Tag: CAMERAS

The LunchCommunicator, developed by Japanese researchers, packs a camera and touchscreen PC that automatically records the person making lunch and plays it back while the other party is eating it, and vice-versa. Maybe it'll make school kids more appreciative of their mothers' efforts, but it just kind of makes us uncomfortable. We figured the one place we didn't have to check for a spycam ...

Researchers in Germany have developed a new endoscopic camera that's cheap enough to be thrown away after each use, and small enough to see eye-to-eye with a grain of rice. Designed at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration, the prototype's camera is just one cubic millimeter in size, and features a resolution of 62,500 pixels. But researchers say it's still ...

Capitalizing on people's nostalgia for old Polaroid prints, a company called Breakfast will soon beta-test a location-based printer that will create inkless, on-demand photos from the Instagram iPhone app. Instaprint, as it's called, automatically prints photos that are taken with Instagram app and tagged with a specific location or hashtag. Next week, Breakfast will show off two printers to ...

These photos play on another trend in war coverage over the past few years, which is the transformation of the soldier and killing agents (the gun notwithstanding) into innocent man-child. 'The boys sleeping' has been a popular motif. Often, these photos have a homo-erotic resonance to them, although it's much more comfortable thinking: 'puppies.'BagNews considers whether or not the use of the ...

Pelican Imaging has developed a prototype imaging system for cellphones with 25 tiny cameras, which take 25 separate pictures and combine those into one bigger, better image. Instead of using a single, large lens and sensor, Pelican's camera array technology uses multiple lenses and sensor to capture light images, adds some 3-D depth and gesture control, and could even let users manipulate a ...

 When the Internet is working in Egypt, the bandwidth is fine and everyone can use Twitter, Facebook and so on to their heart's content during riots. Indeed, I confidently predict injuries among excitable Twitter users who are so intent on getting the latest development out first that their eyes are cast down to their screens - even as rocks are flying toward their heads. Photographer Stephen ...

To help parents monitor their young drivers, American Family Insurance is offering its customers the option to have a small video camera installed in their childrens' vehicles, free of charge. According to The Kansas City Star, the camera, which is mounted on the rearview mirror, records views of the person behind the wheel, and of the road ahead. If a driver makes an irregular move -- like ...

Inspired by raindrops, a German software engineer created some dazzling photographs of ink bouncing off the surface of water, a phenomenon that would normally be invisible to the naked eye. According to The Daily Mail, amateur photographer Tobias Brauening rigged a circuit board to trigger a camera shutter, and to open three valves at the same moment. Each valve drops a different color of ink ...

Lady Gaga returned to CES this year, reprising her role as top-billed celebrity eye candy and creative director for Polaroid. We waited, and waited -- just as we did last year -- to get a glimpse of the petite diva among a throng of sweaty journos, industry affiliates and even a greasy fan or two. Gaga finally appeared, after Polaroid Chairman Bobby Sager was literally booed off the stage by the ...

As DSLR fanatics, we've been quietly and happily singing the death of point-and-shoots for a while now, but CES and Casio have brought news of a pocket-sized camera that verily throws our entire photographic belief system into question. Behold the Tryx, a piece of Transformer ingenuity that boasts three different configurations -- although, really, the possibilities are kinda endless. The ...

Part of any prison guard's job involves breaking up fights or riots that invariably erupt when you put a bunch of convicts in close physical contact with each other. Defusing these spats can be a messy, and sometimes dangerous task, but it may be getting slightly easier, thanks to new computer vision systems that can automatically detect brewing violence from above. As the New York Times ...

The Swann SportsCam isn't for those who want capture high-quality HD video of their underwater exploits. The tiny cam can only record video at a lowly 640x480 VGA clip, but the device is both shock- and waterproof, making it perfect for you snorkelers, scuba divers and spelunkers. The $99 cam also comes with a variety of mounting options, including a strap for wearing it around your head. ...

If you weren't able to divine what exactly this product is from its ridiculously wonky title, we totally understand. But the awkwardly named Creative Live! Cam Socialize HD 1080 (CLCSHD1080, for short) is a webcam that captures high-definition 1080p video at 30fps, and can stream video chats at 720p (as long as your upstream Internet service provides 1 mbps or higher). Within the webcam world -- ...

We have every digit on our body crossed in hopes that a reputedly elderly, generous, affable and morbidly-obese elf looks our way and pops a Lumix GF1 in our stocking. Which is kind of the point: the GF1 is, to-date, the best overall mirrorless camera (one of the newfangled micro four-thirds models you've likely heard of) on the market, offering quality on par with some DSLR cameras in a body ...

A reader asks: Well, it finally happened. My parents sold their house, and have ordered me to trash everything in their basement, including a couple boxes worth of slides spanning half a century. I would love to digitize them, but having tried to do it myself, I've realized it would take me forever. I know there are pricey bulk scanners you can buy (which scare me), and then also online services ...