Showing posts with label gear. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gear. Show all posts
Friday, June 16, 2017
Throwable Camera Creates 360-Degree Panoramic Images
Another old post that has been sitting around, unpublished, for five or six years...
Throwable Camera Creates 360-Degree Panoramic Images:
http://mashable.com/2011/10/25/throwable-ball-camera
'via Blog this'
Monday, May 15, 2017
Tin or Copper? Why Your Camera Does Not Matter!
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| Sun on Camera One Day On Earth: 12.12.12 Folsom, California. December 12, 2012. 4:27 PM http://www.aflitt.com/onedayonearth2012 © A. F. Litt, 2012 |
In a photography group, someone was wondering about gear for an upcoming shoot:
Every time I get a great meal in a great restaurant I demand to know what brand of pots they use, what brand of knives, what brand or type of sharpener they use to sharpen those knives, because I can't enjoy my meal until I know that it has been made with the absolutely best, newest stuff on the market.
And I've been fooled! I, a few times, liked a dinner and then found out they were a small, new restaurant who used sub-par cookware!
Oh, that was humiliating! Tin, not copper! Tin! I felt like, not even an amateur, worse! I felt like a pretender for enjoying those meals. I should have known better!
But it was on them, not me, and boy, I told everyone I knew never to eat there after I got fooled into liking those places' food like that!
And boy howdy, did people know that I knew my stuff after that and I am pretty sure no one ever took those so called chefs, fake chefs, seriously ever again.
Seriously... Gear is nothing but a gatekeeper used by the insecure to keep their egos protected.
If you can't shoot great with the low end, you can't shoot great with the high end.
Get the best you can comfortably get on your budget and shoot your soul out! It will be fantastic!
Thursday, September 04, 2014
On the Second Day, Rain… (And Tower Fall!)
Tower Fall Showing Its Rainbow
Yellowstone National Park. August 1, 2014
Copyright © 2014 A. F. Litt, All Rights Reserved
Photo of the Day by A. F. Litt: September 4, 2014
On our second full day in Yellowstone, our afternoon was rained out, but not before we headed north from the campground to check out Tower Fall. I am used to waterfalls being named in the plural, “falls,” but the official name here, designated by the U. S. Geological Survey in 1928, is Tower Fall. It is the second most popular waterfall in the park, after Lower Falls, but I am not really sure what that means.
Wikipedia has some nice art of the falls: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_Fall
Now, honestly, since I pretty much live in the Columbia River Gorge, my family and I are getting almost obnoxiously jaded about waterfalls. Lower Falls, arguably, is one of the most spectacular waterfalls in the world, and yes, that one impressed us, but this one is, well… It is a very nice waterfall with some interesting pinnacles, old fossilized fumaroles, thrusting up above it.
But let’s face it- we didn’t go to Yellowstone to look at waterfalls!
Due to getting our reservations rather late, we needed to relocate for the third night, so we jammed down to Lewis Lake to grab a spot. Unfortunately, the afternoon thunderstorms we dealt with for most of the trip decided to camp down there as well.
Being good Oregonians, we busted out the tarps and books and settled in for a restful afternoon, though it did set our schedule back a bit later on, leading to a long catch up run late into the evening a couple days later, racing across the country trying to keep caught up with our reservations.
But a little rest was a good thing…
Reflections of Rain
Yellowstone National Park. August 1, 2014
Copyright © 2014 A. F. Litt, All Rights Reserved
Gray Sunset at Lewis Lake
Yellowstone National Park. August 1, 2014
Copyright © 2014 A. F. Litt, All Rights Reserved
Related Posts
from tag waterfall- Rubble: Two or Three Waterfalls on Lindsey Creek?
- Rubble: My Dead Can Dance Video
- Rubble: “Trail” Report: Oneonta Gorge, September 8, 2012
- Rubble: Photo of the Day by A. F. Litt: March 7, 2012, Horsetail Falls
- Rubble: Photo of the Day by A. F. Litt: February 14, 2012, Heart Shaped Pond (2008)
- Rubble: Photo of the Day by A. F. Litt: January 28, 2012, Mist Falls
- Rubble: White River Falls
- Photo of the Day by A. F. Litt: January 21, 2012, White River Falls
Sunday, December 16, 2012
One Day On Earth: 12.12.12 - Filming the Burning Skies
Filming the burning skies. El Dorado Hills. One Day On Earth: 12.12.12 Folsom, California. December 12, 2012. 4:17 PM Featured Photo: December 16, 2012
Trying to get through all of the One Day stills and even get a small video up today. Life is crazy, and this project got huge on me, but I’m doing my best to keep up with everything!
