Introduction
The Department of Geology & Geophysics, through a University grant to the UTAM Consortium and Ron Bruhn's Structure group, has access to a Canon EOS-20D digital SLR camera and assorted accessories. The camera is high resolution (8 Mpixel), and comes with large storage and battery capacity. There are currently two lenses available: a 17-85 mm, and a 100-400 mm zoom. A tripod with mounting head is also available. The camera was originally purchased to acquire images for digital stratigraphy, but may someday be generally available to students.
Using the equipment
Use of the equipment is granted by the UTAM or Structure group; contact Jerry Schuster or Ron Bruhn for access. To pickup or return the equipment, get the case and tripod from the current location.
There is an equipment checklist (see links below) that lists the items you should receive when you pick up the system, and what you should give back when you are done.
To download the camera, either use the card reader and any USB-equipped computer, or the Canon download software and a Windows machine. Photos stored in Canon's RAW format can be converted by the Canon software, photo programs that understand the CR2 format, or some dedicated converters. On Linux, use the dcraw program to convert from the CR2 format to TIFF, JPEG, etc. Note that the raw format stores the best images for science, as no compression or loss occurs due to format.
Images, once converted from the CR2 format, can be processed in any photo-editing program (e.g. GIMP or Photoshop). Matlab also has image import/export routines that allow numerical image processing in the Matlab environment. Linux has sets of command-line tools (e.g. ImageMagick) to do some image processing. Web searches and discussion with previous users can point you in the right direction for your project.