2012 Storm Season coming… – Its not photography, its Farktography

This topic has 7 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 13 years, 4 months ago by caradoc.

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May 28, 2012 at 6:42 pm #2730

caradoc
Participant

This one’s from 2009 – two identical frames within a few seconds of each other. Finally got around to animating it…

May 29, 2012 at 12:02 am #47825

ravnostic
Participant

Heh. I’m very excited for this season’s monsoons. Hope we both get 100 shots just like this one (well, this two…)

May 29, 2012 at 2:00 am #47826

bender16v
Participant

I can’t wait either. I built a lightning trigger based on an Arduino board and modified plans from the internets. I haven’t been able to try it yet though, Michigan doesn’t have the greatest storms. Last year I was living in Mississippi and we had more storms than I cared for, especially the tornado types. I’m limited to trying this at home because I’d be afraid to take that device onto an airplane, the TSA would freak out.

May 29, 2012 at 2:04 am #47827

caradoc
Participant

I built a lightning trigger based on an Arduino board and modified plans from the internets.

Did you use the schematics and code from Maurice Ribble’s site? GlacialWanderer?

Here are some results from that particular circuit:

(Those are Chase Jarvis’ shoes in the last shot…)

May 29, 2012 at 2:54 am #47828

bender16v
Participant

I had to go back and check, and yes I started with that. I just read it again and noticed that he has a link to an explanation of his triggering circuit, which I didn’t see before. Instead of the 2N2222 transistors I am using tiny relays. They may not be fast enough, so I need to test it. But I went that way to keep the trigger 100% isolated from the board’s output just to be safe. I have the transistors and will use them if the relays are too slow. I added a pot for sensitivity adjustment, an extra (switched) photoresistor in case I orient the unit in a strange way (strapped to tripod?), and also a PIR sensor that I had sitting around for motion detection. I’ll try that out on birds or animals maybe. I rigged it up and it seems to work in my office, I just need to make a nice cable for it then test the speed. This is the first thing I’ve made with an Arduino and I sure wish they were around when I was a kid.

Those photos are super, if I can capture anything near that I’ll be happy.

May 29, 2012 at 3:20 am #47829

ravnostic
Participant

…and the discussion just went Greek. Lovely shots. Hope to fake the same by vice of 1000’s of exposures.

May 29, 2012 at 3:45 am #47830

Yugoboy
Participant

I would love ot get shots like that… unfortunately for that sort of shot our neighborhood is lined with trees. Hopefully I’ll get some chances somehow.

May 29, 2012 at 3:47 am #47831

caradoc
Participant

Instead of the 2N2222 transistors I am using tiny relays. They may not be fast enough, so I need to test it. But I went that way to keep the trigger 100% isolated from the board’s output just to be safe. I have the transistors and will use them if the relays are too slow.

Get your cable from FlashZebra. Just build a minijack into the circuit. Then you can use the same trigger for multiple cameras.

There’s a good table of trigger-to-shutter delay times here:

http://lightningtrigger.com/Compatibility.html#cameracompatibility

Look for the Shutter Lag column.

I didn’t even bother with relays, because a lightning strike is usually about 80-250ms, and when milliseconds count mechanical relays are too darned slow. I toyed with the idea of a solid state relay, but decided against it.

Just drop an optoisolator into the circuit and go with transistors. I couldn’t measure the time from spike in IR to the trigger output, which means I was getting somewhere under 1.5ms… Then there’s the 55ms delay for shutter lag, giving me a best-case of 51.5ms from the stepped leader to the shutter opening on my D7000, and 81.5ms from stepped leader to shutter opening on my poor old D80.
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