One thing that is really helping is being able to use my mom’s new laptop. I didn’t realize just how unacceptably bad mine was until making this post on it after using hers for the last 24 hours. Wow.
It really does make every little project take two to three times longer than it should. It is sad, but I just realized that it was not the process of my photo of the day that took so long that I had to give it up, it was the computer I am working with.
I am very grateful that I can use for most of the heavy photography and video projects I have coming up in the near future. It is the only way I will be able to get any of that done.
My laptop? I think it is going to be retired and only used for writing and to play music while I use other computers from now on. It does have much better speakers than the one I am using for photography and video work right now.
Products featuring photography by A. F. Litt:
deviantArt: Prints, cards, mugs, mouse pads, magnets, puzzles and other products.
500px.com – Quality Canvas Prints
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Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Photo of the Day by A. F. Litt: April 18, 2012, Field & Mountain
Mt. Hood from Gresham, Oregon. April 17, 2012. Photo of the Day, April 18, 2012.
I am very close to putting my photo of the day on indefinite hiatus. As it is, it is unlikely that I will be able to continue with daily posting.
This last week, I have not had time to post and today it is only by neglecting other chores that I am finding time to post.
Part of the problem is gear. My computers are just too old and clunky to keep up. I started today’s post five hours ago. If this computer does not crash, I may finish now! Or maybe not even today at all…
Of course, I have not been spending the last five hours working on this post. I uploaded the photo to my computer, had to restart, and then I had to take care of some family issues. I edited the photo, had to restart, and then I had to take care of some family issues. Got the photo posted online, and you can guess the drill… Now, just getting started up again and waiting for Live Writer to start working, I’ve already been at this stage of the game for nearly an hour.
When this daily chore took fifteen minutes, it was possible to post every day. Right now it is taking more like 45 minutes to an hour every day and I just do not have that much time to spare. Many days, I do not have that much free time all in one sitting at all.
With two special needs boys who are both going through some issues (the older one is specifically having a hard time right now, the younger one has an Autism Spectrum Disorder, so life is always full of issues), and their mother staying with me who also has a lot of issues and special needs right now, I have very little free time for myself aside from my role as a caretaker.
Fighting with my computers is not really how I want to be spending my very limited free time right now.
On days when I can use my desktop, back in my office nook, this chore goes pretty quickly, but there are many days when I have little time to work back there. Usually I am stuck on my laptops.
Oh well. So much for my goal of 366 this year.
Hopefully things will settle down eventually, but right now that is not looking very likely. Until then, these posts may be a bit few and far between.
I almost called today’s photo the last photo of the day, but I do like posting these pictures. In fact, I have quite a few recent pictures queued up for the next several posts that I am looking forward to posting. However, I don’t have time to post every day, I have larger concerns in my life right now requiring my attention, so these will be posted from time to time when I have some free time that I am not spending working on larger batches of pictures, writing, or out taking even more pictures.
Products featuring photography by A. F. Litt:
deviantArt: Prints, cards, mugs, mouse pads, magnets, puzzles and other products.
Related Posts
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Bjork: The fine line between brilliance and insanity… (Featuring “Cosmogony” as performed on The Colbert Report)
Note: Cross posted from Retrovirus Lab.
Permalink
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Never quite sure which side she falls on… First heard about her new project on Colbert last night. Just sharing my further look into what is going on in her world (which is very likely a slightly different and stranger world than our own)…
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Bjork | ||||
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CultureLab: Björk: I was always a bit of a nerd:
We are together to talk about Biophilia, Björk's new album and suite of smartphone apps that will combine science-themed songs with computer games that aim to teach music theory to the uninitiated, like me. "Music education's not as hard as people make it out to be, but it's been put on this pedestal for a chosen few," she says. It is for this reason that, like a modern-day Maria von Trapp, Björk is giving me an impromptu music lesson.
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Biophilia, her most experimental project to date, looks set to divide opinion yet further. Its name - inspired by neurologist Oliver Sacks's book Musicophilia - evokes humankind's empathy with nature, which Björk has borne out with songs about genetics, crystallisation, plate tectonics and dark matter. The accompanying apps will be released in place of music videos, while the live shows have so far included a recorded voice-over by British naturalist David Attenborough, a live Tesla coil and four "gravity harps" suspended on 3-metre pendulums.
