March 2010

Michael Zhang

Paparazzi Bot Prowls for Smiling Faces

The Paparazzi Bots are a series of robots invented by Ken Rinaldo, a faculty member in the Department of Art at Ohio State University. Each bot is autonomous, and moves about on a wheeled platform, using infrared sensors to move towards humans. It's goal is to take single photographs of people, and it makes decisions on whether or not to capture the photograph based on facial expressions of the subject. If you happen to be smiling, the bot is more likely to photograph you.

Michael Zhang

Batch Conversion with Photo Magician

Photo Magician is a free and lightweight (less than 1MB) program for Windows that allows you to batch convert a directory of photographs. It's similar in functionality to Photoshop's "Image Processor" feature, with one difference being you can't select the output quality like you can using Photoshop.

Michael Zhang

A Look at Sony’s Upcoming Ultra Compact

Sony has been quite mum with regards to their upcoming ultra-compact camera. However, they've begun releasing some teasers to give us a better idea of what's to come, including the above YouTube video and the following screenshots of the touchscreen interface:

Michael Zhang

Samsung Shipping Container Camera

There's a new video on YouTube showing a gigantic shipping container camera promoting a Samsung camera. In the video, bystanders can actually use the "camera" by inserting some money into a coin slot, and then having someone jump onto the massive shutter button on top of the shipping container. The resulting photograph is then displayed on a gigantic screen atop a nearby building.

Michael Zhang

How Not to Paint Your Nikon D90 Pink

Kai at DigitalRev was recently given the challenge of painting a Nikon D90 pink magenta. He chooses to dismantle the camera in order to paint individual components, but works on it as carefully as one would work on a steak. At one point he even gets an electric shock from the components, though we're wondering why he didn't simply remove the battery. The camera miraculously looks somewhat normal in the end, but several parts are broken in the process (LCD won't turn on, and popup flash wont' go down).

Michael Zhang

Calculate Your Local Golden Hour

The golden hour in photography is the first or last hour of sunlight in a day that photographers often aim to shoot in, since the sun's position produces a soft and warm light with longer shadows. The Golden Hour Calculator is a useful website that can help you calculate the golden hour(s) for your location, telling you exactly when the sun rises and sets.

Michael Zhang

Crowdsourcing Virtual Photo Worlds

In the future, we might be able to roam around a 3D virtual representation of our world, where everything you see was automatically generated from photographs taken at the real locations.

Vision researchers at the University of Washington and Cornell University have been working on turning photographs of things in the real world into 3-dimensional representations. This research could eventually turn snapshots into virtual buildings, neighborhoods, and possibly cities.

Michael Zhang

Time-Lapse of the Milky Way over Hawaii

The White Mountain is Charles Leung's first time-lapse video, showing the stars and our galaxy sweep beautifully across the Hawaiian sky. It was shot in Mauna Kea, Hawai'i using a Canon 5D Mark II (with an assortment of lenses) at ISO6400 using 30 sec exposures and 15 sec intervals.

Michael Zhang

Canon Lens Mug Purchased in Canada

The web has been abuzz the past couple days over the collectible L-lens look-alike coffee mugs Canon was passing out at the Olympics. Everyone is asking whether they'll be available to the general public.