February 18th, 2010
A few weeks back while dissembling an old DVD-ROM drive (to harvest it’s red laser diode), one decided to take out the camera and an LED flashlight. Going into a dark room, the optic unit of the DVD drive was placed on a white surface. Then the flashlight was placed on top of the unit, shining down through the lens. The results are quite interesting.
One fiddled around with different shutter speeds as well as ISO settings, using CHDK. Higher ISO levels on the SD850 IS is horribly grainy. Hence, one did not spend much time shooting with a high ISO level.
-John Havlik
[end of transmission, stay tuned]
Tagged: Macro
2 Responses to “Optics”
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WordCamp NYC
Nice pictures! And keep the chip on your cam cold, that will reduce grain. The first pictures after switching on will the better pictures.
Back from the dead eh?
FWIW the SD850 IS doesn’t have that large of a sensor, and as a result should not heat up super quickly or as much as larger sensors. However, it is a CCD which is sensitive to heating effects in low light conditions (and gets hotter than newer APS (aka. ‘CMOS sensor’) devices). The ISO sensitivities have always been too grainy on it, a result of the small pixel size on the sensor.
-John Havlik