Category: Photography

Thin page scanner for old books and more…

This is a neat device. It is a clear plastic sheet that is fitted with organic diodes that when placed on a page of printed text will allow the text to be read into a computer. The unit also works with a lower level of light compaired to traditional scanners. Once this comes to market, I can see this being a product that will not only provide a safe way to scan an old book, but a way to scan in non flat things. Artists will love it! I want a long flat chunk of this to wrap around trees, cans, etc. Hum, I bet a camera could be built from one of these too! Looking forward to this invention.
Tokyo University’s wraparound scanner
Here is a link with more info and links:
A Flexible Scanner For Your Phone

Camera Woes

My Nikon 4500 looks to be on the way out. I have been having more and more problems with the camera while I have been using it. Like I’ll pop the internal flash open but the camera will not read thats its open until I ‘jiggle’ the head. Or, I have to enable the internal flash when I use the external flash or neither one will fire. The focus is also starting to have problems. 80% of the images I take with my fisheye lens are soft and about 10% without are also soft.
I don’t think getting it fixed is much of an option, it was a refurbished unit (Christmass gift from by awesome brother!) and the replacement cost is too high to justify buying what is now an obsolite camera.
I think its time to start saving the change in my pockets and go buy that Nikon D70. I can see so many advantages to having one of those its not even funny! The only drawbacks I see are that I can’t rotate the lens like on the 4500, I have to use the optical viewfinder to compose my shots, and I can’t use my fisheye lens on it. The tradeoffs are well worth having a digital SLR that I can change lenses on and do all sorts of things that are common to even a low end SLR. I’m looking forward to messing with a lagging flash sync! I’ve never had a camera that could do that.

Electronic Circuits

This is a fantastic site if you ever need an electronic circuit. Once in a while I’ll think of a project that I’d like to try, and being that there is a good chance somone has built something a bit like it before, a page like this comes in handy. Over 8,000 schematics and circuits! Think of what you could build…
Discover Circuits
Even more circuits…