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Making Holograms In The Kitchen
Paul writes "Over at www.litiholo.com is a newly launched
hologram kit that lets
you make your own holograms at home. No, it's not Princess Leia asking you for
help, but it's still pretty cool making a hologram on your kitchen table. Particularly
interesting is the instant
hologram film that makes holograms with no developing (kind of a Polaroid
film for holograms). The hologram kit costs $99, including the laser, film, and
everything else."
You can get it from Amazon. It's Shoebox Holography
i want one!
The hologram kit costs $99, including the laser, film, and everything else." - what, no shark? it's a bloody rip off!
You can't handle the truth.
Ah well.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Imagine what pornographers could do with this! Wow, I can almost see it happening. I'll patent the idea and be rich!
http://porocrom.blogspot.com
just wait for the porn industry to get ahold of this one! hmnm, wait a minute, seems like porn drives ALOT of industries... nevermind...
Does anyone have some photos, or even better, videos, of these holograms? I don't know what they would look like, or how one has three dimensional "film". Can anyone clarify? That site was lax on details.
Any takers on bets for how long it'll take Lucas lawyers to cease-and-desist that Leia framegrab off their front page? :)
According to the web site, you need to use either the laser or a special flashlight to view the hologram. That would seem to limit the usefulness of the process.
Aah. Can't wait for the amateur holo-porn to emerge. Streaming video surrenders.
A sheet of film and a laser pointer, and before you know it you too can be counterfeiting Microsoft and Master Card logos.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Doom 3 has some cool rendered holograms.
A Princess Leia hologram would have made a nice easter egg.
... and what my brain immediately supplied was "I am Lithholio! I need laser for my bunghole!"
Those misspent hours in my youth really are starting to bite me in the ass.
Has sold holography kits for years. Currently they have a book Showbox Holography which shows how to set up a small lab to shoot holograms with a pen diode laser. They used to have a neat kit with a HeNe laser back in the day, but it wern't no $100 bucks. *cough* I haven't looked at an Edmund Scientific catalog for over a decade, but they seem to have shifted from the home hobby lab market to strictly the teaching market... shame. --M
For $100 I sure hope I remember to take the lens cap off.
Isn't that the asian kiddy porn site?
Oh wait, that's ritihoro.com.
something on the history channel a few years back about a company that was developing a hologram storage device by waving some sort of wand around in the air and the picture is displayed that way. But the look to it was rediculous, but this is not a completely new idea.
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. - Catcher in the Rye
I am not totally sure, but I think the kits sold at the linked site require the use of a laser to view the hologram, they are not white-light holograms. Instead you might wanna check out this site and their hologram kits, I plan on purchasing the Standard Kit. http://www.holokits.com
dang. somebody beat me to it...
Judging from the submitter's email address this is a shameless plug for a product. What, no real news today?
Popular Electronics had a great article on making your own holograms in 1992, and it was nothing new then exept that lasers were getting cheap enough to be practical.
There's even lots of websites now on using a laser pointer to do it, but that doesn't seem to work as well.
The most difficuilt part of the process is getting the table to be vibration free enough since a montion of less than a wavelength (~0.6 microns) will spoil the hologram.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Note that the author of the article "Paul" is associated with the company (based on his email address). But at least he's honest in not trying to hide that info.
does that hologram keep the colors of original object. Or is it whole RED? (as picture on their homepage may indicate)
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
instructions here.
.. but how do I get princess Leia on my film?
Rumors allso have it that Padme Amidala is going to wear the buns in the next innstallment.. Perhaps she'll be willing to pose..
A little Googling shows this to be something called a Hadamard Transform.
In the Early to Mid '90s, fast computers had to churn away to make fuzzy cubes and other simple objects.
With better computers and better printers the rendering should be faster and the reduction phase not as extreme. Also with larger Holographic plates the results should be less fuzzy.
Does anyone know the state of Computer generated Holograms? Real geeks wouldn't make holograms with old fashion photographic plates, but in the guts of their over-clocked AMD boxen.
