Komamura ViewCamera Converter for DSLR

Convert your Horseman, Nikon, or Canon DSLR camera into a View Camera with Komamura's View Camera Converter

details here http://www.komamura.co.jp/digital/VCCpro/index.html

English Press Release here
http://www.komamura.co.jp/e/press/PR090817vccpro.pdf

Snap Pictures in the Dark with Electrophysics AstroScope

US company Electrophysics has two adapters which can make your Canon or Nikon dSLR snap pictures in the dark. Such an application is not new and was previously implemented in surveillance and video cameras for recording footages in the dark. But the AstroScope 9350-series adapters are specially designed to be used with dSLRs.

Electrophysics AstroScope is an advanced night vision module that incorporates a state-of-the-art image intensifier that transforms dark scenes into bright, highresolution images. The AstroScope 9350EOS-P is specifically designed for Canon EOS-type cameras and mounts between the camera body and Canon EOS lenses using the standard Canon bayonet. AstroScope incorporates a high quality optic designed specifically for today’s digital SLR cameras and delivers full frame images with little or no vignetting.


These night vision systems fit between the camera body and the lens. There is a central intensifier unit (CIU) which illuminates the scene dramatically even if there is only a weak light source. What is special is that these adapters maintain the electrical connections required for image stabilizer operation and autofocus by the optics.

http://www.electrophysics.com/night-vision/

Ryoji Ikeda’s ‘+/- [the infinite between 0 and 1]’: An Interpretation

Ryoji Ikeda: +/- [the infinite between 0 and 1] is the first major retrospective of Ikeda’s work, presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) and runs until June 21st 2009. The exhibition includes new commissions, large-scale audiovisual projections, sound, and Ikeda’s abstract celluloid landscapes.

Click here for a nicely formatted version of this article as a PDF file.

Ikeda has quickly earned himself an international reputation as a leading electronic composer and sound artist. His work is hailed by critics as the most radical and innovative examples of contemporary electronic music, earning him a Golden Nica prize in the Digital Music category at Prix Ars Electronica in 2001—one of the most important yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music.

Although best known for his sound installations, Ikeda has extended his activities and compositions into the visual arts, and these activities have caught the attention of MOT’s chief curator Yuko Hasegawa. “Previously, we have held exhibitions of veteran and midcareer artists as solo shows,” says Hasegawa, “but we really want to focus on the younger generation and represent them in solo shows.”

Ikeda has been intensely active in sound art through concerts, installations and recordings since 1995. Described as an ‘ultra-minimalist’, Ikeda employs cutting-edge computer technology to develop a unique set of methods for sound engineering and composition. His works feature computed, mathematically pure ‘microsonic’ tones, frequencies and noise that sometimes exists at the edge of perception.

These intense, exhilarating sounds are integrated in audiovisual installations, projected at cinematic scale in his concerts, in which each pixel is precisely calculated by mathematical principle. The vast scale of the projection heightens and intensifies the viewer’s perception and immersion in a world of pure objectivity. Acoustics and sublime imagery—derived from pure mathematics and from astronomy, genetics and other real-world data—are employed to create an experience of time that and be sped up, slowed down and frozen for analysis. Space too is like a field that can be traversed at high-speed, or sliced up for scrutiny.

Time and space, the vast universe of precision numeric data representation, and the limits of human perception are explored with precisely correlated and synchronized audio and video rhythms that sound and image fuse and become indistinguishable—resulting in a synaestheia-like experience.

Although usually described as an electronic composer, this retrospective demonstrates Ikeda’s talent as a visual artist too with large-scale photographic work and a 35mm x 10m abstract celluloid landscape known as data.film [nº1-a].

“My intention is always polarized by concepts of the ‘beautiful and the sublime’”, writes Ikeda, “To me, beauty is crystal, rationality, precision, simplicity, elegance, delicacy. The sublime is infinity, infinitesimal, immensity, indescribable, ineffable. The purest beauty is the world of mathematics.”

