
Camera Meets Speedometer, Travel Across Country Together 290
BluKnight writes "This guy hacked his camera to his speedometer, and ended up taking a picture EVERY MILE during a trip across the US. Kodak has the results (Flash in use!) of this venture. For my next hack, I'm going to interface to my digital camera to take a picture every time I blink -- I'll never miss what I'm seeing again!" The best part is the fact that he stopped every 36 miles to swap film rolls. Sad thing is, I understand this. (I still love film) The interactive map is -really- well done, but requires flash...
I really hate to inform you of this... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I really hate to inform you of this... (Score:2)
speedometer? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:speedometer? (Score:2)
Re:speedometer? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:speedometer? (Score:2)
Re:speedometer? (Score:2)
You set your cruise control for, lets say, 60/h on the motorway. You start a stop watch.
See how much time elapsed since you started the speedo check, till when you ended.
It should be close to 5 minutes. Deviation shows that you have an improperly calibrated speedometer. You can also divide this down so that you make the trip comfortable for traffic conditions. Travel for 30km/h for a time of 10 minutes, or 120 km/h for 2.5 minutes. It works out quite well, that no matter how fast you are actually going through the speedo checkpoints that you can figure out how fucked your speedo is. I suppose that when they put those signs up people actually knew about math. And those were the good ol' days.
Re:speedometer? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:speedometer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:speedometer? (Score:2, Interesting)
At least that was the case for truck tachograph units when I worked on them a long long time ago...
speedos typically count pulses. (Score:2)
The odometer is also tied into this.. in fact, most odometers of the past several years have used stepper motors to turn the digits. In the past 2 years most manufacturers have dispensed with that completely and gone to a digital display.
Speed (Score:2)
Hey, maybe you could rig it to take a photo every time your speed drops below 50 mph. You might get some exciting pictures of stoplights, motels, convenience stores, etc.
Cheers,
IT
I can hear them now... (Score:3, Funny)
Get the Crossover Plugin (Score:2)
Stopped? (Score:2)
And we thought people talking on a cell phone were hazardous.... Doesn't Kodak make an extended roll for professionals, too? I'd think a 200 frame magazine would have been a lot handier, although a pain to change out compared to a standard roll.
Re:Stopped? (Score:3, Informative)
For example Nikon has 250 [mir.com.my] & 750 [mir.com.my] frame (check them out -- huge) 'backs'. You need to take back from your camera and change it.
Of course you need lots of film for that too. Pretty much standard is 100ft (30.5m) or 55ft (17m) rolls (with these you can fill standard 36 exposure canisters). That is enough for about 800 exposures.
bulk load film, autofocus camera body (Score:2)
You're a little bit off there. A 100 foot roll of bulk load film is good for about 18 rolls, 36 exposures each. 36*18 = 648 exposures, not 800.
Also, the equipment you linked to doesn't appear to work with any autofocus Nikon bodies, something that I think would be pretty vital in this situation.
On that note, I would use a Canon body. The optics are nearly as good as Nikon, and the autofocus system is much faster, and in my experience, more reliably hits the objects you really wanted.
Re:bulk load film, autofocus camera body (Score:2)
Well, yeh, probably.
I calculated it this way: 30.5*100*10mm/((36mm+2mm)/exposure) ~= 802 (exposures).
Remember that with single back there is no need to 'loose' exposures when reloading. (2-4 exposures/36exposure roll).
I believe AF is not importaint here as I would use a 16/20mm at hyperfocal.
About Canon, all is nice and swell, but I failed my google search for canon large-amount exposure back. D'you know if they have some or what is their solution for that?
getting out more often (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if you spent an evening just looking at skimming through these, you could get an idea.
It used to be that people often lived their whole lives within walking distance of their home village. You can easily have the equivalent of that today, with close knit communities of other types.
Damn... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Damn... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Damn... (Score:2, Insightful)
(However, I'm not glad they're gone, I don't particularly care about them. It's sad that lives were lost but buildings on the other end of the country from me are another story. -1, here I come.)
Re:Damn... (Score:2)
I agree though that I'm glad they're not edited out... I'm not ashamed of how unified we became. That's why I agree with the "Never Forget" line... Why should we? I certainly don't want to.
Reminds me of Confluence.org (Score:5, Interesting)
This [orbitals.com] is a cool map, showing where they have photos, and is fully navigable.
