3D and Burst Balloons

Well, it’s been a rather fun last few months. In no particular order…

I recently had the opportunity to spend several days with my sister, her son, and his family. Along the way I was introduced to a small cafe in Fairfield, Idaho, that has the absolutely best malts I’ve had in a long, long time. The fries I got with it were equally crispy good and even though it’s almost 2 hours away, I fully intend to revisit the Wrangler Drive In for a burger, fries, and another chocolate malt.

While with the family, we spent most every day fly fishing. Luck was not with us, probably due to the big storm moving in. I did get some bites, but just could not set the hook. My nephew, though, is one die-hard, stubborn fly fisherman, good on him. He caught the only Brook trout, a nice 12 to 14 inches. Having watched another fly fisherman fail on a spot that had several rises, we were able to point him to that location. He went through just about every fly in his fly case before that wily trout finally hit on a midge so small that you wouldn’t think the fish could even see it. Big kudos to my nephew’s tenacity!

Aside from being a well known fly fishery, the area is absolutely gorgeous. I want to go back and have him drop me off at a certain point or three, he goes fishing for the day, then he picks me up on the way home. There were so many places I just wanted to spend the day with my cameras, catching the changing light and shadow play of the passing day. One spot…a gorgeous valley from a high vantage point goes off into the distance where, on certain nights and times, the Milky Way rises from where the river fades into the distance. That’s according to a picture I captured using Dioptra then investigated in Stellarium.

Dioptra image of valley

Sorry, but I’m sworn to secrecy as to the actual location. It’s a fisherman thing.

I had been wanting a 3D printer for a long time. This year the prices were reasonable and I finally bit the bullet, purchasing a Voxelab Aquila C2.

My new Voxelab Aquila C2 3D printer

After printing out some articulated slugs, geckos, octopuses, and other items for family members so to familiarize myself with the new printer, I went to work. I designed and printed out a laser pointer holder for astrophotography to test my skills. Then I discovered my new enthusiasm: lithophanes.

I do all my lithophane work on a Linux box and make use of just three pieces of software: GIMP, Blender and Ultimaker Cura. I use GIMP to remove backgrounds and/or convert a photograph to PNG. Next, in Blender I take that PNG file, convert it into a 3D object, and export as a 3D STL file usable by slicing programs. Cura I use to open that STL file, slice it and generate the necessary GCODE file required by the printer to actually print the lithophane.

So far I have printed several lithophanes. Two of them, of one of my granddaughters and one landscape, are shown below. I have an easier time, for some reason, printing portraits than I do landscapes, which is somewhat ironic as I prefer landscape photography over portraiture.

Granddaughter lithophane

Granddaughter lithophane backlit

Walter’s Butte lithophane

Walter’s Butte lithophane backlit

I’m finding that contrast is much more critical in landscape lithophanes. There is a certain landscape image I really want to capture and use create a lithophane. However, aside from the difficulty just capturing the image, I’m not sure just how well the lithophane will come out. For now I’m keeping that project under wraps but if you know my other main interest you can probably figure out the general idea.

Ah, bursting water filled balloons. So much fun.

Far longer ago than I care to admit to, I saw my first image of a bursting water balloon and the bullet passing through it. This was back when being able to capture such an image was a major accomplishment. Yeah, that long ago.

Ever since then I’ve always wanted to capture a similar image, but the necessary technology wasn’t readily available nor in an affordable price range. That was then, this is now, and to some extent the technology has become both readily available and affordable.

Among my kit I have a GoPro Hero 8 Black. It has the capability to shoot 1080p at 240 frames per second. This got me to thinking that might be fast enough, finally, and it was water resistant. So, suiting thought to action, I set up a simple test rig, hanging a water balloon from a board, putting the GoPro on a stool nearby, setting the GoPro to Activity mode using 1080p at 240 fps, and poking the balloon with a knife.

Editing the resulting video in kdenlive gave me a real nice video which at 3% of the original speed resulted in both the desired water shape as the balloon burst and a smooth slow motion video of the burst. Very promising, I thought. So much so that I decided to go for shooting the balloon.

Poking a water balloon with a knife

I knew, though, that actually capturing the bullet might be a problem from the side like the above image. After all, the slowest .22 round I had was rated 1225 feet per second: A hair over 5 times faster than the camera fps. I reasoned that taking the video looking down the bullet’s path might allow me to at least capture something of the bullet. So, I now needed two GoPros capable of 240 fps video.

