Craig Smith sent us these pics and note:

My telescope is low end in the scope-world, a 60mm refractor. But I discovered the eyepiece is the same size as my digital camera telephoto lens. My digital camera is low end in the camera world, too, a 3.2MP. But put them together with a custom PVC sleeve aligning lens-to-eyepiece, and I'm getting awesome moon shots. Here is the moon on 11/5/09. I added a camera support arm also, a quick adjustment of the tripod leg's wing nut, and I'm all aligned to photograph the skies.

In need of a more visible level for setting up long exposure night shots, zomie made an LED illuminated level attachment for use with his DSLR + Gorillapod setup. Check out his instructable for the step-by-step.

Peter Johansson is building a professional-grade medium-format camera. Like, from scratch. He's about 80% done and has done a wonderful job documenting the build. [Thanks, Billy!]

From photographer Kevin Van Aelst. [via Boing Boing]

Cardboard art virtuoso Kiel Johnson builds a giant twin lens reflex camera in this time-lapse video. Check out his other amazing cardboard creations on his site. [via Hi-Fructose]

Kiel Johnson

Jared from InventGeek begins a series of photo gear projects with his recipe for a 40" pop-up reflector -

So photography is not only a hobby of mine, but also more or less absolute necessity for what I do here on invent geek. That being said I have always been appalled at the high prices for photography equipment and accessories and I find myself thinking that I could make this a lot cheaper than that! Well its time I put my money where my mouth is I guess and finally start equipping my studio with the types of equipment I both want and need to create more consistent and higher quality imagery for our projects. So I have started a new series of projects in preparation to the launch of a new sister site in our how to network for photography, studio and lighting equipment and accoutrement that I am putting together. So we will be doing many projects across the board and wanted to start with something easy and yet worthwhile.

Kristin Boehm has posted a great detailed tutorial on how to make a lightbox out of K'Nex pieces for product photography. She was digging for the perfect materials and stumbled across a box of K'Nex from her childhood, and the rest is history.

I'm not entirely sure who made this video. I have this strange intuition it might be someone named "Werner Mehl," and that the video might be copyright 2009, and....somehow, that Werner's website is probably www.kurzzeit.com. Isn't it weird how sometimes stuff just comes to you?

Sometimes you want to tell a story that takes a while to unfold. One of the beauties of digital photography is that you are not limited by how many shots are on the roll of film, now you can shoot until your camera's card is full. With the high capacity cards available now, you can shoot a very large amount of high resolution photos and barely fill your card.

In this project, we'll use Windows Movie Maker, which comes bundled with the operating system on many computers. If you have a Mac or Ubuntu machine, keep looking. iMovie surely has a process similar to this, and I haven't found a good way to work with movies on Ubuntu. Add your thoughts in the comments if you know of good software for other other platforms. All the windows machines in my classroom run on XP, I have heard that Moviemaker is a bit harder to find in Vista.

Making movies and sharing them online is a great way for students to sum up what they have learned from doing a project. By using the video description, students have a place to park a written explanation of what the project helped them learn and what the photos depict. They can write the text in any word processor and then add it to the video description when it is uploaded. If they need to alter it later, they can just edit the notes by logging in and making the changes.

Instructables user Light_Lab writes:

I collect lots of documents as part of my work; recently I decided I should let the sheets of ‘tree stuff’ return to the environment and clear up my living space and office by scanning everything I could. I had recently got rid of a flat bed scanner; it was far too slow and I hardly ever used it. I needed something that was convenient and fast; it didn't need to make ultra high fidelity scans, just readable would do.

Check out the tutorial for this easy and cheap copy stand.

Our friends over at iFixIt.com just couldn't keep their screwdrivers and spudgers off of the new Coolpix S1000pj, the digital camera with a built-in video projector. They just had to find out how Nikon fit all that bleeding-edge tech into that tiny camera case.

Here's some of what they discovered in their testing and teardown:

* A room has to be quite dark to view the projector's image properly. We expected as much given the size of the projector, but the image quality is mediocre at best. Anything that's projected looks like it was shot in the '70s.

* Surprisingly, both the front and rear outer cases are machined out of aluminum. It's quite a solid camera.

* The speaker pumps out some pretty solid sound when the camera is in projector mode.

* Like most compact digital cameras with no externally telescopic lenses, the S1000pj's internal zoom lenses move perpendicular to the front face.

* Light has to travel through at least four glass lenses until it shines on the CCD sensor. What a journey!

* Disassembling this camera is not for the faint of heart -- Nikon definitely did not intend this device to be user serviceable. We had to de-solder a bunch of components including the camera cover actuator, projector LED, and flash bulb.

* Light for projecting images is supplied by a very powerful LED that even has its own heat sink to conduct heat to the aluminum front panel.

Nikon Coolpix S1000pj Teardown

Too lazy to actually get out and take pictures? Then you might want to check out Photosketch, an interesting research project by researchers at Tsinghua University. Starting with a basic sketch consisting of shapes and tags describing what you want, the software searches a database of images and finds things that will fit.

Their site is suspiciously down, at the moment, however kottke posted a link to their research paper. Hopefully this actually gets released!

[Thanks Stuart!]

Name a truly great British film and chances are it was made at Pinewood Studios, the most cinematic landmark Old Blighty has. Its reputation has resonated worldwide thanks to the biggest names in cinema filling its spaces and next month you will be able to get an insight into the craft and guile that goes on in there, when the Movieum of London in the city’s Southbank showcases underwater photographs from movies such as Casino Royale, The Da Vinci Code and Elizabeth: The Golden Age, as well as television features and music videos.