Letter To Iran
I'm always worried about cutting my fingers off when I'm using a regular LASER.
Hopefully he will read this.
I love the idea, but 2x3" plates are a bit on the small side, I've always done 4x5s. I sort of lost interest in holography because of lack of time to develop the film, so I might have to pick up this kit.
My question is do/will you have larger plates, and in the kit, is the laser diode and optics suitable to cover the larger area?
Jason
ProfQuotes
why do you want long coherence lengths? because you need to make sure that at every point on the film the path lenth difference between every ray you want to capture and the reference beam is within the coherence length. As a starting point one would say that at a minumim it should not be less than the width of the film or the width/depth/height of the object or scene which ever is greater.
Looking at thepicture of the kit, the film and object are many times the cavity size of the a typical internal cavity diode laser. And dhiode lasers have sucky coherence normally.
are there some clever ways of lighting a scene that can minimize the coherence length requirements?
I note that the systemin use is a single frequency hologram not a white light hologram. thus the play back has to be done by a monochromatic light source. It must be the arrangement they are using is not a thick film hologram but a thin film hologram.
any ideas on the geometry they are using and how they are handling the coherence length issue???
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I guess the R2D2 has the recipe for the Death Soufflé.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
This is basically accurate for a projection hologram. Only quibble is that I would add that during projection one must use the same wavelength laser as was used to shoot the original hologram. Best if it's the same laser, especially if we're talking HeNe here as the number of coil windings can shift output wavelength slightly from one laser to the next. Actually, never having shot a hologram with a diode laser, I have no idea if that's still a concern... --M
heh, I want one of these.. At least now, I can pretend I have dinner on the table every night!
I'll give it a try and if it's "easy enough for a kid to do" I'll be giving out "$20 holo kits" as Christmas gifts.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You're just
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
"Printers" that "print" to a photographic negative should do the trick.
I think most of those are in the 4800-dpi-or-better range, and I wouldn't be surprised if they are at 10,000 or higher by now. I haven't checked lately.
Anyone have any info on this?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
When I was kid in the 70's it was the home computer. No, heck, we couldn't do anything useful with them, but they were the future. "I program my home computer - beam myself into the future" as Kraftwerk put it. Well, we did, and we knew it. The feeling must have been similar when people got their first radio, or their first TV.
And now, cheap, do-it-yourself holograms! I just love it when science fictions promises are fulfilled, and the future arrives on my doorstep!
If you look at the bottom of the page, there is a small notice saying:
Litiholo film makes transmission holograms, viewable with laser or LED light included in kit.
Kind of spoils the fun, I think. Small type usually does.
Love,
. K
Ok, this may sound rather lame for those of you who understand what this is all about, but I would like to know anyway: What kind of hologram are we talking about here? Is it really possible to project a tridimensional image in the space? If so, could someone explain me the science behind that?
I am sorry once again for asking all these questions, but I've been trying to figure it by myself and unfortunately never found anything conclusive.
Thanks in advance.
"What is the nature of your culinary emergency?"
The defintion on one of their pages says === hologram - (HOL-o-gram) definition: usually a three-dimensional image, produced by capturing a laser light interface pattern on film. === That's "interference", not "interface", stupid!
You said 'ass'. Heh.
We've been discussing the Liti 'instant hologram' film over at HolographyForum for awhile. The big downside is that these are transmission holograms, and are therefore quite a bit harder to view than reflection holograms. On the other hand, self-developing film is very cool -- normally, you need to develop holograms in a fashion quite similar to photographic prints.
This
Did it bum any one else out that the site had no pictures? I'd be interested in seeing something actually made with their kit. Anyone have a link?
I wonder how long it will take before people start using these to copy brand names. As you know, manufacturers use holograms to show that their products are authentic because holograms are hard to fake. Everything from Microsoft software to Dolce & Gabana pants to Ford brake pads has holograms on it.
How about making your own Visa eagle?
