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Archive: Imaging
September 29, 2008
Nifty robot 3D vision system
Howard Gordon, of Surveyor Corp, sent us this announcement about a new, affordable stereo vision camera system for robots. I checked out the video with my 3D glasses. Pretty cool.
This past week, we introduced a new open source 3D stereo vision system for robotics and remote monitoring called Surveyor SVS. It features dual processors, dual cameras, and wifi connectivity, and sells for $550. The SVS is intended for researchers, educators and developers interested in enabling depth perception in their applications without the need for an array of active sensors (e.g. laser scanners, ultrasonics, infrared, etc).
Surveyor Stereo Vision System ("SVS")
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Sep 29, 2008 02:00 PM
Imaging, Robotics |
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September 26, 2008
Best science images of 2008 (Wow, squid suckers!)
The Best Science Images of 2008 were announced at National Geographic, the squid suckers are awesome!
Little Shop of Horrors fans may see a resemblance to the bloodthirsty plant from the 1986 movie in the above electron micrograph image.Drexel University doctoral student Jessica Schiffman won an honorable mention in photography in the 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge for capturing what's actually an array of suckers found on the tentacles of a long-finned squid.
Each sucker--about 400 micrometers wide, or a little smaller than the width of a human hair--is surrounded with "fangs" of chitin, a hard organic material.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Sep 26, 2008 11:45 AM
Imaging, Science |
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X-ray art
I'm really enjoying Nick Veasey's X-Ray photography portfolio at the moment...
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Sep 26, 2008 06:00 AM
Arts, Imaging |
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September 19, 2008
17 years of rotating self portraits
You've most likely seen a few "daily self portrait collections, but how many of them spanned 17 years? Dan Hanna describes his project -
17 years worth of taking 2 photos a day as my head rotates in sync with the Earth around the Sun. This is a non-dejittered, lo-res, highly compressed, preliminary version of a lifetime project. Later versions will have additional imagery throughout. More details are available on my website at:Watching the hair cycle through repetitive buzz-cuts is by itself quite interesting, not to mention the subtle, gradual changes to his face and jaw. - Dan Hanna [via Kottke]
Posted by Collin Cunningham |
Sep 19, 2008 02:00 PM
Arts, Imaging, Photography |
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September 13, 2008
What happens when you apply every filter in PhotoShop?
What happens when you apply every filter in PhotoShop? - this! via waxy.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Sep 13, 2008 09:00 AM
Arts, Imaging |
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September 9, 2008
Head Controlled Art
New York City based artisits Trevor and Ryan Oakes have invented a method to render, by hand, an accurate camera obscura style tracing of an object or scene onto a curved surface.
For more information about Trevor and Ryan and their invention, visit their website Oakesoakes.com or The Machine Project
Posted by KipKay |
Sep 9, 2008 07:00 AM
Arts, Imaging |
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September 8, 2008
Flickr bike?
Wow, this is really cool - Gina from Lifehacker has a Flickr bike that geotags photos and uploads them to a map on Flickr... Solar panels too!
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Sep 8, 2008 12:00 AM
Bicycles, GPS, Imaging |
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September 2, 2008
LED matrix projector creates simple room ambiance
This video shows an 8 by 8 dual color LED Matrix controlled by an Arduino and Boarduino that is bright enough to project the patterns on the ceiling of a space. Lots of details on this simple build including a parts list at the link below.
Posted by Jonah Brucker-Cohen |
Sep 2, 2008 05:00 AM
Arduino, Imaging |
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August 27, 2008
Breadboarding … in 3D!!
From the MAKE Flickr photo pool
Thrill at these flying wires rendered in anaglyph-vision by Flickr member Davis Remmel! - Wires 3D
More:
HOW TO - Make a camera attachment to take 3D Anaglyph Photos!
Maker Faire - 3D anaglyph photos
Posted by Collin Cunningham |
Aug 27, 2008 01:00 PM
Electronics, Imaging |
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Capturing 3D surfaces with a flash camera
Capturing 3D surfaces with a flash camera via /.
