December 2010

Michael Zhang

Luma Introduces the LoopIt Sling for Lighter Cameras

The LoopIt is a new camera sling by Luma designed to be smaller, lighter, and more affordable than the Luma Loop. Both slings use a lanyard and connector that slide along the camera strap and connect to cameras via any available strap mount point. The push-to-release swivels are manufactured at the same factory that invented the swivel used by the US military, with tolerances that supposedly exceed the ones used in combat.

Michael Zhang

360° Degree Camera Inspired by the Eye of the Fly

The folks over at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland have created a camera modeled after a fly's eye that provides a 360° view of the world. Packed with the 100 small cameras, what the camera captures is combined on a computer to provide a single 3D view of the world.

Michael Zhang

CNN Reports on Professor Wafaa Bilal’s Surgically Implanted Head Camera

CNN recently did a story on NYU professor Wafaa Bilal and the camera he had implanted on the back of his head. The video above gives you a glimpse into what it looks like and how the system works. Turns out it wasn't a working camera that was permanently embedded into Bilal's skull, but rather a baseplate to which the wired camera can be mounted magnetically.

Harry Lim

Commercial Shot at 600 Frames Per Second with 225K Watts of Light

What do 225,000 watts of light get you when shooting with the high-speed Phantom camera? Not much. Just ask Vincent Laforet who shot this commercial using the uber-expensive camera. Even with that much light, he still needed a 2.0 aperture. That only created more problems of staying in focus while using dolly moves in slow motion.

Michael Zhang

Russian Software Firm Breaks Canon’s Authenticity Verification, Big Time

Dmitry Sklyarov of Russian software company ElcomSoft announced yesterday that the encryption system used by Canon to prove the authenticity of photographs is flawed and unfixable. This is the system that's used to prove that images were not altered after being captured by the camera, and has applications in things such as court cases.

To prove their point, ElcomSoft published a series of ridiculous and obviously "Photoshopped" images (e.g. the astronaut planting a Soviet flag seen above) that all correctly pass Canon's authenticity verification.