Read more..
Find your perfect LensSomething that has made a big impact on my photography is an odd looking device I made myself. Let me explain why I made it. The Pentax K-x was the first DSLR that I bought. It's a great camera and I don't regret buying it. But unfortunately there was a limitation that prevented me from taking a certain kind of picture. I wanted to take star trail pictures that showed the apparent rotation of the stars. The best way to do this is to take many pictures one after the other and stack them together to show the trails. An intervalometer is used to make the camera take many pictures in a row. But unlike most newer cameras, the K-x lacks a built-in intervalometer. And if you were to buy an external one, there is nowhere to plug it in on the K-x. So I had to find some way to hold the shutter down.
Once I got the adaptor that slipped into the hot shoe, making the rest of the device was easy. If you search, "tripod screw hotshoe adaptor" on ebay you can find it for a couple bucks. I found the rest of parts around my house. I used a small screw to attach a piece of rubber to a piece of steel. The other end of the piece of steel was inserted in the hot shoe adaptor. After that I simply had to bend it at the right angle so it would hold the shutter button down.
To use it I first find the proper exposure (usually something like 30 seconds, f4, ISO 400-1600). Then I set the camera to continuous shooting mode. After inserting the device and making sure it aligns with the shutter button, the K-x will start taking pictures nonstop until the battery dies or the memory card fills up. Here are a couple startrail pictures I have shot with this device:
 |
 |
To learn more about how to take star trail pictures, check out this article here on PF: An Introduction to Star Trail Photography.
The camera can also be pointed at a faint celestial object and the resulting pictures can be stacked a different way:
I love taking pictures of the night sky as you can probably tell. When I upgrade my K-x I'm sure I will use an intervalometer to take a lot more pictures. But since right now all I have is the K-x, I'll keep using this device to take star trail and deep space pictures. Thanks for reading my blog post.
- Kevin (krp)
Rating:
pentaxians are the most inventive race...
Absolutely brilliant, this is the kind of gizmo that pro's use as a work around for a problem, (use of Blu tac for improvised tripod and filter holder being some more), first class dude.
Does anybody notice that in manual mode, shutter set on Bulb and using a IR remote Pentax, the remote becomes a T shutter : one click makes opened the shutter and a second one makes it closed ?
Thanks for the comments everyone.
@JimJohnson I thought about doing that, but the IR remotes I tried never worked well enough.
Very nice images and great write up.
Congrats Kevin, looks like this story is very popular on our Facebook page!
Heh, I had this exact same problem! I wanted to shoot multiple 30 sec exposures with my K-x. What I did to accomplish this was to get a rubber adhesive foot like the kind that you stick on the bottom of electronics. I put that rubber foot over the shutter release and held it down with rubber bands wrapped under the grip. Then I just set it to 30 sec exposures on continuous. I guess necessity really is the mother of invention.
I'm shocked to hear it does not have a cable port for a release cable!..
Anyway,...good idea, but how about the infer-red Remote Control F ?
Echoing the 'you can't do that' with a K-x as it lacks a port to plug an intervalometer into. I never attempted star trails with mine due to this limitation.
@ SongEmu & JimJohnson
Both of you obviously didn't read the article, or look at the tech specs for the K-x. Tell me, where on a camera WTHOUT A RELEASE SOCKET are you going to connect this "better solution"?
Search the D0-It-Yourself forum for "Make a wired release for any Pentax IR camera". You can plug in nearly any device that operates as a simple electrical switch, and that includes many photographic intervalometers.
That's so cool!
The K-x was my first DSLR also and I ran into the same problem when I would take long exposures of lightning. I solved it by placing a coin over the shutter button and holding it down with a rubber band. Interesting little rig and amazing pictures too.
or you could just use an eraser and a rubber band. :)
Clever! I went with the IR LED and mp3 file method. Then I decided it was too much trouble on the K-x and got a K-5!
"For a few bucks" I made a 2-button remote trigger from a computer mouse and a cell phone headset, and then soldered in leads that let me hook it up to an Arduino if I wanted to...
I mean. This works, and I applaud your DIY spirit. But there are better solutions.
Nice hardware timelapse mode :). Great creativity!
Thanks for posting the good article and very good photos.