Controlling a Nikon or Canon camera with a Nintendo DS

Louise – Paisley wrote in to tell us about a very cool project from Steve of PanoCamera:

In my day-to-day routine I often find myself having to do extensive photographic documentation of objects or locations, only there is often someone waiting to turn off the lights, or move objects, or any myriad of possible interruptions. This is one reason why using a camera tethered to a laptop can be a pain. The computer is a burden to travel with, takes five minutes to boot, the batteries run low, the ten minutes you had to get the job done just became five… It occurred to me that if I could somehow tether a DSLR to an instant-on device like an Arduino microcontroller I would have less weight to carry around and could get more work done. After mentally spec’ing out what I would need, I realized the solution was right in front of me – because I bring it with me for Mario Kart wireless races on long night jobs – (In the manner of John Lasseter’s slow epiphany voice): “Use-the-Nintendo-D-S.” Duh.

Check out the author’s blog for more information: this will be available soon as a combined hardware/software package for about $100. Panocamera DSLR Control