The night before…

I am surrounded by camera equipment, which include the following:

• 1 Canon G9
• 1 Canon G7
• 1 GoPano 360 “lens”
• 1 Egg 360 “lens”
• 8+ Camera Batteries
• 4 Camera Battery Chargers
• 1 Blip.com.au Urbi Remote Trigger
• 1 SLR Adjustable Elbow Mount
• …and a partridge and a pear tree

I’ve spent at least $4,000 trying to get this right, and with all this equipment, I’m not sure what the magic bullet is. The Canon G9 can’t do the CHDK, but it can become an intervalometer with the Urbi. The only problem with the Urbi is that you can’t manually adjust the zoom because it restarts the camera, and takes it over like a computer might. We can control the zoom with some R/C equipment, but that remains to be seen. I’ve been trying to contact the maker of the Urbi, blip.com.au, but they are unresponsive. I don’t think they care about their customers. Anyways, this is what leads me to the Canon G7…

This week, I ordered a G7 from a nice guy off Ebay because of the Urbi’s shortcomings. The G7 does have CHDK support! This means I can (and have) taken pictures with all the settings set, and can get it to do it as often as I want, for as long as I want. Essentially, I have exactly what I want. Only thing is, it’s been hacked to be Infrared. This is weird, and cool at the same time. It means shots don’t have a natural color, but they also can be taken in times that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to, like dusk. Neat huh?

So why two 360 lenses? As I posted earlier, I originally got the GoPano. It’s a very nice mirror, but it’s mounted on a very flimsy piece of Plexiglas. When I start riding the trike, the mirror starts to shake back and forth, much more than the camera does. I bought the EGG because it’s built with a plastic housing, and mounts directly to the camera. It seems like a better solution, but the viewing angle is much lower, so I may well end up in the shot.

It all seems like the optimal solution is still far away, but my deadline is here. I’m packing for Burning Man, and there’s no time like the present. My hope is between myself and my brother, we’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out, one way or the other.