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September 4, 2003

Last night I shot one potential master of the Enterprise and another this morning and they both turned out equally suitable for copying. Here's the final layout.

Overall view with light-blocking cards in place.  The layout is the same as shown here except that I've added a mica plate to rotate the polarization of the right-hand object beam.  The last was an experiment to see what affect it would have on the second master.  None.  The object diffuses the light enough that the polarization doesn't matter.

Here's a larger shot of the layout with the cards removed.

And the final Enterprise model as it will appear in the hologram.

After shooting the second master and bleaching it I decided to use my remaining morning time to reset the table to make a reflection copy.  The test turned out ok although I'll need to tweak the light ratios a bit (this was a really quick test).

I don't have a picture of the H2 yet but here are two pictures of the H1

It's harder to get a decent shot of the virtual image

But the real image shows up very bright.  There's a greater contrast range in the live image that the digital camera just can't capture.

We've also been working on a frame for this hologram.  Susan picked out a design, bought the wood (oak) and we've been working on it in bits and pieces all week.  We're not regular woodworkers and had to re-learn a few things before all the angles came out mostly right (we could use another frame to learn on).

Here's the frame, newly stained on the front and partially wired.

The inner field has a small channel routed along the outside where we ran wire-wrap wire for the light.  The wires you see sticking out of the left and right sides, which will become the top and bottom of the frame, will be connected to a power supply and light arm similar to the one used here.

September 6, 2003

Susan went out and picked up some more mats and turnbuckles (the thingys that hold the back of a picture frame in) and when I got home we finished the last few obvious bits on the frame like cutting the glass and putting it all together.

Here's the frame, waiting for the hologram to be completed.

September 7, 2003

This morning was a frenzy of hologram making and frame cleanup.  By Sat night I had shot six small test holograms of the Enterprise master and all were bad in one way or another.  The first reflection I'd done on Wednesday was extremely foggy with a weak image, and all the rest were either extremely dim and/or foggy beyond belief.

I first thought that the envelope I'd stored my film in had reacted with the emulsion (paper that contains acid is likely to do that, which causes fogging) I switched to some fresh film but got the same results.  By Friday night I had ended up with a hologram of "nothing.  Thinking that I either had some bad chemical contamination or something in the setup was badly off kilter, I got up at 6am and on Sunday morning and dumped and cleaned all my in-use chemical containers and utensils.  I also found that my beam lengths were off by 4.5".  That is mostly likely the cause of the problem.  If you've been reading my logs since I started the Ogham hologram, you may remember that at one point I had beams that were off by as much at 20" and I still got a dim image.  This is because I'd managed to hit a hill in the coherence pattern where the ref and obj beams nearly lined up.  I would hazard a guess that the coherence length of my laser is about 4" or slightly less.

After double-checking the setup I put the Ogham master in the master plate holder just to make sure there was some odd problem with the Enterprise master. After exposing some test film I ended up with a nice bright Ogham hologram.  I immediately switched out the master for the Enterprise and put some test film into the plate holder.  After exposure and processing, I got a nice bright hologram of the Enterprise.

By this time is was going on 8am and knowing that I still needed to get a full size hologram done in time to leave by noon, I didn't change any more variables and put a slightly larger 3x4" piece of film in the holder and shot that.  Success again.

Next I put a 4x5" sheet into the holder and exposed and processed that.  Disaster.  I'd been using 10 minute settling times on the test exposures but with the larger sheets I needed to let the film settle longer.  In went another 4x5" sheet and with the settling time of 20 minutes R2 exposed and I processed the film.

This one ended up bright and clear, ready for backing and final assembly.

We were busy getting the frame completed and so I don't have pictures of the light assembly (which we actually finished after we'd arrived in Ft Worth) but here are some shots of the nearly complete and completed framed hologram.

The hologram in the finished frame with the light arm attached without a light.

The final hologram with the light attached.

September 8, 2003

Here's a closer shot of the Enterprise

and the table layout for the copy

September 12, 2003

We received a new spatial filter from Creative Stars yesterday morning and put it into the copy setup last night.  This morning I shot another copy of the Enterprise that is much clearer and cleaner.

At first, I wasn't sure if I'd like the new filter because the pinhole is screwed into the housing rather than held in place with magnets the way the Jodon filter is.  The magnets make it extremely convenient to put the pinhole back on the filter but it does require fiddling afterwards to get a clean beam back out.  After removing the pinhole and re-placing it to find that I only needed to do very minor adjustment to get the beam fully filtered (I probably could have skipped it), I've decided that I like this new filter a great deal.

Shown in the picture is also the Jodon spatial filter at the top, the ref beam transfer mirror at top left and a cylinder lens at lower right.  The last helps to shape the beam so that I can use as much of the light as possible.

Here's a shot of the new hologram hanging in my office at work.

September 20, 2003

It's been a slow week, work has been hectic while we get ready for "beta" and I've only had a chance to make two copies of the Enterprise.

For the first copy I mounted some film onto glass using the Kapco film.  While the hologram came out "ok" overall, there were some artifacts (plus the fact that I didn't tape the edges and light entered the film) that I can see when viewing it as a transmission.

This is with the light coming in at 45deg, you can see a semi-regular mottling.  I wonder if this is caused by the Kapco adhesive.

It doesn't show too well in the photo but if I tilt the glass so the light hits it at about 25deg, the transmission image is nice and clean.

Here's the reflection mode image.  It too is reasonably clean and bright although if I look carefully I can see very faint signs of the mottling from above.  Strange.

September 25, 2003

Last night I broke down the copy setup to start making some more masters.  I'm on a more relaxed hologram making schedule now, so I can afford to make a bunch of masters before switching over to copies.

For the first one I decided to start with a pin that Susan and I wanted to convert to light some time ago but got pushed to the back burner.  Below is a combination picture of the lizard pin illuminated with the laser and the test hologram next to it.  I ended up setting the light ratios by eye since even with my new light meter I couldn't determine accurate ratios.

As it turned out, the hologram is extremely bright and one can't actually tell which is the real one and which is the hologram just by looking at the image.

With luck I'll have time tomorrow morning to create a master and move on to the next subject.

September 26, 2003

I don't have any pictures (because they'd look much the same as the one above) but I did create a master of the lizard this morning.

I then broke down the table and started to work on a master of a terminator model that a coworker loaned me some time ago.  I have a two-beam reflection of it here but I held onto the model for a while in the hopes that I'd be able to create a master so that I could go copy crazy.

September 27, 2003

Managed to get in a couple of potential masters of the terminator.  For both I added a foil & plastic wrap background to give it something to stand against.  Once I've got some reflection copies I'll post those.

This is a shot of the real image (which is easier to shoot using a digital camera).

Present
2003: Feb | Mar | Apr | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec
2004: Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec
2005: Blog
2006: Blog
2007: Blog