Consider how these sentiments are expressed in a pair of Ikeda’s artworks shown in his ‘V≠L’ exhibition. The work was inspired by his dialogue with Harvard mathematician Benedict Gross and explores the idea that perhaps nothing in the universe is random. Consisting of two horizontal panels, one is etched with a prime number consisting of over 7.23 million digits; in counterpoint, the second panel presents a random number generated by computer algorithms, also consisting of over 7 million digits. From more than a few inches away, the panels appear as a random, concrete-like grey texture. But close-up they reveal a mind-boggling array of 0.8mm-high digits, daunting in their vastness and precision. For comparison, consider that the estimated number of atoms in the observable universe is a number only 80-digits long. Unlike the random sequence, this prime number is like a jewel, a mathematical diamond that can be contracted into the sum of two squares and expanded. Its endowed with special properties which make it vital to data security. But change a single digit and this whole, delicate, seven-million-two-hundred-thirty-five-thousand-seven-hundred-and-thirty-three unit long system of perfection becomes unstable and collapses.

Such expressions of point and counterpoint abound in +/- [the infinite between 0 and 1]. Other examples include the white-light of SXGA projectors within the perfect black room. The 10 screens itself a play on the nature of the number 10 as representing the both the on-and-off of binary logic. The notion of [+/–] polar-opposites are found in the contrast of signal vs. noise as individual instances of discrete data and moments in time are plucked from the vast oceans of endless random data. Light and sound is used to freeze certain moments in time like unique snowflakes, only to dissolve back into a sea of data on the next beat.

Review and description of Ikeda’s work tends to stop short of interpretation. Indeed, with regard to the meaning of Ikeda’s work, curator Hasegawa’s says that Ikeda’s art, “doesn’t have any particular symbolic meaning; it is nonsignifying. He just wants to create a kind of matrix, or give the idea of the universe and infinity, for the visitor to simply enjoy. You can read whatever you like into the work.”

But while Hasegawa seems to believe the exhibition amounts to little more than audiovisual eye-candy, this writer found many clear, masterfully crafted messages, and believes that taken collectively, Ikeda’s work has the same power and potential as any work of great art to be a catalyst for profound personal transformation.

Spoiler alert: if you’re planning to visit the exhibition, I suggest you experience it for yourself before reading further.

The flash of revelation happens once you make your way down to the basement where a second level of the exhibition has been constructed. Here a through-the-looking-glass counterpoint to the entire exhibition upstairs has been ingeniously constructed. This alternate exhibition is identical in size and layout, but whereas the former space was set in pitch black darkness, we now face a negative-image in the form of a pure white room, Great care is taken to make it work. The expansive floor is covered in delicate white felt, and visitors don fabric slippers so as to not scuff the floor with their shoes. The felt doubles as an acoustic absorption material, helping to create an anechoic-chamber-like silence in the room. The entire room is lit from above by a grid of large panels which produce a soft, uniform and continuous light source.

Instead of 10 video projections, we find ‘the irreducible [n_1-10]’: 10 static, black panels composed of a large—but finite—set of numbers. These numbers of so tiny, they are barely visible to the naked eye. Whereas before we explored the unbound vastness of space, the limitless expanse of discrete moments of time, and the infinite range and precision of data representation with god-like objectivity, now we arrive at the polar opposite: the single, here-and-now subjective experience of the only one true universe. Here all the hypothetical possibilities collapse into a single instance of the world having a specific form and state. Our subjective perception of this particular place, the one-and-only world in which we inhabit, is enriched and is much more reified by its contrast with the inverse, counterfactual world of pure objectivity[1].

The experience is supplemented by ‘matrix [5ch version]’, a 5-channel audio installation composed of five Meyer Sound Laboratories SB-1 parabolic long-throw sound beams. Exploiting the directional behavior of a parabolic reflecting surface, the SB-1 provides the ability to propagate precisely focused sound waves while maintaining a narrow beamwidth.