Just make a hologram of your food, then throw the food away. Look at the hologram instead of eating and lose weight.
Of course, many third world countries have perfected alternatives to this diet without the requirment for lasers...
Back in the day when school was uphill both ways, we used to make holographs by taking a coffee can with the bottom cut out and wrapping a sheet of AGFA red-sensitive photo paper around the inside of the can. We'd set the coffee can on the table, empty end down, and set a small eraser in the middle. The eraser had a small hollow with a single drop of mercury. Put an item of interest somewhere between the erasure and the film, then illuminate the mercury with a laser that's suspended overhead. Develop, and then view the paper backlit by the laser. Instant holograph!
The effect was very impressive. I guess nowadays, you'd have the most trouble finding mercury...
The really fun stuff is hand-drawn, and all you need is a compass (with two points) and a shiny but scratchable surface. Oh, and a bit of time.
Hand Drawn Holograms.
-Billy
Where's the @#$% screenshots man??
:P
So assuming you have access to a printer like that these days, what's to stop someone with $99 from picking up this kit and printing replica holograms on top of the ID? Other than the "get caught, go to jail for a while" reprecussion.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
That's his sig, not the book. I don't see any connection.
Suprisingly it worked fairly well. We produced a few small holos of toy cars and stuff, using some Ilford film (can't remember which type) a HeNe laser, and guessing the exposure time. Fixing the film didn't seem to work well though - the holograms tended to start fading or something after a few days.
Do kids get to do stuff like this in school these days? I would like to think that cool science things are routinely taught now, since technology like lasers are everywhere. Probably wishful thinking.
This is not a sig
Please state the nature of the medical emergency.
Nobody's going to be making holograms in their kitchen for $99. There are obviously only a few people in this thread who have actually made holograms (people like me). You can tell them because they're all talking about elaborate antivibration systems. You have to kill vibrations down to below the wavelength of light in order to make holograms.
I took a class in holography at my university. We used the research lab in the physics building's basement, using serious research-quality lasers and optics, and an optical table that weighed 2500 pounds sitting on a vibration-dampening cushion, atop a steel and concrete pillar buried deeply into the ground til it hit bedrock. And even THEN, we had to use the lab at about 2AM when the street traffic died down, because even a car driving down the street could induce enough vibration to ruin the hologram.
Eventually the Physics department built a new laser lab next to a riverbank, on a rarely used cul-de-sac on the edge of the campus. That reduced a lot of the vibration from street traffic. Unfortunately, their new multimillion-dollar frequency-tunable laser, the centerpiece of the lab, caught on fire the first time it was turned on, and that was kind of the end of the laser lab.
From instructions published in Popular Electronics (Dec. '69), I made transmission holograms at home on my dresser in 1970, using a 0.5 mW HeNe laser bought for $49, electronic components for the power supply costing $50, and misc. mirrors and optics for another $25. The film cost $25 for a pack of 25 sheets Agfa. Total cost for experiment: $150. 35 years later, the price has barely dropped? Sheesh!
This will be a boon for the fake ID market.
Profit here I come!
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
The linked Liti Holo site has a slight typo in it's text. It mentions that "IN ABOUT AN HOUR from the time you open the box, you could be looking at your first hologram"
Shouldn't that be "IN ABOUT AN HOUR from the time you open the box, you will be drooling at your first hologram"???
I give massages and reiki treatments (for real!). More info here: http://www.universele-levensenergie.be
Grandparent is refering to the article, not the book.
Dear Paul,
I was once again annoyed to see my beloved Slashdot plugged by yet another slashvertisement. Here's a lesson in PR from someone in the industry: It would have been more effective and less annoying if you had just given us the kitchen science and then linked to your site instead of using the summary to plug your product.
Because of the way you wrote it, you are now getting negative feedback on your slashvertisement from many posters including myself, which will hopefully influence other potential customers to look elsewhere. Just a lesson for the future.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
The process described in Shoebox Holography requires developing the film/plates in chemicals like regular film. This new one is promising "Instant Holograms".