I suggested the project to a friend and partner-in-crime, asking if he’d let me use his GoPro Hero 9 for the second camera. That way, it would only be my camera at risk were something to happen. He happily agreed to the project and we just recently did the shoot. The results can be found on my YouTube channel here: Shooting a Water Balloon.

I was correct in that we didn’t capture the bullet in the video. However, in two of the video clips, three if you look real close, you can see the streak of the bullet’s travel. All four clips show the path of the bullet through the balloon.

Unfortunately, it appears that the bullet creates so much pressure that the water moves faster to get out of the way and I don’t get that “perfect” balloon shape of suspended water. I think I need a camera capable of 480 fps. Now I’m watching the various action camera manufacturers and hoping soon….

Time Lapses and Travel

I’ve been thinking about some drives I want to do when the weather stabilizes (and warms up a little). As much as I love the high desert of the Owyhees, this year I think I want to spend some time in the mountains as well. Thinking about these drives, in turn, got me to thinking about the various time lapse videos I’ve made of my exploring.

Since for me “the journey is the destination” and “not all those who wander are lost” are truisms, my drives tend to be longish or through wide-open terrain that doesn’t change much.

Thus, for reasons of file sizes and long stretches of relatively unchanging landscape, I have been videoing them as time lapses.

I’ve experimented with various timings and lens settings in my GoPro cameras and phone. Over time, I settled on usually shooting at one picture per minute. Sometimes I use the SuperView lens setting, which gives the widest and tallest possible view. Other times, I use Wide, a somewhat fish-eye field of view, and still others I just use Linear. Overall, though, Wide is my go-to GoPro setting.

All that I present as a little bit of technical background as to the type of “travel videos” I’ve made for myself over the years.

Something has been nagging at me as I’ve editen my videos. I’ve not put any of them out on my YouTube channel or really shared them with anyone. Some faint voice in the back of my head has been whispering, “they’re good, as in good enough, but they’re not the best I can do, so I’m not going to share any of these.” Besides, they really don’t work, or flow, as travel videos.

Sure, they show where I’ve gone and they’re decent enough, visually. They have a subtle issue that I’ve only just come to realize…something that I think that little voice was trying to tell me. Let me share an example then explain….

Recently I created a video of a drive I regularly take, simply because it’s relaxing and I enjoy driving that loop. Once back home, I pulled up the video and saw it was decent enough, so I started adding text, naming places, turns or brief explanations such as “if you go right you wind up back on the highway” or “three lonely graves.” I also had a spot where I turn the vehicle through 180 degrees and labelled that “just showing the view.” All superimposed over the time lapse video.

Initially, I was happy with the end result. I knew it wasn’t ideal, but it worked. Kinda. Okay.

And yes, I am somewhat of a perfectionist.

Today it dawned on me what that wee faint voice was trying to tell me.

I’ve been using the time lapse because eventually I do want to share these videos. I know for most people watching these videos in real time would be boring. Never mind also being hours long. So, time lapses were a way to compress my day’s outing into just a few minutes for people interested in also visiting where I’m exploring, but for whom the journey isn’t necessarily the destination. With a time lapse, they can quickly see how to get there, how the loop drives and still get the necessary data to decide if they want to go drive it. Besides, if the journey is the destination for them, they don’t want to watch me drive it, they want to get out there and drive it themselves.

But that last video, used for my example above, also showed that for some parts they would have to pause the video to read everything while still being able to see what’s being mentioned. At one picture per second videoing and a 24 fps time lapse, Lizard Butte goes by in a flash, even though the “Lizard Butte” label stays up long enough to be read. Things like that I have to either label ahead of time and end when it speeds by, or I have to create a still or find some other fix.

You’ve probably figured out where I’m going here.

I can easily speed up a regular video to create an equivalent “time lapse” but I can’t slow down a time lapse video to let you see what the town I’m driving through has to offer. And that can be valuable information for planning, for example, where you want to stop and eat or get supplies. Slowing down the time lapse means the video is no longer smooth, but becomes a fast slide show. Not ideal.

The solution I decided on? Just video it.