From Gizmodo:

Photographer Ben Cooper took this photo of a Delta 4-Heavy rocket launching at Cape Canaveral using a sound-activated camera. And when your camera is that close to a launch, your lens probably won't survive.

This Insane Photo Destroyed a Camera Lens

How do you photograph a 300' tall tree in a dense forest with no clear sight lines? Wildlife photographer Michael Nichols did it by taking a bunch of close-ups using a special camera rig and stitching them together digitally. NPR has the full story. [via Hack-a-Day]

In this week's Ask CRAFT column, I fielded a reader's question about photographing your projects. It's applicable for all kinds of makers, so go on and check it out!

As part of a course at the United States Military Academy at West Point, maker Roy D. Ragsdale developed a prototype Street View-like camera using a laptop, $300 in off-the-shelf components, and open source software. A Python script captures eight 1280x1024px JPEG files that are then stitched together and uploaded to Google Earth.

Construction was straightforward. On a flat octagonal heavy-cardboard base, I glued small posts for the cameras' clips to latch onto. I aligned each unit and then placed the USB hubs and the GPS receiver in the middle. I secured the cables with Velcro and sandwiched everything with another piece of cardboard. The whole thing's the size of a small pizza box, weighing less than 1 kilogram. Excluding the notebook (a 2-gigahertz machine with 512 megabytes of RAM running Ubuntu Linux), the hardware cost about $300.

[thanks, Erico]

Instructables user BobS made a gyroscopic image stabilizer from two harddrives and some spare parts. I'll save this one for my next helicopter trip over the Serengeti.

Stephan Martin writes in to tell us about his homemade thermal imaging system, the Thermoscanner. He mounted a TPA81 thermopile array onto an XY servo mount, then hooked it up to his computer using an Arduino microcontroller. A Processing program is then used to collect data from the sensor and display it in an image.

The resolution is pretty coarse, but it is pretty sweet to be able to make thermal images for around $150!

The best email newsletter hands down for photography crafts is Photojojo. Thanks to Amit's review one year, I found my Nikon D40 and have been in love with taking photos ever since. Now Amit and Kelly wow us again with their new book, Photojojo! Insanely Great Photo Projects and DIY Ideas filled with 50 projects so you can do more with all the cool photos you take. It's not just about printing them out and making a photo album. This book shows you how to use your photos to make cool things such as a lampshade or messenger bag (pictured below).The second half of the book is like taking a photography class. You'll learn techniques for taking better photos as well as fun ways you can experiment with different photo techniques. I love the tips on how to do digital color correcting after you've taken your photos. If you love taking photos and want to learn how to do more with them, this book is for you!

Book Giveaway Time!
We are giving away 3 copies of the Photojojo! book.Just leave a comment in this post and tell us why you need this book. Please make sure you include your email address in the comment form field (won't be published). All comments will be closed by Noon PST on Wednesday, September 23rd. The lucky winners will be announced next week on the site. Good luck!

Project: Ginormous Photo Mosaics
Even if you are living in an apartment and can't put holes in your walls, you can still get some great art up. Download the project PDF to make this stunning photo mosaic where you'll be able to see the wonderful memories you have of your friend and family.

• Matchbox collision photography [above, bottom-right]
  
• LED throwie analysis [above, bottom-left]
  
• Vintage viewfinder photo adapter [above, top-right]
  
• Timelapse history of the sky [above, top-left]

Although there aren't specific directions on how to make one, the image above does make it look easy. via - DIYPhotography

In the Maker Shed:


High-Speed Photography Kit Version 4

Check out this amazing photograph of a chunk of lightly oxidized bismuth metal. Wikimedia Commons identifies the author as Alchemist-hp, who has produced some other really cool element sample photos.

Flickr member victorf built this simple adapter to capture the view from a Kodak Duaflex II with his digital camera. Check out some of the results in his Through the viewfinder photoset.

Frustrated by bad photos on Ebay and Craigslist, Instructables user bloomautomatic shares with us some tips for better close-up photos.

• How-To: Freeform Atari Punk Console
• Vector graphic schematic symbols
• Hangmanduino
• Circuit bending work station
• Arduino Pro housing in aluminum

Flickr user foto_fer posted this nice writeup of how to make a cable trigger for his DSLR camera, to allow him to focus and snap photos without touching the camera. The original writeup is in Spanish, however you can read it in English using machine translation. The total cost was around US $22, however it could probably be made using scavenged parts for free.

Don't have a wired trigger port for your camera? Try a wireless remote for your Nikon DSLR, or an electromechanical trigger for any camera.

Instructables user Housekey posted this awesome tutorial on replacing the lenses in a classic Land camera with pinhole optics. Instant pinhole photos!

Computational photography researchers at Stanford have developed this open-source 'Frankencamera' using a sensor from a Nokia n95 cell phone, Canon camera lenses, and an ARM development board. Their goal is to create a future where your digital camera is no different than any other computer, and you can load new programs into it in order to change how it works. Of course, you can kind of do that now with Canon cameras by using CKDK, however their approach is from the ground up and should be much more versatile.

I love my Nikon camera, but I would love to be able to open it up and reprogram it at my bidding!

[via technabob]

More:

• Inside the Elphel open source camera
• HOW TO - Canon Hacker's Development Kit
• Weekend Project: Scanner Camera