Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Single-pixel camera to take on the Megapixel

Researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas are developing a single-pixel camera aimed at taking on the inefficiencies of the modern digital camera. The single-pixel camera aims to do away with the millions of pixels that are often not needed in a modern image due to redundant or duplicate information in the shot. Whilst the camera is currently the size of a suitcase and bears a resemblance to an old-fashioned pinhole camera, Kevin Kelly, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Rice, states that it is only the beginning of things. Hopefully it will get smaller, he added. What is so inefficient about this (modern digital camera compression) is that we acquire all these numbers for example 10 megapixels only to throw away 80-90% when we do the compression process, explained Dr Kelly's colleague Richard Baraniuk.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Ultra thin telephoto lens to revolutionise camera phones

Engineers in California have announced the development of a new lens that could drastically improve the quality of camera phone images.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) created the ultra thin camera using origami to fold up the telephoto lens. They are hoping that the development will yield thin and lightweight high resolution cameras for use in mobile phones.
The resulting imager is around seven times more powerful than a standard lens of the same depth meaning cameras can now be much thinner and more powerful at the same time.
Joseph Ford, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Jacobs School who leads the camera project, commented.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Top press pictures put the world in focus

AN IMAGE of a group of young Lebanese driving a car through bombed-out South Beirut, taken by Spencer Platt of Getty Images, won the top World Press Photo prize for news photography yesterday.
Described by judges as full of "complexities and contradictions", the 15 August, 2006 photo shows five people in a bright red car - one taking pictures with her camera phone, another with her expression hidden behind designer sunglasses - amid the rubble with crumbled buildings in the background.

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Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Self-taught techniques

Without much cajoling, international award-winning photographer Song Jin Tek reveals the secrets behind his remarkable photo of a bird diving underwater with a fish firmly in its beak.
Conventional wisdom has it that nature photography requires patience and luck, but Song, whose work ranked 9th in the Photographic Society Americas colour slide division in 1990, says he can make birds, dragonflies, butterflies and insects pose for him.
His birdshot, entitled Catching (1990), was actually a scene from an aquarium. As part of the props preparation for the shot, Song impaled a live fish on a wire and planted it firmly among rocks in the middle of the aquarium.
Other fish, meant only for the camera, were made to swim among the leafy sides, shielded to prevent from distracting the bird.

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