Spacebits

Hi all,

Just wanted to let you know that CHDK was used in yet another high altitude balloon project. The photos and videos came out really nice so I'd though I share.

We used two cameras, one IXUS 100 with a 16G SD card with autoboot and dual partition headed down, and one IXUS 80 with a 16G SD card and manual boot headed to the horizon.

You can find the LUA scripts we used here:

http://softwarelivre.sapo.pt/projects/spacebits/browser/trunk/chdk

Basically the script is a loop, shoots a 60 sec video, then switches to photo mode and takes a few pictures, then changes back to a video mode.

And you can see the photos here:

http://spacebits.eu/page/flight1photos.html

And the edited video here:

http://spacebits.eu/page/meetvideos.html#flight1

We've made a mistake with the video mode on the IXUS 80, it's in very low res. But cool footage still.

Hope you like it.

Thanks all for your support, specially the core CHDK team. Our project wouldn't be possible without your work.

cool!

I experienced problems with the video settings for the Ixus 80 too. Did you also have sort of "greyish" videos?

What percentage of photos were over/under exposed?

Did you suffer from motion blur?

I am very itnerested because I am trying to determine the best exposure strategy for these flights.
Some discussion here:
http://www.francescobonomi.it/photo-balloon

You left the ND filter to its default state, didn't you?

For example, EXIF data from spacephoto4.jpg says f 8.0 1/250" seconds. Is this true?

congrats again!

Hi fbonomi,

We were very lucky with the weather, it was as perfectly clear sunny day.

Most of the photos were slightly overexposed but not too much. The ones that you see on the website were post fixed. I used an halo reduction filter on the earth parts to get rid of the natural blue color abundance, increased contrast on the sky and slightly adjusted the while balance, nothing else. As you can see, quality was not compromised, which proves that the information was there, just hidden.

As for the photo settings, nothing special: Landscape mode, ISO80 or 100, Superfine quality, focus set to infinite. The exif metadata is correct.

Here's one original photo for you to compare:

http://spacebits.eu/uploads/spacephoto4_original.jpg

And the "fixed" one:

http://spacebits.eu/uploads/spacephoto4.jpg

The movies came a bit crappy though, I'm still experimenting with the settings for the next flight.

Hope it help. I'll stay tuned to your blog

Great results. Did you have anything on board to measure the altitude?

Awesome guys!

Can you guys post a link to the script? And do you know if it would work on a A560?
Thanks

Joe