Kaidan Head

Some suggestions on capturing and transferring images:

• Our course camera, Canon Powershot A10, uses regular batteries. So, bring some backup batteries before taking off to capture images. There is an instruction manual in the camera box. 
• The head should click to 18 positions.  If it doesn't click, you need to tighten or loosen the mechanism at the base of the head. Don’t tighten the head too much. There is an instruction manual in the Kaidan box. 
• Before shooting images, make sure the optical center of the camera is approximately on the rotation axis of the Kaidan head. I have measured how you should configure your Kaidan head to make this happen and marked the configuration. When you mount the camera on the Kaidan head, please follow those markers. When you demount the camera, please be careful not to destroy the markers. (I do NOT suggest you to disassemble the Kaidan head. Only demount the camera when necessary.) Page 11-14 of Kaidan instruction manual tells you how to configure the head, if you are curious. 
• You can use bubbles on the levelers to make sure the head is mounted level.
• Make sure the camera is turned off when you're finished.  Also, do not leave the LCD monitor on longer than necessary, since the batteries drain pretty fast.
• To download pictures you have at least two choices
• use the PC with the flash card reader in Sieg 228.  You can take the flash card right out of the camera and insert in the slot.
• install the Canon software on your machine (should be in the Canon camera box) and download via USB
• You might want to go ahead and capture a hand-held sequence at the same time.
• During capturing, the lens should be most zoomed out ( the default mode of the camera). Otherwise, the focal length parameters we provide are NOT valid. 
• I recommend you to use Manual Mode of Canon PowerShot A1, so the the exposure and white balance are not automatically adjusted and hopefully consistent across the image sequence. I also recommend you capture images in portrait pose with small resolution (640*480) and save them in superfine compression mode. All those modes are described in the associated camera instruction manual. After capturing, you can use Photoshop or other image package to rotate the images.
• Make sure you return the equipment promptly, so the next group can pick it up.  If for some reason you think you are going to need more time, contact me and the next group (seitz@cs.washington.edu) immediately to see what can be worked out.