today, an ode to the humble Teensy

[SneakyRobb]

Yes. Nice case on the 3d print and I do enjoy the microcontroller. also those thrown keys are very cool

[snacksthecat]

Today did some super macro shots of a deconstructed Alps dampened cream switch. I enjoy playing with this lens but have trouble finding things small enough to photograph with it. It's starting magnification is 2.5x and goes up to 5x so stuff have to be really tiny to fit the frame. All these photos I took zoomed all the way out. I guess it's mostly for capturing insects. I also was having a difficult time figuring out this flash, which is very finicky. These came out a bit dark so I had to lighten them up after the fact. Pretty interesting, though, to see the bottom plastic in particular. It looks pretty smooth to the naked eye, but hit it with the flash and magnification and there's all sorts of little scratches.













If anyone can think of some small keyboard stuff to photograph, I'd love the suggestions. I do have another super macro lens which is less intense so it's much more flexible in what you can shoot with it. I actually took these pictures of my cats the other day with it and they turned out pretty great IMO. But generally it's most useful for small things (goes to 2x zoom).

[snacksthecat]

Another idea that sounded better in my head.

I found all these micro switch keypads (rubber dome MS) that I had harvested sensors from last year. I'd like to make use of as much of them as I can. Figured I'd start with the keycaps, so pulled all those off first. I had the idea to do a timelapse of them falling into a container and piling up and eventually overflowing. Well, I had to use two containers because I couldn't control where they were landing very well. I had rigged up a really stupid contraption made up of a shoe box and a pet toy that moves on its own at random intervals. Stupid, but it worked. Unfortunately the timelapse turned out a bit lame since there was no overflowing action happening. I should have made a funnel but I didn't and now here we are.

[snacksthecat]

Tried the melting ice thing again. This time I tried to find the cheapest, chintziest caps in my arsenal. Those of course came from //gainsborough! I'm kidding, he had kindly sent me a bunch of random sets, including a bunch of nice ones. This set however, I was sure we would see all the caps float up to the top. Unfortunately not. But I wanted to show off my 360 spinning abilities. The timelapse was over 3 hours shot at 6 second intervals. I wanted to go to bed and it was quite late so I cut it off toward the very end.

Also light is very bad because I didn't know how to set any proper lighting up without it being in the video.

This one has sound so mute if you don't want that.

[ddrfraser1]

Haha, I love our weird community

[snacksthecat]

Haha, I love our weird community

I'll take that as a compliment.

What's this? Snacks is posting something relevant to an actual keyboard? It can't be.

Well it is.

Wasn't sure how this was going to turn out because there were a lot of unknowns. First of all, the only thing going on in the background is apartment lights going on and off. The keyboard lights were actually pulsing, but it was a 25 second shutter time for each photo so it all kind of got lost. Still looks pretty cool/peaceful.

The keyboard stopped lighting up after about 2 hours, I guess maybe some weird timeout? Anyway, I tried to make the most of it by playing the timelapse in reverse in order to sync it up with some tunes.

[wadeak78]

I found all these micro switch keypads (rubber dome MS) that I had harvested sensors from last year.

These sound interesting, any details about them?

[forter4]

I want to check all my keyboards now for the date of manufacture. Then as they come up, I will post birthday photos

That is also a great idea

This is the photo for Friday I suppose. Much simpler than the timelapse but still a task to set it all up. It is very difficult to drop a handful of keycaps right where your camera is focused. I think these came out pretty cool though. Couldn't decide which one I preferred out of these two so here they both are.

Ummm what are those alps keycaps? I want them lol

[snacksthecat]

I found all these micro switch keypads (rubber dome MS) that I had harvested sensors from last year.

These sound interesting, any details about them?

Here is the ebay listing. Maybe reach out to the guy, I feel like he had a bunch.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/QTY-2-12SD3-6- ... 3201773083

Ummm what are those alps keycaps? I want them lol

Yeah I really like those as well! I don't know (or maybe remember) where they came from. I'm sure someone more versed in Alps theology could identify what board they go to.

