[Hdri] HDRI capture program for Canon EOS cameras under Mac OS X

[Gregory J. Ward]

There is a semi-working version of EOS Capture for OS X as well, but  
of course you are left to manually control the camera.  It avoids  
having to touch the camera, but it takes a while to get through the  
exposure sequence (as clouds move, etc.) and it doesn't really save  
you any effort.  CanonHDRcap gets through the exposures as quickly as  
they can be downloaded, which is pretty fast on the newer cameras  
that have Firewire or USB 2.0 support.  It might have been faster  
still if I had written the images to the card then downloaded them,  
and perhaps I will in some later version, but it's a lot more work  
for me and only really makes a difference for RAW captures on the  
5D.  (I found RAW captures not to be the way to go for HDR merging,  
for various reasons.)

Rob G. asked about Nikon cameras, and we did look at them originally,  
but there were two things that led us to use the Canon 5D.  One was  
the fact that we needed to capture full 180-degree circular fisheye  
images, and this requires a full-frame sensor.  The second was the  
way Nikon created a separate SDK with a different programming  
interface for every model camera, which makes supporting more than  
one a real pain.  It's a shame, though, because we have this really  
awesome f/2.8 Nikkor fisheye lens, and the adaptor ring that's  
supposed to mount Nikon lenses on Canon bodies doesn't work for this  
particular lens.

-Greg

> From: Thomas Bleicher <tbleicher at arcor.de>
> Date: January 20, 2006 3:14:22 PM PST
>
> On 20.01.2006, at 21:05, Gregory J. Ward wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> Under contract with LBNL, I have written an HDR capture program  
>> that works with the Canon EOS 5D camera under Mac OS X, and should  
>> work with other Canon EOS cameras as well.
>
> I assume that these would be the cameras the EOS Capture software is
> available for. On the Canon website the list is:
>
> EOS-1D
> EOS-1Ds
> EOS-1D MkII
> EOS 20D
> EOS-1Ds Mark II
> EOS 350D
> EOS 5D
> EOS-1D Mark II N
>
> (For beginners: The EOS 350D is the current low end of the list
> and available for about 500 $).
>
> URL for the (Windows) EOS Capture:
>
> http://software.canon-europe.com/software/eos_captures22671.asp?model=
>
> BTW: Canon has a SDK for these cameras which is probably what Greg
>      has used for his HDR capture. Nice to have something for OS X,  
> too.
>
> Thomas