I am interested in learning about holography and possibly using it to display visuals outdoors during special events. Anyone out there familiar with this stuff?
I have an optics table set up in my house, it’s a simple setup but I get some clear and bright holograms out of it.
I got started by taking a workshop, the book I use the most is “HOLOGRAPHY for PHOTOGRAPHERS” by John Iovine it gives some good tips and is easy to understand.
This is my table, 3 feet x 5 feet 1/4" steel plate laminated (epoxy) to 1-1/8" plywood with the edge doubled it weights approx 220lb just for the top, it’s set on three small inner-tubes on block legs, it’s very stable and dampens vibration really well, the total weight for the whole table is approx 400lb. I use 1/2" steel bar stock drilled and tapped, mounted to 40lb magnets for mounting my optics on, I use convex mirrors to spread the laser beam instead of lenses, you retain more of the beam energy that way. I’m using Slavich pfg-01 film, it can be used for reflection and transmission holograms, I’ve found it to be fairly easy to work with, I have a 12"x30’ roll that I just cut what I need off of. It’s an expensive hobby, you can expect to spend $1500.00++ to get setup, the table alone cost me $250.00 to make, decent lasers can be bought surplus for $100.00-500.00.
This is the table setup with the odds and ends that I find useful. Developer solutions, film holders, laser, safelight…
Thanks a lot, that was quite helpful and fascinating. Can you post some examples of the visuals if that is possible? That would be pretty cool.
Thanks again.
This is a picture of a hologram of a calculator, the picture was taken with a 1.3megapixel camera so there is a fair loss of resolution from the actual hologram, the hologram is 4"x4", exposure time was 4 seconds with a 5 milliwatt laser. Total time to make this hologram was 6 hours. This is a simple single beam reflection hologram.
You can see the calculator on it’s mount in the picture above in this thread.
Very cool…Michael. I think that you are just helping cree to learn how to forge credit cards, though.
Seriously though…How expensive would it be to do a limited production of a piece with this setup ? Would it have to be piece by piece ? This seems very interesting to me. I have always been fascinated with this artform.
By the way, cree, I found this link in my seaches and thought you might want to have a look.
http://members.aol.com/gakall/holopg.html
Hmmmm. Everything 3d.
It would be easy enough to do limited production runs with this setup, the most time consuming part is the actual setup, once you have that, it’s a matter of putting film in the holder and making the exposure (with settling time that is about 10 minutes per exposure) developing can be done in batches. The ultimate is to make a transmission master hologram then make copies from that, it’s possible to work some magic that way that is impossible with simple reflection setups, through aperture restriction super bright copies can be made, also it’s possible to have the image appear in front of the film instead of behind it, transmission masters require more optics and are more complex to setup. The last transmission I tried (not a master) took 16 hours just to setup. It’s not a speed sport 
lots of tedium followed by more tedium.
Thanks, Mike for that. I appreciate the time you have taken to set up and showing me this, for the references, and Seval for the link. That is so cool.
Nice set-up VelikM. I had looked into holography at one time but didn’t get into it because as you say it is an expensive hobby. Which brings me to the point of this post, American Scientific and surplus often has surplus deals for things like optics ect that may be of use to those interested in holography or other projects and is full of fun and useful stuff. http://www.sciplus.com/
Paradox
Thanks for the link, it’s definetly worh checking out, first surface mirrors for reasonable prices.