Comparing a flashlit photo with one taken in ambient light can reveal the texture of a surface, and could help develop more realistic computer games... The virtual worlds in computer games provide a realistic backdrop to the action. But step too close and the effect is lost – you'll see that textures and patterns are usually displayed on flat surfaces that look dull and artificial.A simpler way to add depth to textured surfaces could change that.
The new technique can reconstruct the depth of a surface simply by taking two photos of it – one with a flash and one without (see video, right). Merely analysing the resulting shading patterns can capture the surface's 3D texture.
Until now making realistic textures required the use of bulky and expensive laser scanners, says Mashhuda Glencross at the University of Manchester, UK. And the process is really time-consuming, she adds.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Aug 27, 2008 11:00 AM
Gaming, Imaging |
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Analog meets Its match in Red Digital Cinema's ultrahigh-res camera
The guy who started Oakley is now going to kick the butts of every high end camera maker in the world, the Red Digital Cinema looks amazing! Great article about him and the gear @ Wired.
Jim Jannard, 59, is the billionaire founder of Red. In 1975 he spent $300 to make a batch of custom motocross handlebar grips, which he sold from the back of a van. He named his company Oakley, after his English setter, and eventually expanded into sci-fi-style sunglasses, bags, and shoes. In November of last year he sold the business to Luxottica, the owner of Ray-Ban, for a reported $2.1 billion.His team of engineers and scientists have created the first digital movie camera that matches the detail and richness of analog film. The Red One records motion in a whopping 4,096 lines of horizontal resolution—"4K" in filmmaker lingo—and 2,304 of vertical. For comparison, hi-def digital movies like Sin City and the Star Wars prequels top out at 1,920 by 1,080, just like your HDTV. (There's also a slightly higher-resolution option called 2K that reaches 2,048 lines by 1,080.) Film doesn't have pixels, but the industry-standard 35-millimeter stock has a visual resolution roughly equivalent to 4K. And that's what makes the Red so exciting: It delivers all the dazzle of analog, but it's easier to use and cheaper—by orders of magnitude—than a film camera. In other words, Jannard's creation threatens to make 35-mm movie film obsolete.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Aug 27, 2008 10:00 AM
Imaging |
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HOW NOT TO - conceal your identity with IR LEDs
Randy shares documentation of his experiments using infrared LEDs to prevent cameras from recording his facial identity. The verdict - it no worky (at least with any of the LEDs tested) - How not to block cameras
More:
- IR LED glasses (anti-paparazzi)
- LED security camera disruptor on Hackszine
Posted by Collin Cunningham |
Aug 27, 2008 04:00 AM
Culture jamming, Imaging, Instructables |
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August 20, 2008
Emily is not real.
Take a stroll through the uncanny valley with Emily, an impressive example of how far facial animation has progressed -
Previous methods for animating faces have involved putting dots on a face and observing the way the dots move, but Image Metrics analyses facial movements at the level of individual pixels in a video, meaning that the subtlest variations - such as the way the skin creases around the eyes, can be tracked.CGI house Image Metrics has certainly done some amazing work here - but I'm still left with that eerie feeling of faux-humanity. - Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games [via Neatorama]"There's always been control systems for different facial movements, but say in the past you had a dial for controlling whether an eye was open or closed, and in one frame you set the eye at 3/4 open, the next 1/2 open etc. This is like achieving that degree of control with much finer movements.
"For instance, you could be controlling the movement in the top 3-4mm of the right side of the smile,"
Posted by Collin Cunningham |
Aug 20, 2008 04:00 PM
Computers, Imaging |
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Flight in multiple exposures
From the MAKE Flickr photo pool
It seems the Animal Detection Team has been conducting a bit more experimentation involving their aptly named Animal Detector imaging device -
This past week, we took the device to the beach. One afternoon we set the light aside and pointed the camera skyward, recording the motion of pelicans and seagulls flying by for a couple of hours. The birds and their wings traced such elegant paths across the sky. The multi-exposure traces below were made by importing quicktime films into ImageJ and making Z-projections of the resulting stacks.Branching out from research/surveillance into documentarion art - nicely done.
