I’ve decided to do some pretty significant upgrades to my rig before the new year. Now I’m in the lead-time doldrums. Here’s the list:

• Film & Batteries for the film camera: arrives monday here!
  
• Lightweight lens for the film camera: arrives tuesday. here!
  
• Custom boards for the controllers: ETA 3 weeks. 1 day!
• XBee Series 2 Coordinator: ETA 2 weeks. here!
• Misc. Electronic components: tbd (need to survey what I have)
• Re-assemble the camera I took the above shot with: tbd.

The goal is to have a film/digital convertible rig running by Jan 1. I should have a roughly 200m range on the controller, and it’ll be about the size of a pack of cigarettes.

In about three weeks, I’ll have my shiny new controller boards via Batch PCB. The controllers are based on the Atmel AVR series microcontrollers, all through hole parts, and the Xbee Series 2 Zigbee modules.

Woohoo.

Beautifully smooth winds out of the northwest let me get way offshore. It also made it quite easy to get over the Port of Oakland:

Seems like this camera does okay:

I did have one problem– the camera was focussing on the closest subject, which led to some odd focusses (particularly when it decided to focus on the line) — I did find the mode that’ll focus from 16ft to infinity. It remembers this mode between power-on and power-off (actually, the mode wheel is really nice, and will select between that various modes pretty smartly)

Hey, some more stuff out on the Alameda NAS, click for more:

And trying out a new style… let me know if you like it.

I think this is my first successfully stitched panorama using the KAP rig:

Best viewed Huge

Alameda Oakland Ferry

Originally uploaded by blp1979.

Trying my hand at shooting at the ferry terminal. The wind was crazy, a little too high, but with maybe 30-40 degrees of shift within it.

I had been trying to shoot over at the old crane, but the wind was too variable for me to get over to it without risking kite and camera.