Re:Reminds me of Confluence.org (Score:2)
Re:Reminds me of Confluence.org (Score:2)
Re:Reminds me of Confluence.org (Score:2)
you have to watch out for that Huge image of the entire world. They werent joking about it being huge. I only have 256Mb RAM, and it ran out rather quickly.
Driving across the US (Score:2)
I'll tell you folks, there ain't that much to see from behind the wheel of a car. It's mostly grass.
Anyone who thinks the US is overpopulated has probably never left their home city.
Re:Driving across the US (Score:2)
Since I was only in Calgary overnight, I had driven over 3000 miles with relatively little vehicular traffic between Denver and Calgary. (I highly recommend I-15 in southern Montana in a sports car.) Once I left Banff, I started filling up at every station because there was no guarantee that the next station was open, that the road wasn't closed due to a landslide or avalanche, etc.
I'm a glutton for punishment - this was actually a test run for a drive to Alaska in a non-RV - but I agree that the people who stay in cities have no idea of just how empty much of this continent is. Or just how large the large cities are - it can take hours to cross Vancouver or Seattle even if traffic is going at full speed.
Cool concept (Score:2)
The barn is supposedly where the Last IBM Mainframe ever used at Rose was housed, according to urban legend circa 1982.
--Mike--
Fishy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fishy (Score:2)
Umh, I don't dee hat you're talking about, but if you see the gas station twice, maybe he went there in the afternoon and stayed in a hotel room close to that station and then came back there in the morning to get gas?
You notice that all of the shots are during the daylight hours...the photos wouldn't have turned out too well otherwise
Re:mile long loop? (Score:2)
Now, assuming that I could see this (I can't)...I see the gas station and then an open field...
It is certainly possible for the guy to have driven into town for the night...driven ~1/2 mile into town and then driven back to the gas station.
It's possible, but what I think is more likely is that there's a bug in the flash code used on the site and the poster was seeing the same exact image twice...
Re:Fishy (Score:2)
I have to admit that if I were taking pictures on a cross-country jaunt, I wouldn't mount said camera to take snaps out the front windscreen, otherwise I'd get many picturesque shots of the splattered bugs, burger wrappers on the dash, the Thomas Map and all the other nasty bits that live up there.
Question: If you're going 70-100 mph (as you are wont to do in that godforsaken wasteland), and you have your camera set to maximum shutter speed with very fast film (1000 speed), will your pictures be blurred beyond recognition if your camera pointed out the side window?
Re:Fishy (Score:2)
Not with a professional camera... My wife has a very nice professional grade 35mm camera. She took some pictures of me sitting in my ultralight with the engine running & prop spinning. In every shot, the prop looks perfectly still.
Now I know damn well that prop was spinning a lot faster as far as the film was concerned than looking out the side of a car at 70+mph...
Re:Fishy (Score:2)
This is only true for film cameras as they actually have shutters. Digital cameras (well, the ones I've owned at least) don't have shutters. They usually play a little shutter sound until you find the menu to turn that off.
Re:Fishy (Score:2)
Most digital cameras have shutters, but they have the "fake sound" because what people here is normally not the shutter sound but the mirror slap (on an SLR), and the film wind.
The shutter on my digital ELPH is quite quiet, but you can hear it. The shutter on my EOS-D30 is also pretty quiet, but since it is an SLR you hear the mirror slap froma fair distance (farther then from my ELAN 7 which has a very quier mirror slap, and rubberised parts on the film transport so they are very quiet...and I susspect wear faster so Canon can upsell you in 4 years rather then 10...).
The shutter in some digital cameras is a leaf shutter. I don't know a huge amount about them, but they seem to have far lower top speeds (like 1/800th, or 1/1000th), but allow flash sync for a larger range of speeds. However you can only get the higher speeds at smaller apeture as the apeture is really the shutter (I think). I know they are also very common on medimum format cameras.
The CCDs on most digital cameras can not discharge except in the dark, but some can stop accumulating light ("eletronic shutter"). The CCD in the EOS-1D is like that, which is how it gets a 1/500th of a second sync and 1/16000th max speed (the EOS-1D is almost exactly like it's film counterpart the EOS-1V which gets 1/250th and 1/8000th). I do think there are a very very few CCDs that can use only an eletronic shutter, but I'm not sure.
Anyway disable the shutter beep, hold your camera to your ear and take a shot. I bet you hear a focus motor run and then a faint click of the shutter.
If there is a camera store close by try the same with a rangefinder (one without autowind), or an EOS-1RS with the CF set that makes it not advance film (for single shots in a classical concert or other enforced quiet zones).
