Tags: I see it this way! Heritage Shores Bridgville De E.W. Faircloth photography photographer computer Raspberry Pi remote milk drops Nikon D7000 infrared LED trigger shutter

This week will explanations, descriptions, and various ramblings about the "droplet" photography seen in recent posts. http://www.faircloth.org/blog1/?p=7319 http://www.faircloth.org/blog1/?p=7310 I drew by hand, which may be obvious, a diagram of my setup to make the milk drop images. The brains of the operation is a Raspberry Pi, small $35 computer.  It's on the right in diagram and labeled RPi. Connected to the Pi is a LED control interface which has 4 circuits to control infrared LEDs and sense the press of a push button. Here's the sequence to make one of those pictures 1.   A container filled with milk allows drops of milk to free fall into a bowl. 2.  The push button is pressed to start a capture sequence.  The Pi pulses an infrared LED as if it was a Nikon remote trigger( see image at top, and diagram).  That causes the camera to pull up its mirror. A photograph is not taken at this point. 3.  One of the passing drops is seen by a pair of infrared LEDs (an emitter and detector) which tell the Pi about it. 4.  The Pi now uses that same LED masquerading  as a remote for camera to take a picture.  Mirror returns to down position after picture is taken 5.   This process repeats with another button press.    Please bare with me for the next few blog posts, as I will continue posting about this project.  One reason is another photographer out there may doing something similar.  Hopefully, this will be helpful.  Another reason, is I'll be able to recall how I did this years from now.