22 April 2009

LED Photos

OK, this one isn't really a project. But I wanted to share it anyway. One day a bought this little ...light thingy in a junk shop. I didn't really know what it was, but it had LEDs and anyway it was only 1 €...

This is what it looks like:

It turns out that it has three very bright LEDs in red, green and blue and it works in different modes; one of them is a colour change mode. But it does this by using a PWM scheme. So when you swing it around fast enough, you see circles in different colours.

And when I got my new camera with a night shot mode that allows to do an 8 second exposure time, I had to try photographing this. The pictures turned out quite well.






(In the background yours truly, a bit blurred...)

So I toyed around with it. One problem is that when you swing that light around, it doesn't point towards the camera, which means it isn't very bright. So why not try holding it towards the camera...



Hm, not to bad, let's try something more complicated:



Hey, turned out quite nice as well. Somehow I even hit the starting point. So while I was at it, I also tried some other LED objects. Here one that I made earlier - just a white flashing LED - more on that later.



Well not quite as colourful, still - a spiral move:



Ok, that should do. And then there was my micro POV toy - material for yet another post. I had to try. I spun around a couple of times in the dark. Good job nobody saw me. Well yes, perhaps I am somewhat ... different. But look at the results. Aaah, the magic of the humble light emitting diode...



Why 23? Well, that is the room temperature. I know, that makes no sense...

Anyway, lots of fun and a few photos to show off to friends and family. And all I used was a few LEDs, a digital camera and a tripod.

That's it for now!

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