Homemade LowFi Digital Camera

LowFi digital camera mod

Very cool!!! I wouldn’t go as far as to call it a ‘Lomo’ mod, as there are no Lomo camera parts in it and the lens is a magnitude of quality better then any plastic that has ever graced a toy camera body. Still, the effects are rather stylistic.

Take a cheap Vivitar digital camera, strip the body and lens off, add a nice lens mount and some fancy looking hand brushed aluminum U rails for a body and you have a serviceable camera. I’d add a ultra wide auxilary lens to the prime to get a nicer field of view but other than that this is something to be duplicated. Now where did I put that old camera…

[via MAKE]

DigiLomo Camera: The Homemade Lomography Camera

Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera

 

Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera36 fixed focus cell phone cameras and a peak sensing accelerometer make for a novel way of taking a 360 degree panoramic image.

 “We used the camera to capture full spherical panoramas at scenic spots, in a crowded city square and in the middle of a group of people taking turns in throwing the camera. Above all we found that it is a very enjoyable, playful way to take pictures.”

[Via MAKE]

Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera // Jonas Pfeil.

3D Comes to the iPhone with the Hasbro My3D


I’ve finally found an accessory for my iPhone 4 that i just can’t live without. The mega toy company Hasbro have unveiled a 3D viewer that’s designed for Apple’s second, third, and fourth generation iPod touch, iPhone 3G, 3GS and iPhone 4. As soon as I found out about it I ran to my local Target (its exclusively sold there, coming to a different store near you in June!) and patiently waited for the sales guy to unpack the boxes. Needless to say I was the first person to buy one from that store. Continue reading “3D Comes to the iPhone with the Hasbro My3D”

Science for Adults – Theo Jansen’s Mini Beast

Another amazing science kit from Gakken! This time it features artist Theo Jansen, a world renowned kinetic sculptor that hopes to one day let his creations roam free on the wind swept beaches of the Netherlands. This kit looks amazing, not too unusual for a Gakken kit, and pretty easy to assemble. Like all of the projects in this Mook series, the instructions will be all in Japanese but drawn so well that you don’t need to read any of the text to understand it. The project takes you through building a beautiful wind powered walking creature that is as graceful as it is complex. I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these!
[via MAKE Flickr pool]
cloud9science @Wiki – テオ・ヤンセンのミニ・ビーストを作ってみた

I have a pool of photos on Flickr that contains images of some kits and photos taken by some of the cameras that have been featured in the series. Have a look and if you have been graced by owning one of these inspiring products consider contributing a picture or two to the pool.

the Gakken Otona No Kagaku Science Kits group icon Gakken Otona No Kagaku Science Kits

Human Eye Like HDR Video System

I’ve long been a fan of the HDR image. Shooting full motion video has never seemed to be an option until now:

Anyone who regularly uses a video camera will know that the devices do not see the world the way we do. The human visual system can perceive a scene that contains both bright highlights and dark shadows, yet is able to process that information in such a way that it can simultaneously expose for both lighting extremes – up to a point, at least. Video cameras, however, have just one f-stop to work with at any one time, and so must make compromises. Now, however, researchers from the UK’s University of Warwick claim to have the solution to such problems, in the form of the world’s first full High Dynamic Range (HDR) video system.

World’s first full HDR video system sees like the human eye.

Photovoltaic Hornets?

Hornet
Researchers have discovered that a species of hornet might be able to convert sunlight directly into energy via pigments in it’s exoskeleton…

Ishay found that shining light on the hornets—live, anesthetized or even dead—could produce voltage differences of several hundred millivolts across their hard exoskeletons, which suggested that the cuticle material making up the exoskeletons was effectively an organic semiconductor converting light into electricity. Indeed, Ishay even found that shining ultraviolet light on an anesthetized hornet would wake it up faster, as though the light were recharging the insect.

If this proved to be an accurate assessment of the insects abilities it might be possible to ‘grow’ photovoltaic cells.
(Thanks to special field researcher Greg for this link)

via Bug Juice: Hornet May Turn Sunlight Into Electricity