Re:Fishy (Score:2)
Crap, shame I can't mod that up since I already posted :-)
0.1 feet is a lot for things close to the camera, but I bet it would be decent for things some reasonable distance away, and since you are likely to be using hyperfocal focausing anyway stuff close to you will be blurry even if it is still. With a 28mm lens at f/8 focusing to 12.8559... feet gets you everything from 6.45 feet to 1799.14 feet in focus (assuming the normal circle of confusion size for 35mm film).
Re:Fishy (Score:3, Informative)
OK, first there is no jeep. Second, 612 [kodak.com] is grass/sky, 613 [kodak.com] is a service stations and 614 [kodak.com] is grass/sky
Are you seeing straight??? (Score:2)
[613] - Picture of a service station
[614] - Picture of an empty field
Ever drive across US? (Score:2)
Re:Ever drive across US? (Score:2)
I hope the two in the back were kids
Re:Ever drive across US? (Score:2)
I always wondered... (Score:3, Funny)
So that's who's still buying film.
Re:I always wondered... (Score:3, Interesting)
he would have just been a kook who had hacked his digital cam to snap a shot at every turn of the odometer.
sorry kodak - but this does not inspire me to go out and buy more film and take more pictures. unless you have a lot of beautiful naked girls that would like me to photograph them....
of course now that this is live on slashdot - all the kodak marketing types are sitting back rubbing their hand in glee when they see the hits
Re:I always wondered... (Score:2)
If this isn't typical
Kodak also makes digital cameras (Score:2)
Clearly not geography majors... (Score:2)
Notice on the "slide show" they have Arizona labled "COLORADO".
You'd think a site about photographing the various states of the USA, that they could get the state names right.
Re:Clearly not geography majors... (Score:4, Funny)
Why not do this for a city? (Score:2)
I could then put in some coordinates from the GPS, and viola, a cool project.
--Mike--
Re:Why not do this for a city? (Score:2, Interesting)
Every city should do this every 20 years; it's great when you are trying to learn about the historyof your community.
Re:Why not do this for a city? (Score:2)
--Mike--
Dammit! (Score:2)
A couple years ago my now-wife and I took a road trip in a 19-foot van named MURR! (that was really its name). We took two months, just about, and drove down from Vancouver, BC down to San Diego, across to Texas and New Orleans, up through Kentucky (Hi Amelie!), Ohio and Milwaukee (Hi Melissa!), then to Ontario, across the northern States again, up through Saskatchewan, Alberta and BC...home again, jiggity-jog. All told, 20,700 km (speak metric, American dogs!).
My idea was to get a Super-8 camera and a timer. I calculated that one frame every minute would, over two months, add up to about an hour of footage, which seemed the perfect length for a documentary-ish sort of thing -- narration, music, whatnot.
It was during the leadup to takeoff that I discovered that a camera that could do this wouldn't come cheap -- I think the one place I checked said >$1k, which scared the pants off me. The van and everything else cost a lot more than I'd expected, and as it was we ended up coming back with something like $50 in our pocket (which to my mind means our timing was perfect).
What I would do now is get a laptop and a webcam. I work at a small ISP, and one of our customers is a construction company that has a webcam and a FreeBSD box set up to take time-lapse photography of their latest construction site. The pix and movies are really neat, and that would have been a much easier and cheaper solution.
Crap...just realized that the worst part of me sitting here and reminiscing like this is that the guy's site is sure to be slashdotted now...oh well, I'll wait 'til Sunday when his server's cooled down a bit.
Clear a few things up. (Score:4, Informative)
Way nifty
Re:Clear a few things up. (Score:2)
Ah, as I thought. That explains the not-so-random composition of some of the shots.
Get the term right. (Score:2)
More thought required (Score:2)
When? (Score:2)
Also, don't BluKnight and chrisd know the difference between a speedometer and an odometer? Even *I* know that, and I don't know anything about cars... put another one on the "editor who didn't read the article" pile.
Re:When? (Score:2)
He didn't stop the vehicle (Score:2)
At least he wasn't driving some dangerous vehicle while performing these stunts, like a Ford Explorer!
On his first try, he drove a Porsche and "didn't do enough research," he says. On his next trip, in a high-slung Ford Explorer, he traveled on old highways, mostly U.S. 30, 40 and 50.
Doh?
