Archive for the 'Video' Category
How to build a camcorder
I have always wanted a camcorder for myself and not just any camcorder. I wanted one a bit like a professional broadcast camcorder, where I would be able to mount ad-ons like pre-amps, lights and all the other ever so cool stuff you’ll see professionals packing. However I’m not about to pay the horiffic price of eg. a Red Camera . So let’s just build one…
Basically, a camcorder only consists of 8 things;
1) The optics
I’ll recomend SLR optics - they come in all shapes and sizes in a good quality at reasonable prizes compared to Camcorder optics. It’s time for dusting off the MF-lenses you’ve got in the attick. For how to mount the SLR optics on a CCD Camera read this article
Nokia 6280 with SLR optics
Resently the cameras on cellphones are getting better and better. How ever the optics on them are mostly crap made of cheap plastic.
Then i spawned the idea “Why not oparate an SLR lens on to the cell?”
This hack will give you 36x optical zoom on your cell just because of the crop factor + the zoom of the lens you may use. I’d strongly recomend using a prime lens for easier calibrating the focal distance.
I chosed to use a Nikon 50mm f/1.4…
Super zoom on a surveillance camera
For some reason I’ve always wanted a video camera with a huge amount of zoom.
Why..? Well. For no good reason at all. I just did. That drew me to build the zoom converter..
This strange setup gave me a good idea about the aprox distance between the cam & the lens.
A little theory:
One of the major issues to get at good picture is the optic the light has to pass through, before it hits the LCD, CMOS etc.
And the cheapest way to get a quality lens and with the most amount of zoom, is by using your standard 35mm SLR optics of any brand. Even a lot of the cheapest ones will do. ( a standard 70-300mm costs aprox 160$). These optics are the ones with the biggest market share and there fore the cheapest and easiest to get.