Bjork's Coder is Joining Her on Tour, But He Isn't Old Enough to Drink Yet | Motherboard:
You may know that Bjork is a big nerd, but you are not yet enough of a Bjork nerd to know that the developer behind some of her gorgeous new apps – the ones that constitute her Biophilia album – is only 20 years old. And yes, Max Weisel, who started making apps for the iPhone at 16 and designed the very wonderful and free Soundrop app, did that leave-school-and-run-to-California-to-launch-a-startup thing. For now though, he’s on the album tour, swiping iPad screens on stage behind Bjork, 26 years his senior.
I wondered who the fellow was playing the iPads in the performance below…
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Bjork - "Cosmogony" | ||||
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There is some interesting stuff going on here. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to a platform to explore these apps, but I think this is very interesting and a potentially ground breaking direction for music to move towards…
There are a lot of demonstrations on Bjork’s YouTube channel. I am going to be wasting some time today checking them out.
The album Biophilia is available in traditional formats as well. (Wow, things are moving fast for this old Luddite when I found myself, for the first time, refering to MP3 downloads as a traditional format. But it is also available on Vinyl, so I am absolved.)
Listen on Spotify: Bjork - Biophilia (13 Tracks)
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Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Pre-Photoshop Soviet Historical Correction Machines
Obsolete: Photoshop Before Photoshop | Motherboard:
In this Sesame Street-reminiscent vintage Russian clip circa 1987, we learn how images were edited before the days of Photoshop.
Yes. I am sure the Soviets used this technology purely for improving the contrast on old photos!
For some reason, these Soviet machines made me think of this…
Censorship of images in the Soviet Union - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
After Joseph Stalin rose to power in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and became Soviet leader, he initiated a number of purges that eliminated perceived enemies. At first, a purge meant expulsion from the Communist Party, but after the Great Purge in the 1930s members were arrested, imprisoned, sent to gulags or to internal exile in Siberia, or executed. The Soviet government attempted to erase some purged figures from Soviet history, and took measures which included altering images, destroying film, and in the most extreme cases, killing off entire families.
File:The Commissar Vanishes 2.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Stalin, (Nikolai Yezhov, censored) and Molotow at the shore of the Moskwa-Wolga-Channel. After Yezhow was executed he vanished between 1940-1990 from this pic too.
Related Posts
Friday, January 06, 2012
The Final Cut: 2006 (Updated 2012-01-15)
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| From 2006 |
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| From 2006 |
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| From 2006 |
UPDATE: January 15, 2012 - You gain a few, you lose a few...
Going through some old files earlier, I found a whole bunch of 2006 photos that were missing. Luckily, I had posted a lot of them on Rubble before, and they were buried in the old files for the blog.
This does not mean that I have recovered all of those that I suspect that I lost, in fact it actually helps clarify which ones were lost. Fortunately, most of the ones that I liked the best in 2006 were preserved, since they were edited and saved separately to post on the blog (saved on the old Rubblebase.com). Posting photos on Blogger sites was a little more complicated back in those days.
Anyway. Also had a data loss scare this evening, but it was just an oversight when I was finishing up these pictures a while back. A batch got left behind on the lap top. Easily corrected.
However, there may be some duplicates in the slide shows because of this. Not as clean of a final cut as I’d hoped.
Still mostly family photos in this batch.
I return you now to the original post…
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| Birthday scooter. Holly Ridge. Gresham, Oregon. 2006. From 2006 |
Terrible interwebs tonight. I’ve just spent an hour getting a few small chores done. About 10 minutes worth of work on normal bandwidths… I probably should go to bed and put this post off until tomorrow, but I have other things to work on tomorrow…
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| Bonneville Dam, 2006. From 2006 |
This batch is mostly family photos, so I am not going to split them between two different albums, like I usually do.
I seem to be missing a lot of pictures from 2006. I think I had a hard drive die that year and lost a ton of photos from 2004 - 2006. Mostly 2005, I think. There was another, earlier data loss in 2004 that wiped out most of the photos from 2002 to then, but that obviously did not concern these images.
This is why I keep so many pictures on so many computers and on so many photo sharing sites these days… I am a bit paranoid about data loss these days!
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| Horsetail Falls. Columbia River Gorge, Oregon. Summer 2006. From 2006 |
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| Horsetail Falls. Columbia River Gorge, Oregon. Summer 2006. From 2006 |
I actually had to download some of these from the old, retired 2006 Facebook album for re-editing, since they were no longer on my computer. And that is confusing because I didn't think I had any significant data losses SINCE 2006 and the laptop these were stored on has been around since 2008, before I joined FB in the first place... So they should have been on here.