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
See amazon.com.
You don't have to have that much stuff.
I satsified my art requirement as an undergrad by taking a holography as art semi-independent study. I was a physics student, and the other guy taking it was an art student. I don't think he ever managed to make a hologram because he couldn't align the spatial filters. My art sucked, but I had no trouble getting good holograms.
There were two tables-- the small one used a lot of heavy blocks in the base to make it massive, and I think it only had sand for isolation, no air legs, and a half a pool table for a top. The other table was nicer-- it had air legs made form inner tubes (works fine) and the surface was a full sized pool table slate that was resting on a bunch of tennis balls laid out in an irregular 2-D array to avoid creating bad resonant modes.
It was in the basement of the dorm that held the college for lefties (within a much larger university) and part of the room was under a stairwell. Most of the time you just had to make sure nobody had come down the stairs in the last few minutes, and do it at an hour when it was reasonably unlikely that someone would come down the stairs during a 1 minute or so exposure. For super stability, there was a setup using a mechanism from an HO railroad track switch, and you would sit outside the room (so as not to disturb the air inside) for a half hour or so, and then make the exposure.
The hardest part of the whole thing was that the spatial filters were made from microscopes turned on their sides, with the pinhole mounted in the stage and the stages tended to drift.
It's quite possible (as other people have mentioned) to make good quality holograms on a budget, and I even believe the $99 kit (and may have to order it just for fun). The biggest problem with that kit is probably the coherence length of the laser, but a little care can probably mitigate that. That, and keeping the cats out of the kitchen while I do it.
I get to play with expensive optics in fancy labs now, but you can still get bad results if you don't use them carefully. A lot of what they save you is time, and the other thing you get is higher precision, but you don't need super precision for visible holograms--a tenth of a wave or so and you can probably get nice results.
would I need to make my own holodeck?
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
Yeah, I realised that as soon as I posted. I reckon the great-grandparent meant to reply to the article, not to the message. SNAFU.
For those who haven't seen it yet...one of the b3ta award winners last year. Goodness knows how long it took to do.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I'm suspicious of the quality - I couldn't get nice 600 X 800 pic of the holograms or anything close to that.
Shouldn't a site like this have at least one high quality picture so we can show the quality of the hologram? Under different angles if possible?
I'm suspecting they can't duplicate the cheap cat hologram on my watch.
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
Went a saw a presentation in college about holograms. The guy, on stage set up some type of small lazer shot through a diffuser to spread the light and placed this on one end of a table. At the other end of the table he took a piece of Black and white "glass plate" film (about 3" by 3" and this stuff has must have an ASA of like 2 or something cause all he did was dim the lights in the room to do this. Anyway, directly behind this plate of "film" he sits a little yellow "woodstock" (of snoopy and woodstock) toy figure. He turned on the lazer for about a minute or two. Then,when the exposure was done, he developed the film as you would normally (right there on stage in the dimly lit room). After development he held up the B&W film and in it you could see a "yellow" 3D image of woodstock. He had created a Holograhm right before our eyes. No vibration damping. I dont know the wavelength of the lazer and dont know where you get "glass plate" B&W film (he said it was what was used in the early days of photography). Anyone have any insight into this process??
As a lawyer representing Lucas, may I present you with this cease-and-desist
order.
Listen, could you just replace the headphones-Leia with the prisoner-of-Jabba
bikini-clad Leia...and we'll call the whole thing off, because that wasn't
really in the first film...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
When I worked with Dr. Gabor at CBS Labs in the 60s, we did indeed create pretty, life-sized holographic TV images in color,
This brings back an old memory. As a preteen misspending (well not really, I didn't have computer access back then) my late nights, I recall The Monkees on The Tonight Show (with Johnny Carson) circa 1969-1970. They (or IIRC Mickey) had apparently got a laser and a few holograms from Edmund Scientific, and were all excited, saying "20 years from now we'll have 3D television, it'll be great..."
