Hi @Bobbi Thanks for the new thread, which I found very interesting ad banged on a bit myself
On the backyard studio, The Munsen (pipe rings) arrived today, along with the base plate for the mounting. The rings fit quite nice, but being picky, not rock solid so I’ll order a bit of silicone rubber sheet just to pack it out a bit. A mm or 2 would probs do it.
I’ve attached a photo of what I’ve got so far. I think the rings will fit ok, but a bit of drilling needed as the mountings are 10mm, so I need a couple of short 10mm bolts, which hopefully I have in the shed, but if not the local hardware store pretty much has everything.
So, below is the lens with the Munsen rings attached, the base plate and the joke of a mounting ring supplied with the lens. Now, I’ve taken a bit of a punt with all this fitting to the new lens (20-40x). Looking at the apexel site they seem to use the same farty ring to mount the new one. I’d assume they make their lenses with the same mounting, rather than make a whole bunch of different rings, one for each lens. Finger crossed! We’ll see.
I’m having a bit of a chill day today, but will get onto the video/frame grabs later if I’ve got enough lead in my pencil. My wife wants me to fit a new light in the bedroom too, so see how it goes.
@Bobbi Thanks very much for your positive comments and if it dos encourage other, then that would be great!
So to bang on some more, I checked on eBay for some silicone sheet and found some, but also 25 mm wide 2mm thick neoprene strips, which I’ve used before and is very non-slip. The seller offers a 200mm sample for 98p including postage. Not quite long enough for the 2 clips, so splashed out and bought 2 samples. Bargain!
Also managed to find a couple of M10 bolts in the shed, too long so will need cutting down. Also need to drill some 10mm holes in the plate, but must stop now in case it’s all wrong for the new lens and have wasted my time. Anyway, need to fit that light in the bedroom, otherwise there will be words I think. Reminds me of an old joke:
If my wife asks me to do something, I’ll do it. No need to remind me every 6 months. One for the ladies…
And the latest in the saga… The new lens arrived today as hoped and it’s shorter than the 36x and a bit fatter. It comes with a rubber eyepiece that fits on the end, so you can use it as a monocular. I tried it and it works. The diameter of the tube is 44 mm at the point where I can fix it, so the Munsen ring is very snug and tight, so no need for packing. If anyone wants to buy a couple of strips of neoprene rubber, I’ve got some on the way
Due to the design of the new lens, I can only fit one Munsen ring on it, meaning it’s only got a single mount point, and really I wanted 2 for the best stability, but will give it a go and see how it is.
On the bright side, the mounting screw for the Munsen rings is M10, or 10mm, so pretty chunky. The ring clamps the entire circumference of the lens, so that’s good and better than the piddly ring supplied with the lens, with a tiny screw in the top.
If there’s any wobble, I’ll probs put a drop of superglue on the thread and get a couple of star washers to help. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get some time and make up the mount. I’ll post up a pic if I can get it made up. Oh yes, the remote Bluetooth shutter arrived too and it works, so no more tapping the camera to take a shot.
On the garden time lapse, I went through all 3.5 hours today in fast motion, noting each frame I want. Tomorrow I’ll use Virtualdub2 to delete boring bits and export the remaining video as .png files and pick the ones I want. When you do this, Virtualdub numbers all the output images with frame numbers and you can open the sequence and it will play them like a video. It doesn’t care if the input is an mp4 file or string of images. It just works the same. Nice.
Bedroom light didn’t get done as I crashed. Wife’s working tomorrow, so must get it done before she gets home. I can turn the mains power off to my heart’s content. Must get out more…
Hehe nice pics . I like the one of the carved wood panel. Brill!
Latest here is that the lens clamp is finished. I’ll post a pic up below, then one later with it mounted on the tripod.
The hole for the M10 screw in the plate should be 10.5mm and my largest drill was 10mm. So, being an out-and-out professional, used the 10mm one and wiggled it a bit while drilling. Just dandy. As mentioned above, only 1 mount point, but it’s flippin rock solid. This afternoon I’ll set up up on the tripod in the kitchen and zoom in on the bird feeder in the garden and see what comes out the pot.
