Most digital cameras these days come with some kind of electronic remote shutter release. Various solutions exist, using USB cables, smartphone apps, or dedicated remotes. [Steloherd] wasn’t happy with the options available for his Ricoh GRII, though, so built a rig to do things the old fashioned way.
US$5.24 US$6.29 17% Off UURig R046 Hot Shoe Plate Mount Bracket Mount Base Expansion Fill Light Mic Interface Stand for DSLR Camera 0 review COD US$12.80 US$15.36 17% Off UURig R038 Dual Hot Shoe Camera Extension Mount Bracket Vlog Microphone LED Light Extend Stand for Canon M6 Mark II 0 review COD. Dslr Hot Shoe Laser Pointer Mount. 6/24/2019 0 Comments Oct 13, 2012 Thank you for viewing our Studio22 360 degree view. If you are interested in any of our products.
[Steloherd] wanted to use an old-school mechanical release cable, so devised a way to use it to trigger the Ricoh’s standard shutter button. A small aluminium bracket was created, attached to the hot shoe on top of the camera via a mounting foot from a standard flash accessory. A spring plate was then created to help spread the load from the mechanical release pin, ensuring it triggers the camera effectively without damaging anything.
Dslr Hot Shoe Laser Pointer Mount Wow
Installing the mechanical release proved difficult, as the DIN standard calls for an obscure M3.4 conical tapped thread. Rather than muck about finding rare tooling, [Steloherd] simply recut the thread on the release cable to a straight M3x0.5, and did the same for the bracket.
Overall, it’s a tidy hack, and one that could be adapted to other cameras fairly easily. Other methods we’ve seen involve such odd choices as linear actuators harvested from air fresheners, if you’d believe it. As always, if it works, it works!
Aiming and framing with a DSLR
In many occasions you probably are using a DSLR for astrophotography on a mount that doesn’t have GoTo, so you have to find and frame your target manually. To see exactly what your camera is seeing you can make use of the liveview feature of your camera nowadays. This makes it a bit more easy, but you still only see the brightest stars in a relative narrow field of view, depending on the focal length of the lens you are using. Comparing it to a star chart can be done when you know where you are pointing at generally, but if you are off target it is very hard to see ‘where’ you are and how to adjust.
When using my Nikon D7000 on the Astrotrac I used to aim and frame by just ‘looking over the lens’ and taking lots of test images and comparing the image to the star chart of the atlas. I found this to be quite hard so I wanted to have a more easy and accurate way of doing this.
Using a green laser with your DSLR
I got the advise from someone to try and use a green laser to get a better understanding of where the camera is exactly pointing at. You can do this basically in two ways; putting the laser alongside your lens or pointing the laser in the viewfinder. Both methods proved to be to inaccurate to be really useful.
So I had to think of another way.
Dslr Hot Shoe Laser Pointer Mounts
Dslr Hot Shoe Laser Pointer Mount For Cell Phone
Using a red dot finder with your DSLR
Dslr Hot Shoe Laser Pointer Mount System
Turned out you can easily mount a Red Dot Finder on the hotshoe of your DSLR! This makes it very easy to see exactly where your camera is pointing at because of the bigger overview you have of ‘where you are’, so you are able to ‘star-hop’ with your DSLR.
The only thing you need is a small adapter to put on your hotshoe. There are several online stores that sell these. I got mine at Teleskop-Express (in Germany) here: Lacerta flash shoe finder adapter
With this adapter you can easily mount your red dot finder on your DSLR. I even use this when shooting with my Quadruplet, it’s just so convenient.