Digital camera with wifi/USB port and long exposure

[sedm1000]

Random question - but I am not familiar with the area...

Is it possible to recommend a camera that can manage, say, 8 second exposures - but also has the ability to transfer files to a USB stick, or by wifi to a local computer?

What other easy transfer options are available - i.e. so the camera could be accessed by multiple computers, without a dedicated console?

edit: guess that a USB cable out to a printer (also with USB export) would work too...

Thanks for your help.

 

[Gaffer]

Is it possible to recommend a camera that can manage, say, 8 second exposures - but also has the ability to transfer files to a USB stick, or by wifi to a local computer?

Yes.

Most (all?) Canon DSLRs have a USB port and a program that allows you to control the camera from a PC/Mac via . You can set most (all?) camera settings, click the shutter and see the picture. On cameras with "LiveView", you can see a live video feed of what can be seen through the lens, so that you can choose when to press the trigger. With Canon DSLRs you are looking at an entry price of several hundred pounds.

On the newer "1D" series cameras (here, we are talking in thousands, not hundreds), you can get a wifi unit that plugs into the camera. I havn't used it myself but I believe that it can act as a webserver and would assume that this means that it will allow multiple people to browse pictures that it has taken. It is really designed for press sports photographers, where you have the photographer taking pictures of the event and someone else reviewing them and sending the good ones to the newspaper as fast as possible.

Most (all?) of these cameras will take an exposure up to 30 seconds without doing anything special.

I'm curious. What are you planning to take pictures of and in what context?

Andrew

 

[sedm1000]

Thanks for that - as I said it's been a while since I checked this space out.

Aim is to rig up a cheap camera for viewing DNA on gels in the lab. 450-600nm. As far as i can tell, a cheap wifi enabled camera should be able to service ten nearby computers for a fraction
of the cost of a full commercial system (5k+). Are standard commercial ccd's prone to damage from UV light?

 

[lord filbuster]

Thanks for that - as I said it's been a while since I checked this space out.

Aim is to rig up a cheap camera for viewing DNA on gels in the lab. 450-600nm. As far as i can tell, a cheap wifi enabled camera should be able to service ten nearby computers for a fraction
of the cost of a full commercial system (5k+). Are standard commercial ccd's prone to damage from UV light?

How far into the UV are we talking? I doubt they would be damaged, it will likely pass straight through. I think regular ccds stop absorbing around 300nm, so only a little into the near UV. I'd guess the worst thing that would happen is it would need to adjust the colour or exposure of the image. You could always buy a cheap UV filter if it would fit.

 

[-TA-]

Can get a Wifi SD card..

 

[sorn21]

EDIT; NM

 

[sedm1000]

How far into the UV are we talking? I doubt they would be damaged, it will likely pass straight through. I think regular ccds stop absorbing around 300nm, so only a little into the near UV. I'd guess the worst thing that would happen is it would need to adjust the colour or exposure of the image. You could always buy a cheap UV filter if it would fit.

Looks like 302nm in this case. I can always clean the muck off the UV guard and image it through the plastic.

Will try it later and find out.

Thanks.

 

[sedm1000]

Tested with an old Canon G1. Doesn't seem to have done immediate damage to the subsequent images - but wasn't easy to pick up the DNA signal. UV tubes seemed coming through, made it difficult to get an image.

I'll play with this further - it can be done, but requires some tweaking...