The processing code for time lapse captures through the iSight camera with a static centered slit looks like this:

import processing.video.*;

Capture cameraSource;
int capwidth = 1280;
int capheight = 1024;
int outwidth = 1024;

int currentColumn = 0;

boolean keepDrawing = false;
boolean isDone = false;

void setup()
{
size(outwidth, capheight);
cameraSource = new Capture(this, capwidth, capheight, 30);
cameraSource.crop(capwidth/2, 0, 1, capheight);
}

void captureEvent(Capture cameraSource) {
if(cameraSource.available()) {
cameraSource.read();
}
}

void keyPressed() {
keepDrawing = true;
isDone = false;
}

void draw() {
if(keepDrawing) {
if(currentColumn<=width) {

image(cameraSource, currentColumn, 0);
currentColumn++;
}
else {
keepDrawing = false;
isDone = true;
saveImage();
currentColumn = 0;
}
}
}

void saveImage() {
//yeah I know...

String d = String.valueOf(day());
String m = String.valueOf(month());
String y = String.valueOf(year());
String h = String.valueOf(hour());
String mn = String.valueOf(minute());
String s = String.valueOf(second());

save("scan" + y + m + d + "-" + h + mn + s + ".png");
}

If you didn’t know already, Holga is a medium format plastic camera made in the 80s for middle class chinese. Alas, there is no display, no TTL viewfinder, no autofocus and no exposure metering. The constraints imposed by the Holga was just what I needed to make taking pictures more fun!

Some of my Holga experiments can be found in the flickr album A couple of days with Holga.

Only one picture had a written note. It said “Carl Kobdock” below the guy in the blue shirt.

Interestingly, there is only one person with that name alive in Sweden today. I will be sending him a printout to see if he’s the guy. Updates will follow.

It seems like the trip was a lot of fun. See the rest of the pictures in the Trans-Siberian railway trip 1978 set.

Mom is moving to a new place and I helped hear clean out some stuff in the basement when I discovered a suitcase of old photos. Most were blurred vacation photos of people we didn’t know or remember. At the bottom of the pile I found these photos of Knut Andersson, my dad’s uncle. Apparently he joined a circus and had a career as an acrobat which wasn’t popular among the bourgeois relatives. I never met him and know little about him but I am glad there is an acrobat in the family. Maybe it explains my desire to climb stuff.

More photos in the Flickr photo set.

Portrait of Knut Andersson, from sometime in the 1940s.