Hawkeye-DSLR

[Stan Jelavic]

This is a new Hawkeye Wolverine topic discussing the setup with a DSLR type camera.

[Stan Jelavic]

Here is the first demo setup. Just the Hawkeye and Wolverine components loosely interconnected on a board.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/2VrLHaUyEQ5SUkn56

The camera used is a D5 Mark2 with a remote trigger cable.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002KDS2BY/

The cable red and black wires are connected as shown. The white (exposure) wire is not used.


The DSLRs have limited number of shutter operations. The Live Preview should be looked into. but With Mark2, Live Preview is very slow. Possibly get another type of DSLR dedicated to telecine.

[David Brown]

Congrats Stan on the new thread! I'll be following this. I was unsuccessful with a dslr trigger in a much earlier attempt.

Looks like I can access the connections without removing the board. I could just tap into the wire from pin 1 of j26.

Or should any part of the onboard camera be disconnected before using this?

I have my wolverine open still. When I tried to replace the camera usb, I bumped the camera framing. Don't know how, the mount is not adjustable. Maybe it's loose? Framing is still ok without the mask.

My thoughts on Live Mode are it's good to monitor the capture, but the mechanical shutter actuates twice. If you have electronic 1st curtain, your back to 1 actuation. I'm sure that's not true for all cameras.

Full electronic shutter might be the best choice here.

[Stan Jelavic]

Hi David. Welcome to the new thread. Yes you can tap into the pin1 wire of J26 but you should disconnect the Hawkeye camera just to be safe.
Your framing issue is probably caused by loose mount.
Have not checked the new DSLRs. Do you know which ones use the electronic shutter? I will do the tests with the Mark2 but only for short clips.
The macro lenses that I have are from my very old telecine 100 and 50 mm FD lenses. Will try that with the EF adapter.
If the image tests look good possibly get the Venus lens:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coRNugswKDA&t=8734s
The Canon 5X macro is really nice but very expensive:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...1-dc3240e894a8
Another issue with these lenses is that they do not focus to infinity so they cannot be used for everyday shooting and it is too much money to be dedicated to telecine only.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Although I can't comment anything at all about electronics (I'm perfectly idiot in this field), but I may know a thing or two about camera at least.

How about mirrorless camera?

My "new" Panasonic G7 mirrorless camera does have electronic shutter mode. That means absolutely no mechanical operation involved - at all.
Better yet, its remote shutter release is dead simple - just some different resistor value across the shutter cable to activate focus/shutter - couldn't be any simpler!



Currently working on my crude setup with a simple reed switch & a magnet to fire the shutter. The initial result seems very promising.

[Stan Jelavic]

Thanks Nantawat. Looks like you plan to use it for frame-by-frame capture. Have you done any 8mm film capture tests with it and what type of lens do you plan to use with it? The trigger does seem to be pretty straight forward.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Initially I tried with its kit lens, but later found out that its aperture(iris) seems to activate every shutter release. Hence there's still a mechanical to wear out - not so good.
I then tried with fully manual lens. The result, while not perfect, seems OK to my eyes. May upgrade to better optics later.

And yes - the trigger is dead simple. I just placed the reed switch close to the projector's shuttle pulley. Then tapped the wire from the reed switch to the camera's remote cable. Glued a small magnet to the pulley. And bang! it works right away. Couldn't be any simpler!

To make life even simpler there's a stop motion function built right in the camera. At the end of the capture I simply let the camera create the video file from the still image sequence. The output would be a single video file instead of 1,000's of still images - this will make life much easier too.

[Stan Jelavic]

If you go with the 1X macro lens such as:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...m.html/reviews
you would still cover 1/3 of the sensor and give
1536x1064 resolution for S8 film
based on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_mm_f...nd_double8.png
https://www.digicamdb.com/specs/panasonic_lumix-dmc-g7/
and the fact that the lens will produce a life size image on the sensor (1:1 magnification).
This is still very acceptable resolution. The key is the image quality. I would ask you for a few sample shots but your light source is different from what I use so may not be a good reference.