If only... (Score:2, Interesting)
Shoulda Gone Digital... (Score:2)
Re:Shoulda Gone Digital... (Score:2)
Hey ! Didn't you Mean the Redundant-o-Meter? (Score:2)
He used his odometer.
He used a camera with FILM.
He didn't have to stop to change the film.
At night he would mark the last mile, find a motel, sleep.
Then he would resume the trip at the last mile.
Ahhhg. Please mod this +5 redundant and email to all your friends for the ultimate in redundacy.
My housemate did this... (Score:2)
He then ducttaped a webcam to his shoulder and grabbed images every few seconds, saving them to a laptop disk. The next mission was to have that dialed up to a cellphone to post images to the net every few mins - but i dont know how far he got with that.
Re:My housemate did this... (Score:2)
Or am I thinking of someone else?
End of Tourism (Score:2, Interesting)
The ultimate open source - every spot in the world on camera, everybody in the world is everyone elses' big brother => lots of little brothers. I don't see why anybody would want to travel abroad now, just take these pictures in London (England), Macchu Pichu (Andes), ancient ruins as of yet unnamed (Bolivia), Pyramids (Egypt). Personally I can spend a few months at this site alone if it was big enough, honestly. Just look at the success of Webshots [webshots.com] and that just spews out pictures of rabbits, mountains, dogs, cats all at random. Nothing can beat the Dallas skyline on a beautiful red sunset evening reflecting off the skyscrapers with hazy-red skyline. Nice. I'm sure there are lots of other places with views just as spectacular but nobody has ever been there or heard of it.
For instance, an architect would love to see places with beautiful buildings, the travel agent doesn't give two hoots about what building is where and who made it. This architect can just log on and see the building structure in Spain, France, Canada, Russia, heck even Vietnam and other thrid world countries.
A computer programmer would want to see the last remaining building with a VAX inside to mourn (or last Win 95 machine to celebrate), the travel agent would have no idea what he is talking about, but the computer programmer could call up any worlwide location at will so it's not a problem.
I can't imagine how many people there are in Oklahoma or whatever that can't afford travelling to Canada or France or England or Mexico or Brazil. This way they can get one heck of a taste. Brilliant idea, I'll be watching this closely.
hook it up to your GPS instead (Score:3, Interesting)
Do it digital... (Score:3, Interesting)
But this sounds like a situation where a digital camera is better suited. The purpose of this is not to create single great photos, where film is still much better suited, but to create a series of photos to be strung together and viewed as an animation or hypermedia/nonlinear form.
Connect the digital camera to a laptop, and let the laptop monitor the odometer. The computer can click off the photos at the appropriate intervals, download them, and rescale them on the fly (for f in *.jpg; do djpeg $f | pnmscale -xy 640 480 | cjpeg -q 85 > s-$f && rm $f; done). Or with sufficient disk space, you might not need to rescale the photos. At any rate, let the computer manage the image acquisition - never stop to change film, never fill up the camera's flash memory, and stop only for gas and Dr Pepper.
As someone who loves to make timelapses with my Kodak DC290, I have actually though of doing something like this - mounting the camera in the car and programming it to take photos every 30 to 60 seconds. Syncing to the odometer is a cool touch!
--Jim
Re:Do it digital... (Score:2)
For example some 16mm lens weould be pretty nice thing on digital. but as most digital (serious) SLR's have 1,6x magnification, you need something like 8mm fisheye (which is pretty damn expensive.. and not even full-frame.)
Re:Do it digital... (Score:2)
speedometer??? (Score:2, Informative)
Primitive version of special camera system (Score:2)
I believe that California's CalTrans has special movies that show the view out front on a freeway that has pictures taken every 50 feet or so. I remember seeing a news report on KCRA (Sacramento's main TV station) about these pretty amazing movies.
digital camera.. (Score:2)
Mile 2 has the WTC in it... (Score:2)
I did this sort of (Score:2, Funny)
When i drove from CT, CA in 3 days, i took rolls of picture while driving of, landmarks, and pictures of speedlimit signs, with my speedometer in the frame. one shot in colorado was a 75mph zone, and i was going 126mph, and there was a vw passat overtaking me.
Michael Naimark and El Camino Real (Score:2)
Subway? (Score:2)
Wasn't Matt the same guy that's been on those Subway commercials 'cause he lost a ton of weight eating subs? Man this guy gets around...
</humor>
Speedometer? (Score:2)
Dammit, too! (Score:2)
Let's see, there were some VR guys that mounted a camera on a bike and took side-looking photos every few feet through some Colorado town, and put together a VR tour of the place. I'm moving in a month or so and wanted to do the same for where I've lived for the past decade.
