Comments on: Nikon and DIY

By: flames

flames — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:21:26 +0000

Canon cameras have 2.5mm jacks that control the shutter release,which means that you can actually make your own shutter release. I found a fairly good one at the instructables website. That type has a shutter switch for bulb mode, a shutter button for non bulb exposures, and a focusing button.

By: Rev. BigDumbChimp, KoT

Rev. BigDumbChimp, KoT — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:35:58 +0000

Yeah I didn’t add up the cost factor. I haven’t burned the battery down on it yet but honestly I mostly use it for its cable release function.

Next thing for me to pick up is the AC adapter for my D300 so I can get some really nice star trail shots and not worry about draining the camera battery to its knees.

By: Austringer

Austringer — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 22:59:31 +0000

Garry, thanks for the pointers on image improvement software for time exposure.

I do have a 6″ telescope and adapter for my camera, but I don’t have a clock drive, so I’m limited to fairly short exposures if I don’t want streaks.

By: Garry

Garry — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:27:19 +0000

I dabble in astrophotography and hear you about the hot pixels in all CCD images. There are dedicated astrophotography packages like MaxDSLR or MaximDL from Cyanogen and Nebulosity from Stark labs that will do all of the necessary tricks with nighttime exposures like hot pixel removal, image stacking and star alignments. There is a free tool that can eliminate some hot pixels, oddly enough called “Hotpixels”

http://www.mediachance.com/digicam/hotpixels.htm

A better method has you take a “darkframe” exposure (with the lenscap on) using the same exposure settings as the “lightframe” photograph and subtracting them using a program like BlackFrame NR, from the same website as above.
Photoshop can also be used to do darkframe/lightframe subtraction but it won’t be automated.
Another free tool is DeepSkyStacker http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html
That can do a lot of these tricks with nighttime photos.
There are a lot of packages like this geared to astrophotographers and they are a lot of fun to play around with.

By: Austringer

Austringer — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:00:39 +0000

Yep, that looks cool.

On the other hand, MC-22 ($40) + wall jacks ($5) + switches ($3) + wire ($1) = less than $50. MC-36 = over $120.

I’m sure the MC-36 looks better than my bit of stuff, but the family budget is pretty much strapped from having both of us go through grad school recently. Plus, my DIY project has an advantage over the MC-36 in two respects mentioned in a user review on the B&H site:

Time will tell whether this will effect battery life.In the end it does exactly what it is supposed to do but the price is a bit high and be ready to spend another [$]!! or so if you need the extension cord.

I don’t have to worry about batteries. And I’ve tried my lash-up with a 100′ telephone extension cord, and it works fine. I don’t remember how much I paid for the extension cord, since that dates back to non-wireless telephony, and I’m not using it for anything else these days.

By: Rev. BigDumbChimp, KoT

Rev. BigDumbChimp, KoT — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:14:42 +0000

Nikon makes another remote for the 10 pin connection that has a timer on it as well as a shutter lock. I use the MC-36 with my D300 and get great long exposures using bulb and a set timer above the 30 second in camera setting. It looks like it is compatible with the D2Xs.