DIY Tablet stand with PCI Brackets

I received my 2013 Nexus 7 a couple of weeks ago.  One of the things I miss most is that my old case that allowed my tablet to sit up at an angle on a table for video viewing or reading.  I have a new case on order but it is going to take a few more weeks to get here.  I went searching online for cheap stands I could make and I ran across several ideas and combined a few with what I had.

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To make this I took a blank PCI Bracket I had in my desk and bent it in the middle a bit so that it would stand up.  I then bent the 90 degree angle portion a bit more (125 degrees I would guess) so it would grip the edge of my 2013 Nexus 7.  (Since it’s so thin it’s pretty slick).  For as simple as this is it works well, and it even works for my Note 2.

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DIY Studio Results (Whitney)

In February I decided to start building a studio in my basement.  At the time the weather was cold and I was out of things to work on in my house while it was still cold.  This was always something I had wanted, so I built a Backdrop stand out of PVC, bought some fabric to use as a backdrop and found a good deal on some great studio lights through a contact at Awesome Camp 2011.  About the time this was finished the weather got warmer and I started work on remodeling my garage.  A couple of weekends ago a good friend came over and we played around in the studio for a couple of hours.  She brought lots of clothes and we had fun mixing and matching. I am looking forward to future studio time to learn. I still have a ton to learn about studio lighting but i think the results below turned out pretty good.

I ended up firing the Alienbee B800’s I have wirelessly with my Canon 7D with the built in wireless flash firing trigger built in.  This is a great feature, it was guess and check to get it set right but so far it seems to work great, and quite reliable.  I shot tethered via USB to my old laptop using Lightroom to see the shots as I took them.  This was cool and my model really liked being able to see every shot as they were taken.  I think for the next shoot I will bring one of my external monitors so the images are larger.  Other things I learned was I need a bit more width to the room to move lights further away from the source.  For big shoots I might have to push furniture to the sides of the room and setup there.  I will have to think on this. The backdrop holder worked well. I need to re-engineer one side of it a bit but for the most part it did its job well.  I did learn the carpet under the model while nice for her to stand on causes the backdrop to have rinkles.  This is distracting in the photography and next time I will remove it.  I also learned that I need to iron my backdrops.  Not looking forward to this task as it will take forever.  Does anyone have a steamer?

I do plan on doing a blog post sometime on the construction of my DIY PVC backdrop holder, and my garage remodel, but I make no guarantee when that may be.  In the mean time enjoy the small sample of pictures below and the link to the set on Flickr.

 

 

 

 

See the rest of this set on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/eos_liquidretro/sets/72157626682837239/

Mini3 Headphone Amp Build

This past week I built an AMB labs Mini3 headphone amplifier for my Sennheiser HD595 headphones. The amp is still burning in but so far I am very impressed. It really helps when playing audio through my computer and especially through my iPod. The build was very fun. I soldered my first surface mount components. I also built it first time around correctly with no problems. The case is also great. So far I am very impressed. Here are some pictures of the finished project.