An earlier concept drawing of the pump impeller contained a higher number of fins.

For a project on my engineering course we were required to develop a water pump for use in a power drill driven irrigation system. I have put together some pictures from the deign and manufacture stages of making a prototype.

Centrifugal pumps use a spinning impeller to accelerate water outwards from a central point. They allow a high flow rate, but do not offer as high a pressure as some positive displacement pump designs. However, due to their simplicity and very their low number of moving parts we decided to develop this design for our pump.

The original concept had the shaft going the whole way through the pump, and the water coming into the pump through a slot in the front plate. However, the design was modified to have the shaft being held by a bearing in the back casing which means that the back casing will not have to be sealed to prevent water leakage making it more efficient and easier to manufacture. The shaft will be supported at the front of the casing by a hole in the front plate. The new design also has a series of holes around the input of the shaft instead of one slot, and then the entire pump submerged. This will mean that less time and accuracy will be needed on priming and sealing, so again making the manufacturing of the pump simpler.

Ease of manufacture was an important factor to consider in our design, although a greater number of vanes provides a higher pump efficiency we have chosen to have only four; allowing for a more simple assembly and manufacturing stage.

We just have a few small modifications to make before we can test it out for the first time, hopefully in the next week. In total the pump construction time was around 6 hours, from raw materials to final assembled pump.

A short time-lapse video all shot through one window looking over Holcombe, Exmouth and Dawlish. Had problems with dust on the rear element of my 200-500mm that I cannot seem to remove, may try and get some more hardcore lens cleaning tools.

I’m happy with it for my first try, just a short video to get familiar with the work flow and an overview of the whole process. Hopefully my next one should be much better.

Canon 400D, tamron 200-500mm, tamron 135mm, Nikon E-series 50mm and Nikon nikkor 35mm.

Music is by Bonobo.

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)

I have been doing quite a bit of time-lapsing recently and have finally worked out a good work flow; so I thought I would write a post about it to save anyone else time in the future in my situation. This guide will tell you how to shoot a time-lapse using your DSLR and import it into Adobe premiere pro via Virtualdub to remove flicker.

I am shooting my initial images using a canon DSLR and a intervalometer. When shooting it is important to make sure that focus, aperture, white balance and ISO are manually set. For short time-lapses you can also set the shutter speed manually, but for longer periods it is necessary to set the camera to aperture priority. I normally do not use raw for time-lapse since the final output resolution and compression is relatively low, therefore the much larger file-size makes relatively little difference. Make sure the camera is solid and well supported, when shooting with longer lenses I use the mirror lock-up feature to help reduce shake.

Once the the images have been transferred to your editing PC split up each separate shot into it’s own folder. If your photos do not have an ordered numerical suffix select them all, right click the first image, and rename it suitably. All the other images will be numbered sequentially.

You will need to download the 32bit version of VirtualDub (the 64 bit version doesn’t support the MSU de-flicker plugin) as well as the MSU deflicker filter. Extract and place the plugin filter files in the plugins folder and then launch the VirtualDub.exe file.

From the file menu select open video file and navigate to the folder containing your still images; select the first file and ensure that automatically load linked segments is ticked at the bottom of the window; click open.

Your first shot should appear on screen, right click the image and resize until you can see both the input and output video pane. Under the video menu select filters (or hit ctrl +F) click add and select the resize option; specify the dimension you want to export. Normally the images from the DSLR are at least 10 megapixels, this size is not necessary for HD video and unless you plan on digitally panning and zooming on the shot resizing the images now saves a lot of space. Be careful not to modify the aspect ratio of the footage as you resize. In the filters window click add again and select MSU deflicker the default settings work okay, but you can play around with them to see if you can make any improvements.

Click ok to exit the filters window, you are now ready to export the sequence to Premiere Pro. In the file menu select export > image sequence, for shorter clips you can select lossless Targa but for anything over 300 shots I generally choose Jpeg 90%. Name your file and create a folder to save the image set in; click ok when done. The render should take a couple of minutes, normally for Jpeg sequences the projected file size is listed as much higher than the actual size, this is a bug within Virtual dub.

You can now close VirtualDub and open up Premiere. Open up your timelapse project and set-up a sequence into which you can import your time lapse. For this example I have created a 1920*1080 24p project. Under the file menu select import and navigate to the folder in which you saved the output sequence from VirtualDub, select the first image and tick the numbered stills box. If you are unable to tick the box there is a problem with your file numbering. The time-lapse will now be listed in the project items list as footage, right click the file and select interpret footage, the default frame rate can be incorrect so enter the same frame rate as the sequence into which the time-lapse is going to be put. You can now use the footage in your project, if your time lapse resolution is different to your project you may want to zoom out using the options in the effects tab.