Probably hit cut instead of copy while moving a batch between drives at some point, and there were some minor losses when frankenPC 1.0 died a couple months ago. However, I thought that crash mostly took out a couple batches of edited photos and did not touch any originals. Maybe I am wrong about that.Oh well. Considering the camera I had back then, there is no real loss in quality between the originals and those downloaded from the Facebook album...
Yes. These pictures were all shot on this bad boy!
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| HP Photosmart 318. Summer 2002 - April 2007. January 6, 2012. From 2012-01 (Jan) |
2.31 megapixels, 1901 by 1212 maximum resolution, 38mm focal range (35mm equivalent), f2.8 to f8.0 aperture range, shutter speeds from 2 seconds to 1/750 second, optical and LCD viewfinders, USB connections, 8MB internal media, four AA batteries…
…
The Photosmart 318 offers only point-and-shoot photography, lacking even basic exposure compensation. Its three picture-quality settings, the typical flash options, and its self-timer mode account for the full extent of its flexibility. The lens is fixed, capable only of 2X digital zooming (which is less desirable than optical zooming). The camera's pictures looked better on screen than printed. While it reproduced details and colors well in our print shots of a mannequin, the outdoor shot looked dark, and strange color artifacts littered our cropped text shot so thoroughly that words were illegible.
Yes. 2.31 MP, 1901x1212 resolution… About what my phone does today. The sad thing is that the memory was so poor on it that I was forced to shoot most of the pictures at less than half that resolution.
One plus, though, is that it had an old school optical viewfinder. I still think these should be required equipment on cameras even today.
I am not complaining. It was better than no camera at all and I was more than happy to have it.
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| Cape Horn. Highway 14. Columbia River Gorge, Washington. 2006. From 2006 |
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| Bonneville Dam, 2006. From 2006 |
Anyway, here are the links… As usual, pick your poison.
As mentioned earlier, unlike the later batches, I will not be separating these sets between family photos and non-family photos. There just aren’t enough survivors left to make it worth it.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2138128751768.79006.1802638453&type=1&l=29611760b0
Photobucket:
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| Bonneville Dam, 2006. From 2006 |
Related Posts
Sunday, December 18, 2011
First pictures with the new camera…
Ended up getting one of these: Canon PowerShot SX230 HS. It seemed like the most camera for the buck.
At this point, I thought it was better to go with a high end point and shoot rather than a low end DSLR. In fact, if it were not for the limited video capabilities of my $35 dollar clearance Kodak, I might not even have upgraded at this point.
One of the things that I really like about this camera is that it has the option to go fully manual with everything, controlling shutter, aperture, ISO, even focus. But the best thing about the upgrade is the much higher resolution view screen. I had to guess whether or not a lot of the shots on the old camera were in focus. With the new one, it is much easier to tell before I get home and start cussing because I didn’t get the shot I thought I did.
UPDATE - December 20, 2011: Uh oh... Google is improving Picasa! Looks like they broke these pictures. Winning!
At this point, I thought it was better to go with a high end point and shoot rather than a low end DSLR. In fact, if it were not for the limited video capabilities of my $35 dollar clearance Kodak, I might not even have upgraded at this point.
One of the things that I really like about this camera is that it has the option to go fully manual with everything, controlling shutter, aperture, ISO, even focus. But the best thing about the upgrade is the much higher resolution view screen. I had to guess whether or not a lot of the shots on the old camera were in focus. With the new one, it is much easier to tell before I get home and start cussing because I didn’t get the shot I thought I did.
UPDATE - December 20, 2011: Uh oh... Google is improving Picasa! Looks like they broke these pictures. Winning!
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| From 2011-12 (Dec) |
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| From 2011-12 (Dec) |
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| From 2011-12 (Dec) |
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| From 2011-12 (Dec) |
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Friday, December 02, 2011
Another look at the Lytro Light Field Camera
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| From 2011-12 (Dec) |
Thanks to Sean S. for spotting this one!
Wired took a look at the Lytro camera through the eyes of two professional photographers… I suspect the article may have been written from a press release, but there is some useful information there.
The first time I posted about this camera, there were a couple questions I had. One question was how pro photographers felt about it after having a chance to take it out for a decent field test. The second question was about the camera’s unique shape and whether or not this was a good or bad thing. The Wired article suggests some answers to those questions.
