Most digital cameras these days come with some kind of electronic remote shutter release. Various solutions exist, using USB cables, smartphone apps, or dedicated remotes. [Steloherd] wasn’t happy with the options available for his Ricoh GRII, though, so built a rig to do things the old fashioned way.

[Steloherd] wanted to use an old-school mechanical release cable, so devised a way to use it to trigger the Ricoh’s standard shutter button. A small aluminium bracket was created, attached to the hot shoe on top of the camera via a mounting foot from a standard flash accessory. A spring plate was then created to help spread the load from the mechanical release pin, ensuring it triggers the camera effectively without damaging anything.

Installing the mechanical release proved difficult, as the DIN standard calls for an obscure M3.4 conical tapped thread. Rather than muck about finding rare tooling, [Steloherd] simply recut the thread on the release cable to a straight M3x0.5, and did the same for the bracket.

Hot shoe mounted red dot finder works great for pointing my dslr camera towards dark sky objects when doing astrophotography. Most modern cameras come equipped with a hot shoe; this tutorial will talk you through building a laser attachment that leverages this hot shoe. Total expense will be about ten dollars. The materials required are minimal: metal mending brace ($2, hardware store) laser pointer ($3-5) hot shoe to threaded 1/4 inch adapter ($4) glue. So I bought a dovetail bar, mounted the lens to it, and slid it into the mount in place of the telescope—you can see a pic of the configuration below. I transferred my green laser pointer to help with aiming via a hot shoe adapter, and voila! The mount itself is half the price of an AstroTrac, though probably not as portable.

Dslr Hot Shoe Laser Pointer Astrophotography Camera

Overall, it’s a tidy hack, and one that could be adapted to other cameras fairly easily. Other methods we’ve seen involve such odd choices as linear actuators harvested from air fresheners, if you’d believe it. As always, if it works, it works!

• Anyone have experience mounting a finder scope/autoguider (Orion Deluxe Mini 50mm Guide Scope) onto the hotshoe plate on the top of a DSLR camera? The finder scope has a 1 1/4 dovetail base (shoe) and also a adapter plate but I need something with a hotshoe fitting on one side and a plate or a do.
• But in dim nocturnal light, it can be difficult to accurately aim the camera at a particular target in the sky. Red dot finders could facilitate this function, but their feet are not designed to hop aboard DSLR cameras — until now. The Geoptik hotshoe adapter is a convenient mediator between a camera and a red dot finder’s dovetail.

Most digital cameras these days come with some kind of electronic remote shutter release. Various solutions exist, using USB cables, smartphone apps, or dedicated remotes. [Steloherd] wasn’t happy with the options available for his Ricoh GRII, though, so built a rig to do things the old fashioned way.

Dslr Hot Shoe Laser Pointer Astrophotography System

[Steloherd] wanted to use an old-school mechanical release cable, so devised a way to use it to trigger the Ricoh’s standard shutter button. A small aluminium bracket was created, attached to the hot shoe on top of the camera via a mounting foot from a standard flash accessory. A spring plate was then created to help spread the load from the mechanical release pin, ensuring it triggers the camera effectively without damaging anything.

Installing the mechanical release proved difficult, as the DIN standard calls for an obscure M3.4 conical tapped thread. Rather than muck about finding rare tooling, [Steloherd] simply recut the thread on the release cable to a straight M3x0.5, and did the same for the bracket.

Dslr Hot Shoe Laser Pointer Astrophotography Machine

Overall, it’s a tidy hack, and one that could be adapted to other cameras fairly easily. Other methods we’ve seen involve such odd choices as linear actuators harvested from air fresheners, if you’d believe it. As always, if it works, it works!