The night has returned here in the North, and I'm trying to build a housing for my Ricoh Theta X so I can leave it outside for extended periods of time in extreme cold, in the rain and in the snow, to capture timelapse videos of the northern lights.
My idea is to install the camera inside a clear spherical - or at least spherical-ish - glass or acrylic housing with the following properties:
- Enough space inside to install a small heater, to protect the camera from the cold.
- Not so much optical distortion that the camera's stitcher isn't able to stitch the two fisheye images together.
- Prevents any water ingress.
- Fairly resistant to scratches.
Ricoh does sell this polycarbonate hardcase for the Theta X. The problem with it is, it has a hole on the side to let a USB cable through, to power the camera externally. Unless it's sealed with silicone, this is almost guaranteed to let water in - and I don't want to seal it because that means losing access to the camera permanently.
So I decided to try making my own housing. This is my first attempt.
I found a large clear hollow sphere, originally for one of those globe light posts that used to be common in everybody's gardens in the 80's. I think it's made of acrylic, but maybe it's made of polycarbonate too, since it's supposed to resist weathering and cracking outside. The sphere has a hole at the base and a thread-like rim to mount it atop a pole.
So I 3D-printed a suitable mounting plate for it, that positions the camera at the center of the sphere, and mounts onto a regular photo tripod with a 3/8-16 UNC thread. Then I tried capturing a short test timelapse video this morning:
Sadly it's not ideal: although I was very careful, the ball already came with small scratches and one long, thin hairline scratch. I guess it's not meant to be great optically: it's just a light bulb cover after all.
But the scratches aren't too visible. What's more problematic is that bright things tend to reflect inside the sphere. You can see this at the stitching seam (along the beach, left and right): the sky creates two light bands at the seam. I'm pretty sure the northern lights too will reflect inside the sphere in the dark.
Finally, the sphere is much too large: every little spec of dirt on it is really visible, and I expect any kind of rain or snow on it to ruin the image completely.
So I'll try to find a narrower sphere that "hugs" the camera a lot more, and made of glass so it's more scratch-resistant. Stay tuned ๐