As for the former, “Wired.com recently chatted with photographers Stephen Boxall and Richard Koci Hernandez, who have been using the Lytro for two months and four months, respectively.” As I said, this article actually had more of a press release chat, with quotes from the photographers presented by Lytro rather than asked by Wired, a feeling not helped by the fact that Boxall’s images are featured on the Lytro web site (perhaps Boxall’s too, but I didn’t click through very far), but let’s see what they say anyway…
Mostly they talk about how simple the camera is to use and Hernandez says that he “loves seeing the reactions of his friends and family as they’re viewing the light-field pictures he’s taken.” These would be the digital images on his computer, of course, not prints, because the reactions are to the novelty of clicking around the image, refocusing it…
Yes, that can be fun. For a minute or two. A few seconds for each photo. But, it also feels pretty gimmicky.
My interest is in creating beautiful, static images. Obviously, especially depending on the shooting environment, especially in a fast paced environment where you have little to no time to set up and frame your shots, this after the fact editing capability seems like a very useful tool. Having this functionality in a camera would have been great while out shooting the recent Occupation protests.
However, for the landscapes and for most of the photography I shoot, I have all the time in the world to set up my shots. Those mountains aren’t going anywhere for millions of years. In these cases, it is the quality of the final print I am the most interested in and not the ability to change the focus of the photo after the fact in editing.
Which leads into another question I had about these images. Okay, we get it… “These micro-lenses capture up to 11 million rays of light.” Very exciting. A big number, very spectacular. But what does that mean? Really? How does this compare to megapixels? What sort of prints am I going to be able to make with these images?
Here is where the pros knock a little enthusiasm out of the sails. The article indirectly quotes Hernandez as saying, “the living pictures the Lytro camera takes are square-shaped, and most closely proximate a 6MP to 8MP image.”
Now that is not terrible. As Ken Rockwell points out, “even the cheapest cameras have at least 5 or 6 MP, which enough for any size print.” Though I am concerned that, with the square shape, cropping these images into more traditional print proportions may further effect the resolution.
Again, probably not too much of an issue for several varieties of photography, fine when the trade off is being able to focus the photos later in editing when shooting in high pace, frenetic environments where I might not be able to get the perfect shot without such capabilities (compromise is always an issue when editing with traditional digital photos shot in these environments).
Still, I think when it comes to my landscapes, I’d prefer to keep the megapixels. Because, often, in those situations my editing is usually more about cropping than it is about focusing. All to often I’ll notice, when I sit down and look at the image on my screen, that the real picture wasn’t the one I was shooting, but a detail in the frame itself. Different eyes at a different time, dealing with the low resolutions of the on camera screen, etc. There are many reasons why this happens and there is definitely some flexibility to be lost in editing when dealing with a five to eight megapixel image.
So, bottom line, where do the pros stand? Well, suspecting the source of these quotes is a press release, obviously they are pretty enthusiastic. But I do notice making a point, when it comes to resolution, that they refer to “living pictures” and not photographs, separating these images from a traditional photograph.
And, as the Wired writer says, “In its current form, this camera is a great tool for the amateur photographer, these two professionals suggest.”
That is where my opinion is leaning on this camera, too. Maybe, though, I’d step it down a notch from “amateur photographer” to casual user. Kids, family reunions, weekend trips to the zoo…
Although, I think I would also consider throwing one of these cameras, even in its current form, into my bag as a second camera. My thoughts, I am setting up in a field, taking pictures of mountains in the distance, when a herd of elk wander through. I grab the Lytro, get some fun, closer up, dynamic photos of the critters with narrow depths of field and funky focuses, then turn back to the traditional camera and take the picture of the landscape and geology.
The second question I asked at the top of this piece has to do with the shape of the camera. For those who haven’t seen one yet, here is an image from the Lytro web site…
As I wrote in my first post:
Some of my concerns have to do with the actual physical design of the camera itself. Was the design influenced more by the marketing department or by actual, working professional photographers?
I had a pretty negative initial reaction to the shape of the camera, but after playing with its possibilities in my head for a bit, it is growing on me... slowly and slightly. I'd have to use one for a day to really know if I like it or not.
Now I notice a little hic-up in the Wired article on the design. The writer throws this out, sounding like she is plagiarizing a Lytro press release, “Hernandez is also a fan of the Lytro’s unique design.” A closer look at the words that follow make Hernandez seem a bit more ambivalent on the shape. He is indirectly quoted as saying “he sometimes doesn’t know quite how to hold it.”
When it comes to design, while there is no actual right form or shape for things, there are shapes and forms that daily users of items are familiar with and have built up long muscle memory over years of use. When I am in a high paced environment and am grabbing my camera to take a picture that will only be available for a fleeting few seconds at most, I want that muscle memory to work.