Listeners who traverse, and disrupt, the soundscape created by these 5 speakers, encounter a highly-subjective hearing of the work. There is no objective position, only one vastly entangled system as the act of observation itself disrupts the sound waves and the acoustics are highly dependant on the position and direction of the listener’s body, head and ears within the field. This further solidifies our conception of space as a uniquely subjective experience.

Venue details:
http://www.ryojiikeda.mot-art-museum.jp/

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[1] The ‘White Room’ mise-en-scene in the movie “The Matrix” plays an analogous role. The stark white, horizonless background, and anachronistic setting reinforce the emptiness and artificiality of the Matrix. By contrast, the subsequent transition, made without physically leaving the ‘white room’, to a scene on the outskirts of New York City, reinstates the theme of simulation versus reality in the film.

One is also reminded of the “white room” scene in “2001: A Space Odyssey”, in which Dave Bowman ages rapidly. Devoid of doors and windows, this room too plays counterpoint to the ordinary perception of space and time.

Google gives online life to Life mag's photos

Google gives online life to Life mag's photos

Google gives online life to Life mag's photos
8 hours ago

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) — Google Inc. has opened an online photo gallery that will feature millions of images from Life magazine's archives that have never been seen by the public before.

The new service, available at http://images.google.com/hosted/life, debuted Tuesday with about 2 million photos. Eventually, Google plans to scan all 10 million photos from Life's library so they can be viewed on any computer with an Internet connection.

About 97 percent of Life's archives have not been publicly seen, according to Life.

The photos can be printed out for free as long as they aren't being used as part of an attempt to make money. Time Warner Inc., Life's parent company, hopes to make money by selling high-resolution, framed prints. The orders will be processed through Qoop.com.

Life's archives include photos from the Civil War as well as some of the most memorable moments from the 20th century, including the Zapruder film capturing John F. Kennedy's assassination.

Google has been indexing a wide variety of information that previously wasn't available online as part of its efforts to lure even more traffic to its popular search engine. For the past four years, Google has been scanning millions of books stored in dozens of libraries around the world.

The Life partnership represents Google's biggest undertaking in professional photography. Google hopes to work out similar arrangements with the owners of other large photo archives, said R.J. Pittman, a director of product management.

Tonchidot: Sekai Camera

Canned demo vaporware, or possibly the greatest advance in the integration of mobile location-based contextual video-driven telephony with user contributed content the world has seen?

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/17/tonchidot-madness-the-video/

Thanks Haru-chan!

Leica S2 with 56% larger sensor than full frame

Photokina 2008: Leica has unveiled a brand new autofocus DSLR system designed for professional users, which is configured around a 30x45mm sensor (i.e. 56% larger than 35mm full-frame).

Details at dpreview

Is Google evil?

Randall Stross looks at whether Google's relentless collecting, processing and commercializing of our most personal information begs for public oversight, in this article (designed to promote his book Planet Google: One Company's Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know, Free Press, 2008)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/24/EDV1134BDS.DTL

SLR camera shoots high-def movies, too

When I first got my Canon 5D DSLR I was disappointed to discover that it couldn't shoot video. Why could my $750 Panasonic LX1 with Leica lens shoot 640 x 480 video at 30 frames-per-second, but my $2500 Canon can't I wondered.

Enter the Nikon D90



New Nikon SLR camera shoots high-def movies, too
By PETER SVENSSON – 1 hour ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Nikon Corp. on Wednesday launched the first digital still camera with interchangeable lenses that also shoots movies.

The D90 single-lens reflex camera, or SLR, takes 12.3 megapixel stills, but can also shoot movies in the high-definition 720p format. It will be available in September for $1,000 without a lens.

Compared to a consumer digital movie camera, the D90 will provide extra versatility for a videographer, since different lenses have different looks and applications.

Photography as a Weapon

NYT article on photography by Errol Morris

Photography as a Weapon

Apple and the future of the computer

I just bought my first Apple product--a 32GB iTouch. Well, it's true that I already owned an iPod Nano, but I didn't buy it because it was given to me.

