Taking Control

Having control of your DSLR's capabilities is of huge importance in the photography world. Remote control becomes even more important when trying to capture an image with high dynamic range or HDR. These dynamic images are created by capturing several different exposures of one image and combining them together to form an image in which there is adequate exposure of nearly every pixel in the image. Because you are shooting several different exposures of the same image it is important that the camera doesn't move, making changing the settings a risky move even when the camera is mounted. This has forced photographers and manufacturers to come up with remote ways of controlling the camera. In the past this has been done by connecting your camera to a computer and controlling it with software. The problem with this is the amount and size of gear required for the shoot. This has led the team at HDR Labs to develop the Open Camera Control.

To do this, the HDR Labs team has taken a Nintendo DS and created a piece of software that allows you to control your camera by tethering the device to your DSLR via a DYI cable made from a camera release cable, a standard Nintendo DS game housing and a few other circuitry parts. Although this step takes a bit of knowledge on circuit board building and coding, it is still putting the technology into the hands of the consumers and getting them to think outside of the "photographical" box. All of the Camera Control software they have developed for the Nintendo DS can be found here.

With the creation of the Open Camera Control, HDR Labs is hoping to put an idea in the minds of photographers, or rather a canvas, that they can then change and mold into something that fits a style of shooting or artistic vision they have in mind. Just like the creators of Frankencamera they are hoping that manufacturers begin to create cameras that can be programmed by photographers to do things completely unexpected.