backing up and emulating

[Ryanfaescotland]

Yeah mate that'd be awesome not sure how good the pics are going to be though there looking pretty blurry so far. I'll post one up later if you want to see an example.

[Zach]

I use a tripod for my pics.. Or when I can't I find some other way to set it ontop of something and set the timer.

Also make sure you are taking your picture with sufficient lighting and with the flash on. On my camera turning the flash off totally kills the focus for some reason (cheap POS), and having extra lighting also helps keep it clear.

[Ryanfaescotland]

Problem is I'm working on the floor and taking photo's from above so can't really rest the camera on anything. I'll try propping things up and sitting the cam on the floor instead or if that fails I can always try using the video camera and grabbing stills from that although it's quite a hassle and I'd rather avoid that.

Anyways here's a couple of pics.

This is a pretty good one (so imagin what the bad ones are like)


Here is a bad one



Here's the worst one!

[Zach]

You DEFINITELY need more lighting in those pictures regardless of the blurring. The pics are gonna "make" the Article - unless you are proficient enough to actually draw technical diagrams, in which case that would be OK.

[Ryanfaescotland]

I can draw a basic circut as in a power source, a resistor and a bulb but I doubt I can draw it properly and I really doubt I could draw this circut. Anyways I'd rather avoid that since this guide is meant to be as simple as possible.

Here are the new pics taken using my camcorder instead and with the items put on a white piece of paper. I also changed my bulb from an energy effiecint one to a 100W one so if the world bursts into flames blame Zach.





They are alot better IMHO but could probably be lighter still I'll prob try using a table light next to where I'm filming see what difference that makes.

EDIT - I've tested it and the bulb next to it makes no difference so that's as light as it gets least without photoshop which I don't have.

[Zach]

When photographing things in a room you usually want back-lighting or foreground lighting. a light source from behind the camera may work better to your advantage. Or behind the object you are filming.

Putting it next to it won't do much as the light source is hitting it from the side and not hitting the proper area to illuminate the whole object...

Hell you could always go down to a local druggers and get a disposable Kodak with flash or something cheap like that, and have it developed digitally onto a CD or something... (disks are evil - horrible compressed images)

All that aside, whatever the case I will probably clean the pictures up when you send them to me anyhow.

[Ryanfaescotland]

[Zach]

Those are pretty decent pictures if that's your camcorder, I would think they'd work

[Ryanfaescotland]

Yeah that's from the camcorder. I'll keep a copy of the unedited ones from now on for you but it's not a digital camcorder so it's quite a scutter hence I can't be assed going back and redoing all the ones I've already done!

Making a start on the construction now and already I've found I'm not listening to my own advice of 'read the instructions right through before begining" since it says to by a 62-pin connector then tells you later on if you've bought a 64-pin you can skip this step.... so my instructions are for the 62-pin extra step way but I'll probably mention it.

[Ryanfaescotland]

It's finished!!

Got a problem though. I've set up an old computer to test it on since my laptop doesn't have a parallel port but inorder to get it to work I need the software needed onto the old computer. Laptop doesn't have floppy discs.

Only way I can see is burning it to CD-R which should work since the old comp has a CD-Rewritter so should be able to read the CD's burnt from the laptop. Apparently not.

I burn the software on the laptop but when I open the CD in the old computer nothing appears. I am using CD-R's and not DVDs. Anyone know where I'm going wrong or what I need to do??

Old Computer - Windows 98, CD-ReWritter
Laptop - Windows Vista, DVD-ReWritter