I bought an iTouch for two primary reasons: White Rabbit Press is planning to develop a Japanese language app for it, and I also thought it would be a nice way to tote around my photography so I can show it to others (several photographer friends of mine are already using their iTouch as a mini-portfolio).

I really wanted to like the iTouch, but--while the fanboys seem to have lost their ability to think critically about all things Apple-branded--I find the device to be very disappointing.

First and foremost: you can't save any files on it. Well, of course you can save stuff you buy from the iTunes store...but this state-of-the art touch-screen digital audio player with built-in wi-fi and Safari browser cannot save an mp3 file, a picture or any other file from anywhere else on the web. I'm flabbergasted. I have 30 GB of space, I have an audio player, a video player and a photo album app, and I can browse the web, but I can't save anything? You've gotta be kidding! I was able to navigate to my flickr account and thought I'd download some of my photos into my album, but I couldn't figure out how to download the images. I thought I just needed to learn the right multi-touch technique, but nope, it can't be done.

This is CompuServ all over again: corporate controlled network access which diverts you toward proprietary fee-based services.

Of course I could download the images on my PC, then import them into the iTunes App and then sync my iTouch, but why do I have to go through all that hoopla when I have all the necessary and required elements: free memory, a web broswer, an image viewer app, and wi-fi access?!

You can't save email attachments either. What if I'm on the road and I want to email a PDF document to someone? Guess you also need to carry a real touch-screen handheld computer for that.

OK, so moving on...

* No copy-and-paste: got a mail from my friend Kenn and wanted to add this info into my Contacts. His address and phone number is in his signature, but you need to have pen and paper handy because there is no way to copy-and-paste this information into the contact form

* limited web-based user experience: two words: no flash. Also, there is a YouTube app which allows you to search and view YouTube videos over the wireless network, but you can't login to your account in order to access your favorites. You can bookmark YouTube videos that you find, but those bookmarks can only be access from your Apple iPod...

* doesn't support many popular video formats: Only quicktime, MPEG4 and h.264 videos. No "live" video or audio streams (it can play "streamed" archival media as it is downloaded).

* can't upload: guess this goes without saying, but mp3 files, images or any other files cannot be uploaded (to flickr or basecamp for example) or attached to an email.

* predictive text seems to have a learning disability: I'm getting tired of typing things like "whiterabbitpress.com" over and over...my mobile phone does much better plus it allows you to keep a list of phrases which can be pasted into an email message or memo.

* Browser doesn't seem to be extensible: no way to access my Google Toolbar bookmarks?

* Apple Tax: Hadn't had it for 24 hours before I get hit with my first Apple Tax. An iTouch 2.0 firmware update was released today. I called Apple to explain that I just purchased my iTouch the day before. So new customers are effectively getting a $10 discount. I asked if I could get a $9.95 gift certificate so I could download the update for free. Sorry Charlie, no money no honey. Yeah, I know, it's only $10, but isn't the $500 I paid for this thing already enough? I've never had to paid for a firmware update for any audio interface, computer, camera or mp3 player I've owned. Besides, it's a penalty for buying these devices ahead of others, because future customers get it for free.

* doesn't come with any kind of case: my nano did, why doesn't the iTouch? Had to spend another $15 so that the metal doesn't get scratched to shit in my bag or pocket.

* if Apple is the first company to "get the interface right" then why can't you use the keyboard in landscape mode? That would make it much easier. Bigger keys = less mistakes. Guess no one at the Genius Bar thought of that one...

* wish the designers also thought of drilling a strap hole in the frame. There's nothing to attach a strap to, and this thing is pretty slick on a hot and sweaty crowded Tokyo train...

* the headphones could have benefited from a little plastic nub on one side, so that you can distinguish the left and right by touch alone because it's faster than looking and also possible to do in low-light. My Sennheiser cans have this feature.

