How to modify the Lex 35/Vivitar T100 toy camera for multiple & bulb exposures

Key and tape positioning

The Lex 35/T100’s shutter cocking mechanism is coupled to its film advance, so reliable multiple exposures are out on a stock model. If you’ve got a screwdriver, a metal coat hanger, a pair of pliers, and some tape, this is not a problem. This will show you how to add a key that will cock the shutter without touching the film advance and allow you to shoot multiple exposures with impunity as well as how to block the shutter from closing, allowing you to keep it open as long as you want…

Continue reading here on Photon Detector.

Blog commenting now works in IE

Imagine that!

The old ThinkPad that I used for browser testing finally died, so I didn’t pick up on the problem. Sorry!

Tech note: apparently IE has a problem where it doesn’t allow you to manipulate a form field named "author" with JavaScript if you have an "author" meta tag. Yet another reason to switch from the steaming pile of shit that is IE to something sane, like Firefox. Hell, lynx would be an improvement. At least it has deterministic rendering!

Non-tech note: IE sucks. Firefox is free and does not suck. Please consider switching.

Image gamma redirector (open source PHP)

This open source PHP script will choose from two different gamma-corrected images based on whether the page is being viewed from a Windows/*nix machine or a Mac. Macs generally have a target gamma of 1.8 while Windows and non-Apple *nix has a target of 2.2 or 2.4 (which usually nets out to about 2.2 in average lighting). The result is that images made on Macs look too dark on everything else and images made on everything else look too light on Macs. This script solves the problem by detecting which platform the browser is running on and automatically redirects the request to an appropriate gamma-corrected copy that you’ve prepared ahead of time.

This is free and open source software and is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

More info and download here in the Tools & Reference section.