Andrew Hazelden's Blog

Today I just completed with my brother, Russell, our most adventurous and complex aerial video from our Multiplex Easy Star model airplane. The video is called “An Aerial Exploration of West Dover” and it is a ride high above West Dover, Nova Scotia. It was filmed in 720p High Definition video.

The airplane was controlled by a 72 MHz Hitec Optic 6 R/C radio and flown using a 900 MHz video link which provided a FPV ( First Person View ). This video was recorded on August 18, 2010 in 720p HD with a Canon Powershot SD780IS Camera with CHDK.

The music used in the video was “Un instant per sempre” and “Our Moon” composed by Roger Subirana Mata.

If you are on High Speed Internet make sure to enable the 720p resolution video option on the lower right of the video controls so you will be able to see all sorts of fine detail.

West Dover Harbour

Privateer's Island

The View of Privateer's Island Looking Towards Mackerel Cove

Power's Lake, West Dover

Here are two photos taken at sunrise today in the West Dover Barrens. Photographed using the RAW DNG feature in CHDK using a Canon Powershot Sd780IS.

Mist over the lake

Sunrise in the Barrens

This is a Phantogram of a Canon Powershot SD400 camera. Red / Cyan 3D glasses are required to view this stereoscopic image.  I think that this is my best Phantogram to date, and I am really happy with it. I processed the images in Apple Shake. I have now decided to show a preview of the printed Phantograms so people can see what they look like before they print them.

Canon SD400 Phantogram Anaglyph Preview

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Printed SGI O2 Phantogram image

Today I created a printable phantogram image of my SGI O2 computer. A phantogram is an anaglyph stereoscopic image that tries to pop-up off the page when viewed from about 16 inches away at a 45° degree angle. It is viewed with red / cyan glasses. It is best experienced printed off in color on letter sized photo paper. If you have an Apple iPad, I would love to hear from you on how it looks.

I prepared the phantogram image in Apple Shake using two cornerpin nodes to make a perspectival anamorphosis from the left and right images.

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Icelandic Volcanic Ash

I recently was given a sample of volcanic ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull Volcano. This is the volcano that caused air traffic interruptions in May 2010 throughout Europe due to ash drifting several kilometers high in the atmosphere. The ash has a dark gray appearance and the particle sizes varied greatly. I examined the ash under a trinocular microscope at 45x and 90x magnification. Large particles of the ash had a diameter of 0.72 mm, medium sized ash particles were around 0.24 mm, and small ash particles were 0.05 mm and smaller. I used Helicon Focus to DOF (Depth of Field) Stack the microphotographs for clarity.

Measuring ash particle sizes using calipers.

DOF Stacking

Volcanic Ash Pile

More Volcanic Ash

I just finished dissecting an old Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse. The mouse uses a CMOS image sensor with a 22 x 22 pixel sensor with a total resolution of 484 pixels. The CMOS Sensor IC (Integrated Circuit) is cased in a clear 32 pin tqfp package that allows you to see inside it. The mouse was a wireless model and had two RF coils on the circuit board.

I used Depth-of-Field stacking to enhance the clarity of the two images taken under a microscope. This involves taking about 15 pictures under the microscope at different levels of focus and then using a DOF stacking program to merge the focused part of each image into one ultra clear image. Helicon Focus or Adobe Photoshop are two good DOF Stacking programs. There is a GIF-A-Mation at the bottom of this post that shows the RF Coil image at different levels of focus.

Microsoft Optical Mouse CMOS Sensor

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