* no voice-over-ip: for obvious reasons

* Devices like Microsoft's XBox, Apple iPhone and Amazon's Kindle are designed to lock you in to business model which funnels more-and-more money back to the gadget provider. I worry that if everyone has a gadgets like Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPhone then they start to become a barrier to alternative ways of communicating and distributing digital goods. For example, if the PC were as locked-down as the iPhone, then you might not be able to install Skype and you’d have to use some Microsoft fee-based voice-over-IP service.

Imagine if Microsoft said that for every application that runs on Windows, we get a copy of the source code? Or if Microsoft took 30% of the revenue for each and every Windows application sold? You'd think they were greedy monopolistic sons of bitches, and you'd be right.

Furthermore, would-be iPhone application developers — at least those who aren’t well connected — can be waiting up to six months to be accepted into the Apple iPhone developers’ program. Only those in the program can submit apps to be distributed through the iPhone Apps Store, and with several minor exceptions the Apps Store is the only way to get an iPhone app distributed to the public. And once an apps is submitted, there’s still a review by Apple — which can reject it for any reason or no reason at all. No there's no guarantee that the $30,000 you just spend to develop an app will even be able to see the light of day.

If these devices are 'the future of the computer' as some people suppose then I really worry because they completely lack the sort of hands-on openness and limitless possibility which inspired young people (like myself) to think and learn and create.

Portable Polaroid PoGo Printer

Long live Polaroid!

Here's how it works -- you snap off a picture with your cam phone or Pict-Bridge enabled shooter and then send the image to the PoGo via Bluetooth or USB. The PoGo then prints out a borderless image on a 2-inch by 3-inch slice of thermal ZINK photo paper.

Wired reviews Polaroid PoGo Printer

WIRED blog article on the basics of RAW

Why You Should be Shooting RAW

Pixel Perfect

The New Yorker interviews photo retouch master Dangin Pascal.

LINK

Fuji makes you sign bizarre EULA to buy a camera

By signing this End User Questionnaire, End User certifies that (1) the subject camera is being purchased by End User for the above stated legitimate business purpose, (2) End User will make its best efforts to safeguard the camera from being used by others, and (3) in the event End User transfers the camera or the camera is lost, stolen or is otherwise no longer in End User’s possession, End User will immediately notify Fujifilm of such event.

more at boingboing

Found this on a fuji website:

Fujifilm UVIR Digital Camera USA End User License Agreement:

By breaking the packaging seal you acknowledge your understanding and acceptance of Fujifilm's Ultraviolet (UV) and/or Infrared (IR) sensitive digital camera firmware End User License Agreement. The camera firmware contained in each system package is fully activated to engage the camera's UV and/or IR capabilities and ready for use. No other firmware modifications are necessary in order to activate the camera's UV and/or IR wavelength sensitive CCD. THIS LICENSE IS NON-TRANSFERABLE.

You hereby acknowledge and agree that your use of the camera's UV and/or IR light energy sensitive capabilities, as enabled by Fujifilm's camera firmware, will be purely to accomplish a legitimate business purpose in the medical, forensic, fire investigative, law enforcement, scientific, systems integrators, museum/antiquity, aerial photographic survey, astronomy, professional nature and fine art photography, photographic education and local and federal government markets.

In addition, you further agree not to use the camera's hardware and firmware enabled capabilities to engage in unethical photographic conduct involving the violation of personal privacy, child endangerment, lewd photography, and or paparazzi like activities.

source

Saleen S5S Raptor

Just unveiled at the New York Auto Show, the supercharged Saleen S5S Raptor ($185,000) drinks E85 ethanol and delivers 650 horsepower, a 0-60 time of 3.2 seconds, and a top speed of over 200 mph. Choose from a 6-speed manual or paddle shifting.

Michael Toschi belts

Clever design:

FIT is a molded component which creates a dynamic interface between the buckle and the strap of Michael Toschi Belts. The FIT system allows the belt to increase its circumference as it responds to load, even though the belt is fastened. FIT increases the belt's comfort by reducing bite and bind caused by common body movements.

