Camera speed on Android

Check out the photograph above. This was taken while traveling in a car. Of particular focus are the lines on the road - they are actually straight, but show up as curved in the photograph.

When cameras were first added to cell phones, they were small, slow and blurry. The sensors were tiny, the lenses were basically plastic and the processors were slow. While the megapixel count has gone up, the optics have gotten better, the biggest bottleneck still remains the processing speed.

At least the Android platform has taken an interesting approach to overcoming this processing speed bottleneck. It seems the sensor is read in sequence, line by line, starting from the top. The advantage with the approach is obvious - the camera can process one line at a time, keeping the picture sharp and well processed.

The side effect is the effect showing up in the picture above. The straight lines on the road, show up as curved because the car moved in the time between when the first line of the sensor was read and the last.

Capture Camera Clip: on Kickstarter

I guess I joined the bandwagon. After all the case is so compelling. The video above is a great introduction.

tl;ds

The Capture Camera Clip System is a machined doodad that grabs onto belts and backpack straps that allows cameras to be clipped onto it. Using the tripod mount, the clip looks and sounds like a solution that can finally take on the problem of the swinging, dangling SLR.

This, also was my first attempt at backing something on the site Kickstarter. If you have not heard of the site yet, it is a creative way to fund projects. Everyone gets to be a venture capitalist, for a fixed reward of course, and not a direct equity stake. Nevertheless it has spawned several awesome projects including the TikTok+LunaTik Multi-Touch Watch Kit, Diaspora and GoPano, in addition to a ton of movies and documentaries.

GIF redemption

The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) format has had a checkered history. Introduced in 1987, it has had widespread support in browsers, making it one of the most commonly used image formats on the internet. The format has also had it's share of controversy and patent issues, which led to the creation of free alternatives but never really impacted it's use.

The defining legacy of the GIF is not its ubiquity, or the controversies. Instead it is its capability to show animations that simultaneously made it irresistibly over-used and notoriously hated. Animated gifs, along with the HTML <blink> tag are single-handedly responsible for the seizure inducing pages of the 90's.

Now, the animated GIF is making a comeback of sorts, as nothing less than high-art. The blog From Me to You, has a section called cinema-graphs, which are essentially beautiful photographs, embellished with Harry Potter style animations.

Consider the following:

And this

The blog, which is primarily fashion focused, has a lot more of this. Animated GIF as high-art. Who'd have thought that was possible for redemption.

First Human Photographed

Before a photograph was a photograph, it was called a daguerreotype. Better than a Camera Obscura, the daguerreotype allowed a chemical capture of a stable image on a copper plate. While the quality was in no way comparable to the cameras in our phones today, the daguerreotype became the first success of humankind's efforts to visually capture our surroundings.

The picture above is an example of an image captured by the inventor of the process, Louis Daguerre. What was interesting about the picture above, in addition to it being an early daguerreotype, was the fact that it seems to have become the consensus for the first ever photograph of a human. Unlike the current freeze frame photography, early photographs had exposure times in excess of 10 minutes, and were better suited to landscape and cityscape photography. Which also meant that unless someone was absolutely still they would "ghost" out of the image altogether.

At the bottom-left of the picture is a man apparently getting his shoes shined, and was therefore still long enough to appear on this exposure. Thus, unwittingly, becoming one of the first two humans to ever by photographed.

Luckily, it seems that the art of long exposures to ghost out humans is very much alive and kicking.

Digital Camera Uno

What you have here, is the first ever digital camera.

In this blog post over at Kodak, Steve Sasson, the inventor of the digital camera, gives some detail into a phenomena that is so omni-present today.

Built off parts from a Super 8 movie camera, along with a nascent CCD imaging array, the camera used a digital cassette to store the images. It took 23 seconds to complete write the recorded image to the cassette. Thank God for solid state memory eh?

To play it back, a cassette reader contraption tied to a TV set. And the 8-pound camera recorded a - wait for it - 0.01 mega pixel picture. Bad enough to require an up-conversion to display it on a TV. And of course Kodak being Kodak, called it "Film-less Photography". That said, even they weren't that oblivious to the impact this would have on the future of photography. From the post...

"The camera described in this report represents a first attempt demonstrating a photographic system which may, with improvements in technology, substantially impact the way pictures will be taken in the future."

There you go. 1975. First digital camera. And a paltry 0.01 megapixels.

Wish I was a Camera sometime

This is a line from a song by Bon Jovi. But I dont wish to capture just her beauty alone, I want to capture ALL beauty. And I just dont want to be any camera. I'd rather prefer if I was a Nikon Cam, with an assortment of lenses, and a stand at that same time. Otherwise, being a camera is just not worth it.

And, of course, I also wish I and my camera were invisible. But of course that would lead to problems with the photonics of the entire process of photography. Light would be free to go through my cam, and a shutter would not really help. But then, I really want to be invisible, and hope my reel becomes opaque just for the exposure time to catch the light, and it goes invisible again.

*Grin*. Okay, the reason I want to be invisible, is that I want to capture moments, as they happen. I dont want people to freeze up because I am there. I dont want birds to fly off. I dont want animals to give me glances and slink away.

That probably is the reason that I rather stick to photographing, dead things and other things that cannot run away from me. But I really want to be invisible.

Did you ever sit next to that road. And looked at the myraid colors and images flash past you. The sights and the sounds. The smells and the colors. The people in their hues and colors, going about their business. Businesses, varied, moving, and incredibly fascinating. And you wish, you were a camera sometimes.

Someone looked at some of the snaps I had shared, and had written to me expressing his opinion that I was a nature lover. Hmm, maybe, maybe not. I think not. I am not a nature lover or anything. I am a photolover. I am just photophyllic. Just dont care a damn, what those photons bounce off, as long as they differ in energy in patters that i like.

Art and science.. Or is that art and crap. you tell me.

Why is it that the cheap food is always the best tasting. If it has too much of oil, cholestrol, and is probably cooked in unhygienic surroundings. And it just tastes yummy!

~!nrk