Insect Eye Could Be Your Next Camera

Bug Eye Micro Lens

This could trump the Apple Big Brother LCD screen:

The eyes of insects such as bees and dragonflies are made up of tens of thousands of tiny components called ommatidia. These all point in different directions to give the insect a very wide field of vision.

Inspired by this, Luke Lee and colleagues developed an artificial compound eye consisting of a moulded polymer resin dome filled with thousands of light-guiding channels, called waveguides, each topped with its own miniature lens.

The artificial eye could be used to create surveillance cameras, cellphone cameras, and surgical endoscopes with a much wider field of vision, the researchers say. The whole eye is 2.5 millimetres in diameter. Each artificial ommatidia consists of a lens attached to a polymer waveguide that directs light towards the centre of the eye.

Sounds like an amazing device.

‘Bug-eyed’ lens takes a broader view

Big Brother Looks Like an Apple?

Now this is neat. Implant gobs of imaging sensors between the LCD pixels and have a chunk of software assemble the output as an image. Sounds Orwellian (yeah, that’s what everyone is saying about it…) to me. Might be handy though, I’m sure that advertisers will love this sort of thing, it so reminds me of Max Headroom.

[via core77] 

New Scientist Breaking News – Invention: Apple’s all-seeing screen

High Speed CMOS Imaging From Sony

I see that a professional camera company has figured out what amateur astronomers have known for a long time. If you take a photo of the same object lots of times, stack them together, pour on a smidg of math and presto! You get a nice sharp photo. I doubt it will hit consumers cameras any time soon but one can wish.

Sony Announces Plans to Develop High-Speed CMOS-Based Imaging System – Emerging Technology

Digital Camera Fingerprints

 

Hum, digital pictures can be tracked back to their comeras? Pretty cool, except that it looks like the technique can be messed up if the image has been altered. I think this will be a boon to UFO searchers as it may help prove if that digital snapshot of the bug eyed monsters are real or the product of a late night Photoshop fest.

Nobel Intent: All your cameras are belong to us