What does the Apple iPad, Olympus Studio, an E-1 and a laptop have to do with each other? The answer is a remote controlled camera for photographing birds. Click on "Read More" to see the rest of the article.

Downy Woodpecker, Olympus E-1, Leica 14-50, iPad controlled

The Apple iPad offers photographers functionality normally required of larger or dedicated hardware. I've been exploring various features and options and looking at this in a modular fashion. This particular photograph is the result of today's effort. Maybe it isn't the world's greatest bird photo, but that wasn't the point. This was a proof of concept photograph.

The camera is placed on a tripod less than two meters from the bird feeder and the Leica lens was zoomed to the 34mm (68mm equivalent) focal length. The camera was oriented vertically and with this focal length and distance I had all of the perches covered by the camera. Attached to the camera was the firewire cable descending to the ground where a laptop computer was placed. The laptop was running Olympus Studio 2 software.

Studio 2 allows tethered operation of Olympus E-system cameras and I had placed it in PC control. In PC control, most of your settings are adjustable via the computer screen and there is a button that allows you to "press" the "shutter release". Unfortunately, in PC mode there is a delay, so you will have to adjust your own timing accordingly to compensate for the lag.

The laptop is also running one other piece of software called VNC Server. VNC is a keyboard, video and mouse remote control program which allows a VNC client equipped computer to access the host computer for full control of it. The VNC client software is available for the iPad.

To make this work in the field, you do need to establish a wireless network. For this proof of concept outing, I had an old WiFi router hooked up to the laptop (on the client side ethernet ports--use wired connection if at all possible to double the speed of the screen updating). The iPad is connected to the wireless side of the WiFi router and allows you to control the computer from as far away as the WiFi signal is able to reach.

As there was no electricity at this location, and between the router and the laptop's worn out battery, I did need a power source. A deep-cycle marine battery with a DC/AC power-inverter took care of that task.

Image Details: Olympus E-1, Leica 14-50 lens at 34mm and set to F8, aperture priority. Shutter speed is 1/25 second. ISO 200, ESP, and the white balance was set to Auto -1. Image was cropped to square and resized for the web.

I was approximately 50 meters away from the camera and birdfeeder when I shot this picture.

Ken Norton

June 19, 2010.