The FIT system is not visible when the belt is worn as it is concealed behind the strap.

Michael Toschi online

Stanford researchers developing 3-D camera with 12,616 lenses

Stanford electronics researchers, lead by electrical engineering Professor Abbas El Gamal, are developing such a camera, built around their "multi-aperture image sensor." They've shrunk the pixels on the sensor to 0.7 microns, several times smaller than pixels in standard digital cameras. They've grouped the pixels in arrays of 256 pixels each, and they're preparing to place a tiny lens atop each array.

The result: an electronic "depth map" containing the distance from the camera to every object in the picture, a kind of super 3-D.

more here

(thanks kevin!)

Regulating Japanese Internets

The Japanese government thinks they can regulate content on the internet--yet can't keep cigarettes and porn away from children at the local 7/11.

The Japanese government made major moves [recently] toward legislating extensive regulation over online communication and information exchange within its national borders. In a series of little-publicized meetings attracting minimal mainstream coverage, two distinct government ministries, that of Internal Affairs and Communications (Somusho) and that of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Monbukagakusho), pushed ahead with regulation in three major areas of online communication: web content, mobile phone access, and file sharing...

Regulating the Japanese cyberspace continues here.

BoingBoing let's us know how well China's storied and expensive Great Firewall holding up.

PBS Frontline discussion on censorship and web filtering/blocking in China.

CHALLENGES FACING HUMANITY

These 14 challenges facing humanity were announced at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston:
-Make solar energy affordable
-Provide energy from fusion
-Develop carbon sequestration
-Manage the nitrogen cycle
-Provide access to clean water
-Reverse engineer the brain
-Prevent nuclear terror
-Secure cyberspace
-Enhance virtual reality
-Improve urban infrastructure
-Advance health informatics
-Engineer better medicines
-Advance personalised learning
-Explore natural frontiers

Now go get to work on that will ya

Refocus Imaging: Computational Cameras

2008 may see a new generation of cameras, dubbed computational cameras, that allow viewers to refocus an image after it has been captured.

Refocus Imaging, a Stanford University spinoff, is licensing lens and software technology
that allows a camera to capture the entire light field entering the lens, not just an ordinary image.

An array of micro lenses between the lens and sensor capture all the focus fields at once. Viewers can then move a slider accompanying the image file (which will be a new format) and refocus each image file at will — an entirely new end-user experience.

I don't know how many viewers would really care about refocusing an image, but I think this technology has more interesting applications such as making it easier to extend the depth of field in macro (close-up) photography--something which can be accomplished today with a technique called focus stacking but requires a lot more work and can be problematic or impossible if there is motion in the scene.

Focus Stacked Dolichopodid(Source: AirBrontosaurus )


According to Refocus Imaging, their Digital Lens platform requires only two changes to a conventional camera:
-A new microlens array in front of the sensor
-Refocus’ proprietary software

The incremental change in hardware creates an enormous increase in the power of the recorded light. A conventional camera records only the average value of the many light rays striking each pixel. A Refocusing Digital Lens camera records each of the individual light rays, providing much more information to compute better pictures.

See it in action: select an image from the Refocus gallery and click on the image to focus at a specific location. Use the right hand slide bar to push or pull the focal plane.

Note from Chris aka AirBrontosaurus on the above Dolichopodid image:

Manual focus stacking with moving objects can be tough. You have to be quick, but still make sure you capture all the different points. This is compounded by the fact that the fly in the picture (Dolichopodids) are very, very skittish. The flash pulse usually sends them flying, so you can only get one shot before they're gone. This one didn't move, so I figured I had to get a good stack on him.

The macro lens I use (Canon MP-E) actually doesn't focus. It only has one focusing distance for a given magnification ratio, and you have to move the entire camera to change the focal point. So, in addition to working with very small DOFs, you have to move forward and backwards tiny amounts to get all the focal planes to line up. It's hard, but a lot of fun.