On a pesronal note, after a huge amount if time of doing no hobbies, I’ve had to climb a mountain to do this. I feel very rewarded, but spent. Funny thing is, if you don’t do something for a long time, in your mind it grows in difficulty. Then when you come to do it again, it requires extreme effort, often overwhelming and exhausting. It’s not a comfortable thing to do, but it is the right thing I think.
Doing all this has given me more ideas. I have a rechargeable torch with a wand type lamp. I could set it up in the garden overnight, using the torch for illumination and record 8K video all night. The torch might be enough to attract local wildlife, but could pop some dog food out for the foxes/hedgehogs. I checked on a couple of vet’s web sites and you shouldn’t feed cats dog food on a regular basis due to different nutritional requirement, but it won’ harm them on occasion, so all the local cats would be ok.
Looks lovely, but where I am from, that might be served in a barn. And I am, of course, teasing you a bit. The meal looks yummy, the hay threw me off. Although, you can eat it, if you like.
Nice pics @SimonInEdinburgh looks like a nice trip out. Down in the Southeast, I’ve processed the video and extracted the frames I like. Learnt a bit too, but for now, here’s the pics:
The image processing took ages reminding my laptop is very old, so will bit the bullet and order a new on today. One issue was the procedure I used. There was lots of ‘no action’ in the video, so intuitively, decided to cut out all the ‘blank bits’, export the result to a bunch of .png files and step through those to find th decent shots. However, Virtualdub is much faster at scanning through a video file than a load of single images. Next time, I’'ll scan through the video, delete the blank bits, then step through the remaining frames, deleting all the gunk and ending up with only good frames. Then export the entire resulting video and all the images will be the ones I want. Also getting a better laptop than Noah’s will make a difference
All the images above were 4K, so 3840x2160. Most of the above are smaller as they are cropped. I’d like to push the boat out a bit further and try an 8K video, but will wait for the new laptop for that. The video this time @4K was 6.5GB, so the next will be a bigun!
I chose the export format as .png as this format does compression, but unlike .jpg is not lossy, so you get the full monty.
as I could only fit 1 Munsen ring on the new zoom lens, I have one spare, so have ordered another metal platform for the fixed 36x lens. The I’ll leave them clamped on all the time, and when I go out and about, can change lenses easily, rather than mess around removing and clamping lenses. Must get a bag to carry them in.
Ok that’s it for now, I’ll get off and order that laptop, then lie on the sofa in a coma
Oh, yes, the other booboo. when you export images from Virtuladub, the image name is the frame number. First thing I did was step through the video noting frame numbers of desirable images and deleting blank sections (no animals), then exporting the whole lot to images.
Surprise! After deleting lots of passages of blank stuff, the frame numbers are no longer the same. DOH! What a waste of time . Won’t do that again till the next time
I agree entirely. As the original was on my phone and copied to my laptop to work on, I effectively did this. Although it’s no so much of a risk as it sounds. I didn’t explain it fully, but VirtualDub doesn’t actually delete anything, it just creates a database of edits and applies them when you view, so the original is untouched, which is quite nice. Then, if you’re happy with your edits, you save the video as a new name and you have the untouched original and the chopped up output as a new file.
What’s Sigil? I googled it, but don’t really get it. Is it a software installer?
Cheers
Steve
ps ordered a new laptop from Dell today. Twice the speed, twice the RAM and 4x the disk space and a screen that’s a touch over 4K. Can’t wait, but will have to. I’d forgotten Dell’s lead times. 24 days! Think they must be walking it here! At £1600, it’s a bit more than I wanted to spend, but I always like to buy bigger and better than I need, so it lasts a long time
The pictures are lovely…I thought you stole my cat but one was close enough to see yours is missing a furry patch on it’s nose.
And I did not know you all puffins over there! Actually I am joking. The blue on the wings is brilliant, making whatever this is a pretty bird. Those feathers and the fact the birds are not twaddling around upright like a penguin tell me they are definitely not puffins. Do you know what they are?
They nest in my trees every year and then complain at everybody that uses the garden, mob our cats and everything else, they kill the other fledgling birds - full out pests
The diameter of the tube is 44 mm at the point where I can fix it, so the Munsen ring is very snug and tight, so no need for packing. If anyone wants to buy a couple of strips of neoprene rubber, I’ve got some on the way 
. I like the one of the carved wood panel. Brill!