Games [puzz.com] magazine once had a puzzle consisting of a dozen photos along a very similar route; the goal was to put them into the proper order. It wasn't too hard for me, as I've driven from my house (St. Louis, MO) to my then-mother-in-law's house (Columbus, OH) more times that I can count. Going the other direction, some friends from college and I drove to Colorado for spring skiing for way too many years. So, yeah, I know I-70 pretty well.
A year ago, I drove my oldest son to Boston to attend college [smfa.edu] and took pictures with a PalmPix almost every step of the way, mostly of things that had always intriged me but that I hadn't seen for years. In particular, there used to be an old barn just east of the Indiana-Ohio state line that was painted with one of the old Apollo pictures of Earth rising over the lunar horizon. It was gone (or repainted) on my last trip through, so don't bother looking for it now. If anyone has any recollections, or better yet pictures, post a reply to this.
Well, that's all for now, I guess. I'm going to scroll through those pictures looking for things that I recognize.
odometer, not speedometer (Score:4, Informative)
I read the post and envisioned a flash sequence of speedometer readings - ooh look, he's back up at 85 again... doh must've been pulled over, we're stopped.
The icon for the story is wrong (Score:2)
Where's the speedometer? (Score:5, Funny)
Washington State has every 1/100th mile online (Score:2, Interesting)
Now I just hope that I don't slashdot the sight.
Flash is not evil per se ... (Score:2, Informative)
I've seen plenty of places where flash is used well to do things that otherwise couldn't be done. Despite all the anti-flash sentiment around here, it's not flash or macromedia itself which sucks, it's designers which insist on making kludgy, overbranded, full-flash sites which suck. Macromedia is actually trying to educate its users about usability [macromedia.com] and trying to encourage them in the next flash.
Flash ain't a bad tool, but only in the right places, and this is one of the better uses I've seen...
Why do it the hard way (Score:2)
I think this is a neat art project, but this would have been much easier to do with a digital camera, GPS, and a latop. No stopping to change rolls of film. No worrying about sequencing the rolls. Easier to make into a flash movie. A hell of a lot cheaper to process.
I do like this idea. I may have to try it on my motorcycle for my next long trip.
Bah, old stuff.... (Score:2)
Here [imdb.com] is the result, btw.
Ohio contains the mark of the beast?!? (Score:2, Funny)
And for once I'm glad to see an application of flash that is interactive, well-designed, doesn't attempt to cause epileptic seizures AND doesn't try to sell me something.
Here's one for ya.. (Score:2)
Re:speedometer? (Score:2, Funny)
0000001
0000002
0000003
...
Must. Leave. Work. Now. Going. Crazy.
Re:speedometer? (Score:2, Funny)
Totally. I had no idea what the story was about.
Re:ummm... DIGITAL camera? (Score:2)
Re:ummm... DIGITAL camera? (Score:2)
Re:ummm... DIGITAL camera? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:go digital (Score:2)
Re:seeing the pictures without Flash. (corrected) (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/features/onTheRoa
/ postcards/tellYourFriends.shtml?mile=1
Re:I didn't know the US was that flat (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably too hard to change the film every 36 miles while driving around the edge of a canyon.
Michael
Actually, much *is* flat (Score:2)
However you still hit "hiccups" of mountain ranges. I-90 through Montana is especially noteworthy in this regard. If only the RV drivers understood that they might climb hills faster than semis and other RVs, but a sports car over the horizon can maintain 80 MPH even when climbing and *will* soon be on their ass if thet get in the left-most lane.
If I had run a camera like that, I would have only shown pictures of high plains and the back end of RVs.
Re:Why the side-view? (Score:2)
Anyway, there really isn't supposed to be much continuity between successive shots. You're supposed to look at the whole thing. It would actally be quite amazing to see prints of all of these shots lined up from east to west. If you made them 5x7's, though, they would line up to 1927 feet, 4 inches or about 0.36 mile. And that's with no space between each print. I guess you could get it to a quarter mile by using 4x6 prints. However, there aren't many gallerys with a quarter mile wall.
Re:Forward looking? (Score:2)
The added benefit of course would be to have 30 chances to get the mountains that are ahead of you, instead of wasting those shots on wheat or whatever it is. Of course, if you set your cruise at 80mph, most of your pictures will have the frame of your car slicing right down the middle. Roofcam!