Here is a video showing the time lapse from above, I have included a section with and without the MSU deflicker filtered applied to show it’s effectiveness. Only a slight filtering was applied for this clip as there is a large amount of foreground movement.

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)

Or you can go and watch it on vimeo.

http://www.vimeo.com/25117868

I just got an intervalometer to make time-lapse videos with my DSLR and this is the first time I have tried it out. The intervalometer is just a cheap model off of eBay made by Yongnuo digital (they call it the MC-36 Timer Remote Cord), it allows you to shoot long-exposures, timed-releases and timed-intervals which is perfect for my needs. When setting up the timer you have to specify the shot interval in seconds and the number of shots, I normally just set the number of shots to to 0 (infinite) and stop the time-lapse manually. The timer is fairly easy to use and construction seems solid, a bargain at only £15.

At the moment I don’t have access to a tripod so I have had to balance the camera on top of a colour enlarger for each sequence I shoot. I got this enlarger free from my school when they were throwing out a load of stuff from the observatory before I left; I haven’t actually been able to try it out yet. I want to do some 120 black and white development and enlargement at home sometime, but it is quite an investment so it will have to wait.

This time-lapse is one of the first I did to test out the equipment and develop a good work flow, and I think it came out pretty well. I produced the final video using Virtualdub, adobe premier pro and after effects. I will probably put up a post explaining the process later this week.

For this clip a canon 400D was used with a Tamron Adaptall-2 135mm f/2.5 prime lens that I got second hand for about £20. ISO was set to 100 and the aperture was at around F/5.6. Shutter was set to auto to account for changes in light. Flicker was reduced in post using Virtual dub, twixtor was used to smooth out the motion of the clouds and slightly slow them down.

I have been shooting for a couple of days and this is just one clip from a much larger project, anyway here is the first little test clip:

If you are a student at the University of Bath looking for a good place to swim on a hot day Warleigh weir is what you are looking for. About a 30 minute downhill walk from campus (more back) the weir is a popular spot on a hot day. I recommend you go during the work week to avoid the masses; on a hot day it can get very busy. The water is deepest at the very end of the weir wall, where you can jump and dive into the water.

The weir is surprisingly warm and the water seems very clean, perfect for swimming.

More information can be found here: http://www.publicearth.com/places/swimming-areas/warleigh-weir

Photography info:

• All shot on Canon 400D
• Nikon nikkor 35mm Prime lens F2.8 AI
• ISO hovering around 100-200
• F-Stop varies from F2.8-5.6
• All hand held manual focus
• Shot raw and processed in Adobe PS CS5

This is the first time I have really tried shooting in raw, I have used it occasionally before for important shots, but have usually shot Jpeg because of the space saving; but now I have decided that shooting everything in raw is really worth it. The latitude of the images is really improved and you can recover so much more detail from each shot, much more forgiving. Looks like I am going to need to invest in some more CF cards.

When I got to the weir my friends had already been swimming and the place was empty, so I got a few shots before I jumped in. One or two aren’t quite in focus, shooting with low aperture lenses isn’t very forgiving and on small sensor cameras (less than full frame) I find it hard to see enough detail for critical focus. It is often also difficult to tell whether something is in focus on the relatively low resolution screen of the 400D.

Anyway here are some pictures from a visit last Monday (Click to enlarge) :

The shallow incoming angle of the flash really brought out the detail in the moths wings.

I have started playing round more and more with my external flashes and wireless triggers. The other day I noticed a moth on the window and thought it might make an interesting subject; using a single strobe with slight diffusion placed outside I up-lit the window and got these shots of the various moths that were attracted.

Basic info:

1 wireless flash from behind, no diffusion zoomed all the way out, lighting up through glass towards camera.

• Canon EOS 400D
• 50mm manual Nikon E-series lens
• f8 ISO 200 1/160
• Hong Kong Nikon extension tubes
• Jessops 280 AFC strobe (no manual control just full power)
• Neewer CT-04 radio trigger

The dust on the window causes a star scape background that surrounds the insects when illuminated by the flash. Click on each image to view them full size. (Actual resolution available by request).

Currently a huge amount of time and money is being invested in the research, development and implementation of technologies to exploit renewable energy sources; it is estimated that £95-billion was invested in new renewable capacity in 2009 alone. [1] In the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s 2009 report plans were set out to raise the production of  energy from renewables to 30% of the total; some believe that electricity harnessed from wave power could be the solution to meeting these goals.

For my course on mechanical engineering at the university of bath I was tasked to create a website exploring a topic from a list of possibilities. I chose to investigate wave energy and my final project can be found here:

http://stevenbrace.co.uk/mecheng/final/