- Traces of pelicans and seagulls crossing the sky
More:
Posted by Collin Cunningham |
Aug 20, 2008 04:00 AM
Imaging |
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August 19, 2008
Photographically enhanced video
Researchers from the University of Washington's Graphics and Imaging Laboratory are developing video enhancement software which utilizes data from related still images. Currently only for use with 'still-life' scenes, the process incorporates information from higher resolution photos and automatically maps it to the corresponding areas of the video in need of improvement - increasing resolution, dynamic range, ligthing, and even masking specified areas.
Unlike traditional visual effects software (e.g., After Effects, Shake, Boujou, etc), the system is completely automatic and no manual labor is required from the user. The major limitation of the work is that it can currently handle only videos of static scenes (i.e., videos shot with a moving camera but containing no moving objects in the scene). Efforts are being made to lift this restriction in future work.Pretty amazing results, especially if the software works as effortlessly as described. Unfortunately rendering times currently required are even more impressive - taking a Linux server farm 5 minutes to churn out a single frame! Developers say this will improve after forthcoming optimizations.
- Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene [via Gizmodo]
Posted by Collin Cunningham |
Aug 19, 2008 02:00 PM
Imaging, Photography |
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HOW TO - CCD camera eyepiece for binoculars
Here's helpful instructable for fitting(and building) a CCD video camera to a basic pair of binoculars -
Have you ever looked through your binoculars and thought " I wish I could get this on tape" ? Well now you can. In this Instructable I'll show you how to build a cheap CCD eyepiece that will fit most binoculars.- CCD Eyepiece for Binoculars
You can use it with any camcorder that has a video input to capture whatever you can get a view on with your binoculars.
Posted by Collin Cunningham |
Aug 19, 2008 04:00 AM
DIY Projects, Imaging, Instructables |
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August 18, 2008
Add more focus to your space explorations
This mod shows how to slow down the speed of the auto focus on a Meade ETX Astro Telescope. Lots of details on this mod if you have the time and space to store one of these giant scopes.
Posted by Jonah Brucker-Cohen |
Aug 18, 2008 06:00 AM
Imaging |
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August 15, 2008
I left my Death Star in San Francisco
Here's a really cool short video, done by Star Wars fan Michael Horn, of various Star Wars vehicles participating in "Imperial Fleet Week" in San Francisco. Horn says he "shot everything on my junkie DV camera, did motion-tracking and comping in After Effects, and basic sound design in Final Cut."
MAKE pal Bonnie Burton did a brief interview with Horn on The Official Star Wars Blog.
[via Laughing Squid]
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Aug 15, 2008 10:27 PM
Arts, Imaging |
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August 14, 2008
HOW TO - Make video flipbooks with AfterEffects
Bennett sent us this how-to on making flipbooks from video -
I can’t quite remember how I got the idea, but I thought it would be fun to create some flipbooks based off of video I had shot. The challenge was to be able to effeciently process the frames from a 3-5 second clip, have them printed by a photography shop, and assemble them as easily as possible.Hit up the site for some nice video of the resulting books - Handmade FlipbooksAfter some testing, I created a template within After Effects that takes a video as input, and through some expressions I wrote, outputs a sequence of JPGs - each with four video frames and crop markings per 4×6 print
Posted by Collin Cunningham |
Aug 14, 2008 01:00 PM
Crafts, Imaging |
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Autoscope by Joe Kelly
Joe Kelly sent me a link to his website where he has some really amazing works of art. Most of them are based on different pre-cinema technology. The image above is his Autoscope that was created a few years back for a festival in Calgary.
The Autoscope is an early prefilm media device/installation (it even predates the zoetrope). It is an updated version of the phenakistoscope which was invented by Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau in 1832. Traditionally these devices are handheld toys that have about 8 frames. The Autoscope was built with 72 frames.
Read more about: Autoscope by Joe Kelly
Posted by Marc de Vinck |
Aug 14, 2008 02:00 AM
Arts, Imaging |
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Phillip Torrone
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