Last year we featured the work of Matthew and William Burrard-Lucas, two brothers who mounted their Canon DSLR to a remote-controlled car to shoot close-up photographs of dangerous African animals. The behind-the-scenes video above was just published yesterday, and shows the RC DSLR being driven up to different animals, all of which are clearly thinking, “what the heck is this thing”? They should offer these “BeetleCams” for sale. I want one.
We have a bit of a scoop for you today: there’s going to be a new Kickstarter-funded gadget announced on Thursday called the Triggertrap. It’s a pretty nifty universal camera trigger that can trigger your camera’s shutter with anything you can think of using a built-in intervalometer, a laser trigger, a sound sensor, and an Aux input that you can connect custom triggers to:
Think about it: You press your car horn, it takes a photo. Your phone rings, it takes a photo. The sun rises, it takes a photo. Anything is possible – and that’s why this camera trigger is so eminently hackable and exciting to experimental photographers all over the world!
There’s also a private sneak-peek of the Kickstarter video over on Vimeo. The password is TriggerTrap123.
Read more…
When the iPad 2 was announced a couple months ago, it was called “the first ‘camera’ to have a sensor resolution lower than the display resolution.” Commenters were quick to point out that Apple never intended for the device to be used as a camera like the iPhone is, and therefore was probably able to keep costs down by limiting it to a 0.7 megapixel sensor. Now, with millions of the devices in consumers’ hands, Flickr’s camera statistics confirm what we suspected all along: no one uses the iPad 2 as a camera.
Read more…
IT consultant and photo enthusiast Viktor Takacs didn’t have much success when he tried capturing lightning on camera, so he decided to build this fancy do-it-yourself trigger (which he named “Zeus”) that automatically snaps a photo whenever the photodiode detects a flash of lightning. He even built a knob into the device that can be used to adjust sensitivity. The demo above shows the trigger reacting to manually triggered flashes from a strobe.
Takacs has a detailed post that walks through how he created the device. You can also email him for the code used by the microcontroller.
The Flashkus by Art Lebedev is a cheap, disposable, and environmentally friendly cardboard USB stick that might one day make sharing event photos with friends much easier and cheaper. While many websites are geared towards photo sharing, transferring gigabytes of data to friends is still difficult to do via the Interwebs, so people often choose to burn DVDs or use pricey USB drives. The Flashkus would make the process easier by allowing people to simply tear off a USB drive, dump photos onto it, scribble a note onto the front, and hand it off to their friends. Once the photos are downloaded, the drive can be reused or thrown away.
It’ll be available in 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB but currently seems to be in the concept/design stage. Hopefully Art Lebedev adds it to their online store soon.
When Apple designed the iPad, they opted for simplicity and omitted things like a USB port or memory card slots. This made it more tedious for photographers to transfer a large number of photographs onto their iPads, since the Camera Connection Kit needed for USB and SD Card support comes in two separate dongles. Luckily, there’s a made-in-China knockoff that can ease a little of the pain — the 3-in-1 iPad Camera Connection Kit combines the two dongles into one nicely designed apparatus. Available in both black and white, it comes with a USB port, a SD Card slot, and a Micro SD Card slot. Pick one up over at the M.I.C Gadget store for $29.90.
If you shoot often, then you probably go through the hassles of sticking your memory card in a card reader and battery in a battery charger often as well. While these tasks don’t take much time in themselves, doing them day after day can cause them to become quite tedious. Canon’s Cross Media Station is designed to make these things a breeze, allowing you to do both by simply placing your camera (or two, or three) on the device, which looks like a slick scanner.
Read more…
The Photo Album Story Teller is a nifty device that allows you to add voice notes to your physical photos. It works with color coded stickers that are used to identify photos. Place the sticker next to the photo, scan it with the device, and record a message. Come back later and rescan the sticker to hear the note that was recorded.
If writing notes next to photo album photos is too Life 1.0 for you, this could be a fun way to include extra background information with your images. There’s a price to pay for this photo-geekery: the Story Teller costs $100 for the recorder and 500 stickers.
A couple days ago we reported that the upcoming Nintendo 3DS will have a built-in 3D camera system, instantly putting 3D photography into the hands of those lined up to buy the system.
If you can’t wait for the DS to play around with 3D photography and instant feedback on a 3D screen, Hammacher Schlemmer has unveiled a 3D camcorder with virtually the same imaging specs as the 3DS. The device, which ships on July 2, also shoots and records at 640×480 (VGA) resolution and has a special 3D screen that allows you to review your photographs in 3D on a screen that doesn’t require special glasses.
Unlike the 3DS, however, this 3D camcorder has a 7 inch screen, almost double the 3.53 inch screen of the 3Ds.
The downside for this device is the price — it’s listed at $600, which is much more than most people think the 3DS will be sold for.
Unless you’re desperate to get your hands on this technology, it might be prudent to wait a year or two. Presumably 3D cameras and camcorders will be capturing at much better resolutions by then (unless you’re willing to pay around $21,000, of course).
(via Wired)
The BeetleCam is a remote controlled car that has a Canon 400D DSLR and two flash units strapped to the top. It’s the brainchild of brothers Will & Matt Burrard-Lucas, award-winning wildlife photographers based in the UK, and allows them to capture some unique photographs of some of Africa’s most dangerous animals.
William tells us,
We are brothers from the UK specialising in wildlife photography. We aim to use teamwork and ingenuity to take unusual shots of wild animals. Recently we embarked on a project to photograph African wildlife from a ground level perspective using a camera mounted on top of a four-wheel drive remote control buggy called BeetleCam. We took BeetleCam to Tanzania and photographed lions, elephants and buffalo with it. The project proved to be a great success and we managed to get some amazing photographs from a unique perspective.
For more photographs from the BeetleCam, and some videos of the cam in action, check out the BeetleCam project page.
Image credits: Photographs by Will & Matt Burrard-Lucas and used with permission