[David Brown]

The cannon MP-E macro is awesome. I don't own one but I came very close to buying one at least 3 times in the last 6 years. The biggest obstacle was I didn't own a Cannon body, and there is the cost!

At 1x mag, the MP-E is compact and more in line with 'normal' macro lens. Yes, that's a lot to invest in the telecine unless you decide to also take up insect portraiture.

I think most people that are interested in this method will already have a dslr. Buying a macro lens might be hard part.

On the cheap consider a reverse mount for a wide angle lens. Most will already have a 35 or 20mm lens. Since all you will need is a "filter to lens mount" adapter that can be ~$10. A couple of extension tubes and you're soon at 5X.

Old lenses of any brand from ebay can work, but you'll need to do some research on quality. Older lenses have manual apertures, all Nikon F-mount lenses have mechanical apertures, even new ones. I have used tape to set the aperture and later I bought a cheap mount fitting to eyeball the setting.

I know there are microscope objective adapters for Sony E-mount. There are many inexpensive objectives on Amazon. The one used in the example below was around $500 and is physically large! Microscopes seem to have a very CLOSE focusing distance and I never pursued this.

This is interesting. https://www.closeuphotography.com/5x...x-5x-objective

[Stan Jelavic]

Thanks for sharing David. There is a pretty big difference between the MPE65 and the microscope lens. Aside from the lens, one big problem with this approach is the shutter life. Most of the DSLRs including the mirrorless still use a mechanical shutter with a limited life. My Olympus PEN camera that I used in my early telecine has used 85000 shutter clicks out of 100000.
Nantawat in the above post mentioned that his G7 has no mechanical shutter and that would be a way to go. But the ultimate cost of this project is pretty high. You are looking at around $500 for the camera and another several hundred for the lens.

[Stan Jelavic]

Guess some people are willing to get the new DSLR for telecine. Possibly get the one with e-shutter capability so that way they do not have to worry for the shutter wear and can use the camera for other everyday shooting.
For people that already have a DSLR and are worried about shutter wear there may be a workaround. If the Hawkeye is set very close to 2 FPS the camera can be set to video mode at 30FPS. Then a script can be used to extract every 15th frame from the video. Not a new idea by any means but for people with a Wolverine and that already own a DSLR and some mechanical skills may be an interesting option. Actually the Hawkeye board may not be required, can use the Wolverine controller to run the motor, just not sure how accurate the 2FPS rate is.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Or capturing still images from camera's HDMI output?

That should be totally possible, provided that the camera does have "clean" output - no display overlay presented.

[Stan Jelavic]

Good thought.

[David Brown]

Hi Stan

We talked earlier about disconnecting Hawkeye's onboard camera when using the dslr shutter connection.
Sure it's safe advice, but I want to have both options available.

Did you mean to disconnect the usb to the Hawkeye camera or the 4 pin connector on the camera? I did both.

I have been successful having the Hawkeye trigger the shutter in both a Nikon and Sony cameras. Both of these cameras require the focus and shutter wires to be shorted together or they will not fire. It might not matter but, I take the red and black wires to be positive and negative(ground).

Maybe you are already shorting shutter and focus wires for your Cannon?

I won't be using the Hawkeye's light source. I have an LED light source I will place under the camera. The camera will be mounted on a copy stand located to the left side of Hawkeye. Mounting the camera is not easy with a tripod.

The Sony has an electronic shutter (silent shutter). I might try the Nikon. It only has a mechanical shutter. I don't intend to capture that much here to worry about the shutter count. Plus the Sony has a 4.5:1 macro lens that makes setup simpler.

All for now.

[Stan Jelavic]

Hi David, on my Mark2 with the lens set to manual focus it is not required to use the focus lead just shutter and ground. Not sure from your description how you are exactly putting the things together. Looks like you have the Wolverine with Hawkeye and I guess you use it as a transport and then you gave a DSLR setup. In that case the USB connection can stay connected so that you do not have to go through the connect-disconnect steps. The black wire is ground and the red switched hot lead.
Worked today on the assembly. Pretty fiddly trying to get the mounting holes centered etc but it is coming along pretty nice. May be ready to do the test run tomorrow.