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A complete guide to automatic focus stacking with CHDK and a Canon A2400

Focus stacking is pretty awesome, and perfect to take your model photos to the next level. The only problem is that it's pretty slow and time consuming, or expensive, or both. Luckily there is a way to make it quick, easy, painless... and it's cheap. What follows is my approach to focus stacking, built around a bunch of open source/free software.

1: Get a compatible camera

First step is to acquire a compatible camera. Take a look at the Supported Hardware sidebar on the CHDK home page and select a camera. I chose a Canon a2400, which is a nice new, extra small point-and-shoot camera. It has optical image stabilisation which is nice, but most importantly it's small and has a good macro mode. I managed to pick one up brand new ...

Ranuska tunnel taking shape

Ranuska has been slowly ticking along. The tunnel has been the focus of my attention lately.

First port of call was to get the track into place. Thanks to my chopper I quickly made up the sleepers. A few test fits later and I glued the track down for good with 24 hour Araldite – 24 hours so that I had some time to get everything lined up before the glue went off. Once that was set I attacked the track with dark gray undercoat.

Now I had the track sorted, it was time to get the tunnel into place.

Before I put the tunnel walls in place, I need to line the inside of the tunnel. I did this with some well-expired Scultamold, that it turns out never set. I also added some small wood brackets to mount the tunnel to.

The Chopper

One of the most tedious parts of hand laying track is cutting sleepers to length. I get my sleeper stripwood in 2ft lengths, which then need to be chopped down to 15mm. The wood is quite strong, and it is quite a slow process to measure, cut, measure, cut, measure, cut. If only I had a machine to do it for me...

A plan is born...

So I decided to build an accurate chopping machine! I've seen commercial units, but really how hard can it be? I'd need blade that lifts up and down, a guide to keep things square, and another guide to set the length.

I sat down in front of Inventor and 30 mins later I had a machine all made up and chopping virtual sleepers:

I popped into town and picked up an M8 bolt, nut and washer set, some single edge razor blades, and a bit of w...

An engaging build, part 5

Continued from part 4...

An important occasion requires a celebratory train, so two carriages were duly ordered and shipped over to Utrainia, months prior to "the occasion". The carriages were prepared in top secret, first with a coat of deep maroon paint, which unfortunately came out more brown than maroon. Then it was time to name the carriages.

First of all some guidelines were added to the carriage with some masking tape. Then the decal letters were cut out and put in a dish of water to soak for a minute:

Each letter is the...

A tidy workbench

I very nearly forgot to post the most exciting part of yesterday's progress: a clean workbench!

Now everything is in its place. Even the floor is clean, and some of the secondary tables are looking pretty organised too. I've even found a cubbyhole for my project trays.

As for the meths, that is for the shellac. Rachel was curious how I, a mere guy, had managed to get shellac, supposedly the greatest thing in fingernail technology ever seen and therefore far too cool for me. I explained that I made it, from female lac beetle secretion, mixed with meths. That is the last time Rachel ever wears shellac nail polish!

The tube contraption on the desk is a slice of mailing tube with a base stuck on, ready to become my paintbrush holder. I dipped both ends in shellac to stop...

Ranuska trackwork finished?

After yesterday's amazing effort, I was pretty sure I could knock off the rest of the trackwork today. And indeed I did.

First up was laying the regular track between points; this wasn't too complicated, just a bit fiddly making the outer and inner loops an even gauge. Once that was done I set about laying the inner rails around the beach area:

These are slightly smaller rails that sit inside the regular track. I will fill between the tracks with DAS and scribe in cobblestones. By having the smaller rails on the inside I won't have to worry about keeping the DAS out of the flangeways, and it'll look more like tram track too.

Once that was done, I did an electrical test. This showed up numerous shorts. Each one had to be tracked down and fixed. After half an hour of f...