[snacksthecat]

Here is yet another timelapse! I will get around to doing other photos at some point, I think. This is just too much fun.

I wanted to show off two things: I got a new camera lens. It's billed as "zero-distortion" which really translates to "very little distortion". Straight lines (e.g. buildings) look really awesome and rigid. You only start to see some distortion when you get get really close up with a shot. I took a picture of my cat and it terrified me.

I also wanted to say that I was able to rig my camera-as-a-trigger contraption up to the motorized turntable that I use for photogrammetry. I'm sure there's a smart way to do it, but what I did was open up the remote and wire up the 1 IC to an arduino. So the remote has wires coming out of it and it has to be in line of sight to work but it's pretty cool nonetheless.

Really want to do more outside stuff, but this is what I have to work with for now. I do have some funny picture ideas, but haven't had the motivation to set those up and take them. Really the biggest pain is setting up lights and taking them down.

But here's what I've got for now.

Audio again in case you want to mute.

[ddrfraser1]

Hahaha, this is awesome. I think you've found your calling.

[ZedTheMan]

I want to check all my keyboards now for the date of manufacture. Then as they come up, I will post birthday photos

That is also a great idea

This is the photo for Friday I suppose. Much simpler than the timelapse but still a task to set it all up. It is very difficult to drop a handful of keycaps right where your camera is focused. I think these came out pretty cool though. Couldn't decide which one I preferred out of these two so here they both are.

Ummm what are those alps keycaps? I want them lol

Hi! They look like caps from one of the toshiba satellite laptops from the late 80s/early 90s. I actually have a kb module from one of those. The switches are alps SKFS IIRC and they are pretty mediocre but the caps are awesome alps electric doubleshots. The modifiers are strange though so I should probably get a tai hao dolch set to try to match it, or see what can be done with the caps I do have.
Some of them have awesome tripleshots and other colors.(I could be confused on this fact)

[ddrfraser1]

I agree. Those are beautiful caps.

[snacksthecat]

Today I wanted to play around with motion blur and lighting a bit.

I built this little keycap pyramid as a subject, and used the TV as my moving background. It was surprisingly tricky to balance all the different factors, particularly getting good soft light on the keycaps and catching an interesting moment with *some* motion, but not too much on the TV. Oh and don't knock the pyramid over!

Unfortunately I had to trash a bunch of pictures that were otherwise good, but I'd left my overhead fan light on and you could see the harsh reflection on the screen. Had some fun with this one for sure though.

These were the two that I felt came out best:

In this one, the light on the keycaps is better in the sense that there's not so much of a distracting glare happening.


In this one, I like what's going on in the background better. There's some motion blur, but mostly it's a still moment so the picture comes through a bit more clear.


This is the youtube video I was watching. Sit down and strap in for 2.5 hours of groovy tunes.

[SneakyRobb]

Today I wanted to play around with motion blur and lighting a bit.

I built this little keycap pyramid as a subject, and used the TV as my moving background. It was surprisingly tricky to balance all the different factors, particularly getting good soft light on the keycaps and catching an interesting moment with *some* motion, but not too much on the TV. Oh and don't knock the pyramid over!

Unfortunately I had to trash a bunch of pictures that were otherwise good, but I'd left my overhead fan light on and you could see the harsh reflection on the screen. Had some fun with this one for sure though.

These were the two that I felt came out best:

In this one, the light on the keycaps is better in the sense that there's not so much of a distracting glare happening.


In this one, I like what's going on in the background better. There's some motion blur, but mostly it's a still moment so the picture comes through a bit more clear.


This is the youtube video I was watching. Sit down and strap in for 2.5 hours of groovy tunes.

Spoiler:

2560_BC_Colorized.jpg

[snacksthecat]

2560_BC_Colorized.jpg

Not sure if this is a meme that went over my head or if the image didn't attach.