Of course, we didn't have 3D Television 20 years later, and we won't have it 40 years after he said that either (the perils of prediction). But holography is still neat, and we got some other neat things since then too...
Tag lost or not installed.
And holographs, a damn fine way to carry a sentimental reminder and material for knocking one off all in a days work.
:-)
I think these shoudl be mandatory for passports, and i am applying for a job at the passport office in case they do!
Sorry I just wanted to see a message with 'female genetalia' modded as +5 insightful !
Seriously, holographing boobs is mans greatest achivement!
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Aren't all vehicle tires tubeless nowadays? I recall seeing car tire tubes as floats in pools and lakes, but that was many years (decades) ago. There are mountain bike inner tubes, but they're barely big enough for a turntable plinth. Is there a source for "NOS car inner tubes?"
HE-NE lasers are much more available than decades ago, but some things are HARDER to find...
Tag lost or not installed.
not to be a skeptic, but I am not going to buy any product from a company that doesn't have photos of what their product makes. I understand that the 2D interface of a photo may not make the best example of their product, especially if you need a special flashlight to view them. But seriously. "Buy our product for a hundred bucks, what they make looks great, we promise" btw, the only hologram they DO show on the site is of pricess leia, which they admit their product does NOT look like. Neat! Now I know one thing it DOESN'T look like, 29,435,621 more to rule out before I can figure it out by process of elimination
Don't take it personally, I 'm like this all the time.
In the '80s in Transactor Magazine we had a story on making holograms with your Commodore 64. You printed them on your Commodore 1525 printer. That story blew my mind then. When I started working there as the editor in 1988, I saw the hologram. That blew my mind too. But today? Sorry, about 15 years too late to blow my mind.
Astro
Typesetting machines should have resolution something like that (they shine light onto photographic paper), they were in the thousands of lines per inch 20 years ago. This should be easy technology, if not as cheap as the $89 all-in-one printer/scanner/copiers with the $49 replacement print cartridges.
... "we have the technology" ...
With a laser, a few mirrors and the negative on a drum similar to laser-printer technology, the resolution can be arbitrarily high, limited by the grain of the film. Since the laser can go as slow or be as powerful as we want, the film can have smaller (less sensitive) grains and have greater resolution than even "real" holograms (where 30-second and longer exposures would have reciprocity failure).
I can see holograms being computer-recorded as well as printed: instead of the film plate, one puts up a very high density CCD array, and saves the interference pattern. We got big drives to save it on
Tag lost or not installed.
Actually, the Tech teacher at my school and I (physics and chemistry) have been discussing some sort of joint project dealing with optics and LASERs. After reading some of these posts, I have some new ideas I'm going to share with him, one of them being using that book from Scientific American to actually build a LASER. The building and electronic side is great for tech, and the theory and electronic side is awesome for a practical project in physics.
So there are some teachers trying to provide interesting experiences for their students...but the numbers are dwindling. Mostly because of NCLB and other forms of legislation requiring test after test after test. Its like the last month and a half of school are useless because of all the tests. So if you're in favor of having more interesting experiences in school, talk to your local/state/nation rep's to get them to limit the amount of tests required.
Honest, or perhaps stupid.
steve
from MichaelH (don't feel like creating a login)
If any of you think this can't be done with a laser diode (most red diodes under 10mW will have at least 1m, yes "meter" coherence length) go to the holography forum www.holographyforum.org and poke around. You'll find many of us will be happy to answer any question you have.
Holography is easy, it doesn't take thousands of dollars and can be done in your home.
Unfortunately the Liti product flat out doesn't work. On the other hand we can point to to other ways to make a hologram if you're really interested.
www.dragonseye.com/holography (my site).
Just for reference:
Laser diodes can have coherence lengths over 50 meters. An Infiniter 200 laser pointer can make a hologram and costs less than $10 and has a coherence length of around 6".
Some useful links if you want to go on from here:
www.hologrphyforum.org (mine)
www.integraf.com (film and supplies)
www.holoworld.com
And yes, I have used the Liti kit.