researchers

Scientists Develop Camera System that Captures ‘5D’ Images

An international team of scientists has developed an experimental camera system that can simultaneously capture five dimensions of information from a single snapshot. The concept works by combining two types of sensors together to gather a wealth of information all at the same time.

Researchers Create Software for Designing Pro Drone Shots in a Virtual World

As camera drones become increasingly popular as a relatively cheap and easy way to capture aerial photos and videos, there are more and more stories in the news of drone accidents being caused by poor piloting. For those who wish to capture pro-quality shots without having to worry about piloting drones themselves, a group of researchers at Stanford want to help: they've create a computer tool that lets you create a shot virtually and then have a camera drone automatically turn it into real footage.

This Camera Shoots a Gigapixel Photo of Your Entire Body for Skin Cancer Screening

While it’s the fifth most common type of cancer in the United States and the deadliest of all skin cancers, melanoma can often be cured if caught early enough. So, in an effort to step up early detection efforts, a team of researchers at Duke University have developed a gigapixel whole-body camera that captures high-resolution images that will allow doctors to more quickly and effectively diagnose melanoma.

Researchers Create Software Capable of Intelligently Averaging Thousands of Photos Into One

Researchers at UC Berkeley have created software that automatically averages hundreds or thousands of similar images to create the pinnacle of amalgamations.

Unveiled last month, AverageExplorer lets users see the average image that represents whatever collection of images they’re looking at. The idea is to break down the overwhelming amount of images given when searching through Google Images, Flickr or Bing and combining it into one visual summary of the result.

Your Future Camera Might Be Powered by Hemp

In an interesting development in the world of batteries, researchers have discovered and demonstrated a way to make extremely efficient carbon electrodes by heating up the fibers of hemp in a two-step method.

The resulting carbon electrodes hold as much energy as the super-material graphene, are more durable in extreme temperatures, and come at a much lower cost -- pretty much the ideal material to make batteries out of.

Did You Know: Studies Show People Believe They Look Like the Retouched Version of Themselves

Remember the “Dove Real Beauty Sketches” advertisement? It was the ad that brought in various women, and then had those women and a stranger they had just met describe them to a forensic artists. This, in the end, showed the original participants that they were far more beautiful than they saw themselves.

It was an admirable advertisement that went viral, but according to a series of studies performed last year by psychological researchers Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago and Erin Whitchurch of the University of Virginia, the Dove campaign might just have it backwards. In other words: they found that we actually think we're MORE attractive than we really are.

Researchers Use a 480-Camera Dome to More Accurately Capture 3D Motion

Traditional 3D motion capture technologies, amazing though they are, are limited. They only give you a small number of data points to work with, and while they seem to capture a great deal of detail, their abilities are far outpaced by the intricate movements of the human body.

Fortunately, there’s a new technology in development that might just be able to solve this problem by throwing a crap-load of cameras at it.

MIT Project Mimics Iconic Portrait Photogs, Takes Your Selfies to the Next Level

Are you not impressed with your average Instagram selfie? Is the lighting too bland and out of place for your liking? If so, a team made up of a researcher from MIT and a few individuals from Adobe and the University of Virginia might just have a solution to your problem.

They’ve created an algorithm capable of accurately stylizing an average, otherwise insignificant selfie to look like the works of some of the best-known and well-respected portrait photographers of all time.

Smartphone App Snaps Stealthy Photos to Spy On Your Life in 3D

With the advent of Internet-connectivity and apps in cameraphones and digital cameras, images can now be shared with others in ways never before seen in the history of photography. Unfortunately, not all of the ways are positive. Some are downright creepy.

Take PlaceRaider, for example. It's a malicious Android app that hijacks your smartphone's camera, secretly takes photos of your life, and uses those images to reconstruct 3D virtual spaces of private locations.

50-Gigapixel Camera Created Using 98 Microcameras

Scientists at Duke University have created a digital camera that boasts a whopping 50 gigapixels. The camera, dubbed AWARE-2, uses 98 separate 14-megapixel microcameras and a special spherical lens. Each microcamera captures a tiny portion of the scene and a specially designed processor stitches the images together. Processing the data is so hardware intensive that 97% of the camera is made up of electronics and computer components (the other 3% is the optical elements).

Future Cameras May Be Equipped with Invisible Flashes

Future generations of photographers may one day look back and wonder why we often blinded each other with painfully bright flashes of light for the sake of proper exposure.

NYU researchers Dilip Krishnan and Rob Fergus are working on a dark flash that eliminates the "dazzle" effect of regular flashes in a low-light room. They've created this camera rig that combines common infrared photography techniques with an ultraviolet flash that produces a dim purple glow instead.

The team placed an infrared filter on the lens of the Fujifilm S5 Pro, which is has a modified CCD sensor that specializes in IR and UV photography. To supplement existing UV light, the team created a modified filter on an external flash to emit only UV and IR wavelengths.