I don’t need to fumble with my camera and have to pause to remind myself where the shutter button is, I need the camera to feel like a natural extension of my body, like all the other cameras I’ve been using for the last 30 years… If it is not, I run the risk of missing my shot.
And since this sort of high paced environment is the type of environment where I suspect I’d be using this camera the most? Well, If this happened more than once or twice, I think the new camera would end up living in my bag and rarely seeing the light of day.
All in all, it is hard to say. I would love to play with one of these for a day. I might even like to have one, as I said, as a second camera.
Another possibility that does excite me a bit is suggested by this article as well, that this technology might be merged into more traditional cameras, adding to the traditional camera’s capabilities instead of replacing them. Now that sounds like the true photography revolution they are trying to hype the current Lytro camera as.
Until then, however, it still feels more like an entertaining gimmick to me at this point.
Lytro Camera: How Pro Shooters Use Its Amazing Lens Technology | Gadget Lab | Wired.com
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Saturday, November 12, 2011
11.11.11: Update
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| From 2011-11-11 (11-11-11) - Photo |
So I made it out and filled two SD cards with pictures and videos for the One Day On Earth project yesterday. It will take a while to get through these. Could be quite a while, considering that I still haven't touched the majority of the pictures from the summer camping trips. It cannot take that long, though, since I only have 28 days to get my submissions in.The original plan for yesterday was to focus on the Occupation camps. Unfortunately, I didn't leave early enough and it was dark and raining when I finally called it for the day, still haven't having made it to the camps. But I'll be down there later today, so I'll have yet another batch of photos and videos to work on...
I can tell the main focus of the coming week is going to be image and video editing.
Anyway, today is all about the occupation. But I did want to get at least one photo up today. frankenPC is acting up so, of course, everything is taking three times as long as it should...
This was the theme song for the bus ride home. It just felt like yesterday.
Monday, October 31, 2011
A look at the Lytro Light Field Camera
My first reaction is that this could be a really cool system. My second reaction? Well, a number of concerns go flashing through my mind.
My concerns? Well, I notice a couple of issues that make me wonder if this system is designed by people familiar with photography who are developing new technology, or by tech geeks who are playing with photography. One is good, the other? Not so much.
Looking at the corporate team, I am seeing a lot of tech, not a lot of photography. However, a quick scan of Ng's thesis is encouraging.
Some of my concerns have to do with the actual physical design of the camera itself. Was the design influenced more by the marketing department or by actual, working professional photographers?
I had a pretty negative initial reaction to the shape of the camera, but after playing with its possibilities in my head for a bit, it is growing on me... slowly and slightly. I'd have to use one for a day to really know if I like it or not.
These concerns extend far beyond the physical design to the basic camera settings. A lot of the functionality of the camera is not shown in these videos. I know I want a multitude of settings, from automated settings (your basic consumer point and shoot settings) to really specific manual controls over everything (aperture, ISO, shutter speed, et cetera with conventional cameras, though I am not sure if or how these apply to light field photography).
Though I am far from an expert on the nuts and bolts of digital photography technology, I am not sure how their resolution specification ("11 Megarays: the number of light rays captured by the light field sensor") compares to the more familiar megapixel. Then again, I've also been saying this for about ten years: the focus on megapixels is a bit of a red herring in digital photography. Here is a good explanation of my views by someone who has done the research: The Megapixel Myth.
Another dirty little secret is that they are not available for PC users yet. Mac only. That rules me out for the time being (not that I wouldn't love a Mac if I could afford one), but the PC software is in development.
I would love to test drive one of these bad boys, at the very least.
Here is an interesting (Flash?) simulation of how the software works on the Lytro website: https://www.lytro.com/living-pictures/282
Additional links:
The technology explained: https://www.lytro.com/science_inside
Ng's Thesis: https://www.lytro.com/renng-thesis.pdf
Ordering Information: https://www.lytro.com/camera
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Cute picture of cats...
Yes. It is a cute picture of cats. It is not mine, but I saw it on Picasa and I really liked it. Yes. It is a picture of cats. A cute one. Deal with it.
P.S. Yes, this is how bored I am while re-installing everything on my reborn, for the Nth time, frankenPC. Watching the little green bars moving sloooowwwwwlllllllly across the screen...
P.S. Yes, this is how bored I am while re-installing everything on my reborn, for the Nth time, frankenPC. Watching the little green bars moving sloooowwwwwlllllllly across the screen...
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