Memory is cheap. I use 256 GB microSD cards as my default in my GoPros. That’s also the largest size card per my manual but the web site says 516 GB max. For most of my drives, there’s really no reason not to just video as a regular video instead of a time lapse. Driving for hours to the McCall area or Pocatello could be a problem, but one easily solved by swapping out the memory cards at the halfway point. Otherwise, a time lapse could still be appropriate. But for most of my day drives? I can easily fit a few hours on a card that size. Power is irrelevant: I run off my vehicle’s power. Memory really is the only caveat.

When I do my editing, I can easily enough speed up playback within the final video. Thus, I can create a video where you “speed along” during the long stretches of driving, but when something interesting comes up, the playback reverts to real time. You would seem to speed down the highway then as you come around a curve and the town comes into view, the name of the town pops up and you drive into and through town at normal speed, having time to see what points of interest and stores there are. Then as you leave town, the video goes back into high speed.

That quite takes care of things. The “Lizard Butte” label pops up, the video drops into real time, you can see why it’s called Lizard Butte, then it speeds up until the next point of interest in the drive. Much better than the label popping up and the butte flashing by too fast to see it looks like a lizard.

Sometimes with a time lapse something happens or flashes by and you don’t get a real good image of whatever it was. This way, that’s also eliminated, at least to some extent. Once, I drove by a nest on the top of a power pole while a Redtail was landing to feed her chicks. I didn’t get a good shot in the time lapse. I stopped there on the way back and took some pictures with the DSLR, but it wasn’t the same as capturing that bird’s landing would have been.

Sure, it’s a little more work after I get home, but not really that much once you figure out how to do it in whatever video editing software you use. If you’re interested, I run a Linux box, so I use KDEnlive as my video editor. There’s other options than KDEnlive, of course, but that’s what I like.

Hmmm. I think I’ll go for a drive tomorrow just to get a regular ol’ drive video to play with. My regular loop has a few points of interest, and a slight alternate route has some interesting rock formations. I think it’s going to work just fine.

Slowly, slowly

Still not in a writing mode, but working towards it. As far as that part of my life goes, I’ve been working on the Pa’adhe ebook. It’s been mostly proofing (found a couple of errors), layout, making sure things are in the right order. I’ve got three cover pictures left to do, still: one to replace an existing cover I don’t like and two for the stories that don’t have a cover yet. The designs are done, but now I have to figure out what pictures to take and combine for these covers.

Talking about pictures, I’ve also been working on three photography projects. Actually, it’s probably more accurate to say two videos and one photograph.

The photograph is a three generation portrait that I’ve been thinking about for several months. Now that everyone’s present that needs to be in it, I can proceed with actually taking the photo. I’ll be using the DJI Phantom 4 for this due to the perspective needed and to avoid any part of the photographer being in it. It’s also necessary to use the drone to achieve the hidden geometric aspect I have in mind.

One of the videos I have mentioned before. I’ve a script written for it and have all the necessary gear to do the shot. What remains is to get the necessary actors together on location (herding cats would be easier) and get the video needed so I can get to work compiling the whole. This I need to get done within the next two months or it’ll be unlikely to ever get done.

The final video is one that I am not even sure is going to be anything more than an experiment. Fundamentally, it’s one of my granddaughter dancing, but it’s the perspective that makes the video what it is. Or breaks it. I can see in my head what I want to achieve, but until I actually start processing the video, I have no way to tell if it’ll work or not. In some ways, it’s abstract…but without being abstract. I’m trying to explain to some extent the problem with the visualization without giving too much away yet and that’s not easy to do. With everything else I can throw out teasers, but this one…any teaser is too revealing. Let’s just say that if I don’t get the angles right, it’s not going to work and since there’s nothing like it out there that I know of, I have no guidance to the right angle. If it’s off by even a little bit, the impact won’t be there. Even so, right angle or not it could still be a bust.

Both videos will utilize the GoPro Hero 4 Black and the DJI Phantom 4, though in different ways. I never did think I would be doing video, but there it goes. Never say never.

I’e been doing a bit of amateur radio, just PSK-31, since my last blog post. I have to admit I’m happy with the home station, but not so much with the mobile setup. I need to do some more playing with the mobile gear to figure out what’s not working, but it’s also quite possible that it’s simply there was no activity when I was using it. Or maybe it was a bad location. All I can do is keep trying different locations for a while before I start troubleshooting the gear.