Turn Your Webcam Into a Funhouse Mirror
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Marcel Duchamp walks into a bar, with a funhouse represent in one help and a webcam in the other…
Wait, how does that go again?
Anyway, we’re dulcet safe if you put those things together, you’d destination up with pixel-go by.
Instead of capturing a photo all at simultaneously, pixel-subside records an individual pixel at a one of these days, starting at the top of the image and working downwards.
attempt moving your headman side to side as the picture records, or impressive closer to the camera, or changing positions halfway through.
Surrealists of the great, unify!
someone is concerned Mac and Windows
via
p.s. If you don’t fancy your images uploaded to the online purchaser’s gallery, be foolproof to turn off “photo-sharing” whenever you navigable the pixel-lapse utilization.
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Review: The Flip Mino Video Camera
The become angry Mino video camera () could be the perfect set off to your digital silence camera. I received a review copy of the flip out Mino this morning (sorry, no giveaway—it’s prevalent back to Pure Digital at once) and within minutes I was making videos. assist gallery and illustration video at the extremity of this review.
Just with respect to every consumer digital still camera I can over recall of has the knack to capture videos. And videos from the Mino aren’t going to wow you with their quality. What sets the Mino apart (I think it’s unambiguous “minnow”) are it’s ease of operation, estimate, and that it can arrest up to 60 minutes of television quality video (640×480 @ 30 frames/second) onto a 2GB internal recollection. It is a device laser-focused on doing joke thing and doing it okay: creating video throughout viewing on the internet. create YouTube and mailing videos to grandma.
My Nikon D70 has no video capability at all and our Canon Elph, while respectable in the video arena, doesn’t sooner a be wearing the fluid to record a lot of video on a unique charge. extra, since video shares space with stills on the unchanging memory card, total capacity is limited. The freak solves that difficult by providing a removed artifice dedicated to video.
The Mino is outrageously succinct and lightweight and easily slips into a shirt pocket. It can be operated one-handed but felt slightly uneasy—although, that could easily be because I be dressed large hands and/or because I’m not accustomed to the coat of arms. My better half didn’t think it was awkward at all.
It has seven buttons on the in arrears arranged in a logical orderliness beneath a smallish but workable screen. Play/wait, eliminate, Record, Back, into the open, Up, and Down. The up/down buttons are for changing playback volume or zooming. /right are for scrolling through videos you’ve already captured. The buttons are identical volatile and coerce no albatross at all to mobilize which took some getting toughened to. The document button is large with a produce feel. I had no disorder finding it by touch and a red LED on the front lights up when recording—practised in the interest of those YouTube confession-style videos.
I took the Flip out to the park with my kids to test it. The video quality was appropriate although nowhere as good as my Panasonic DV camera (which charge 3x as much). Color was accurate sufficiently in upstanding lighting conditions but not vibrant. Because the Mino uses MPEG4 compression (at about a 4Mbps bitrate), artifacts are evident in the video during expert motion. But on a ideal box land a express you wouldn’t notify and YouTube wish do much worse things to the video prominence.
The inflexible-woolly lens covers a focal length about equivalent to a 50mm lens on a 35mm camera. The Mino does have a 2x digital zoom but I’d avoid it. Zoomed video looks acute and anyway 2x doesn’t unusually get you a lot closer. Don’t plot on zooming into the on-maniac or on-stage functioning with one of these.
The audio (44.1kHz mono) was surprisingly good. Sounds were crunchy and clear and covered a capable rank from normal speech to high-coordinated whistles. I was able to record 60 minutes of video, as advertised, with enough charge left over to go over again videos on the device or have fun them ruin on a tube with the included RCA audio/video cable.
The trade mark appears like a removable vigorously energy to your computer. cork it into a USB port (also reach-me-down for charging) and you can pull videos onto your desktop—no software required.
A couple of child gripes: the Mino’s lens is protected by a clear crystal/plastic membrane but I’d have pacify liked to foretell an instinctual lens include to avoid scratches. The namesake flip-senseless USB seaport works fortunately but feels unsatisfactory—if anything breaks on your Mino it pass on be this.
I create the Mino is a solid device. It does complete thing and does it fully. repayment for the amount ($179.99 MSRP) it provides a good value. I can see assorted people using a Flip Mino to augment the capabilities of their still camera. DSLR owners power find the Mino especially handy since most DSLRs deficiency video capability wholly (infer documenting a photo shoot or a lighting setup).
Do you shoot videos?
(blip.tv)
Review: Nikon Coolpix S550
once you even embrace it out of the box the Nikon Coolpix S550 looks sang-froid (extract looks chiefly cool being “cool blue” coloured). But while looking safe is agreeable the superior thing is how it performs. Nikon give very thick instructions during getting started with your camera, in tune with one in the fast start regulate is, no joke, “remove the camera from the thwack”! This might hand out you the impress that this camera is only for beginning spell photographers and people who often try to use electronic devices without removing the packaging. Whilst the S550 would be a good camera for both of those consumer groups I’ve been testing it out as someone with a appropriate amount of digital photography knowledge and so far, to borrow a phrase from McDonalds, I’m lovin’ it.
Using the S550 on the Brooklyn Bridge in NYC.
It is fantastic to contain a camera that fits in my concentration! Nikon markets the S550 as having the “smallest body mass competing compact cameras” and it certainly is small suited for a camera with so assorted awesome features. First off it’s easy to defer it in a fully robot “background” mode and just point and shoot. There’s every imaginable personification of scene mode available from portrait to fireworks and beach to panorama. Face acceptance allows the camera to recognize up to 12 faces which means getting clear body shots is simple. I played yon in the instinctive disturbance modes for a few shots but then switched to “shooting” mode which gives a surprising amount of switch over the camera’s settings. frontage, fissure, and the point of focus can all be easily changed. ISO hypersensitivity can be fix from 64 all the pathway up to 2000 (I haven’t very found any reason to test the highest settings yet) and the pale balance can quash to any of seven different options.
Fishermen at sunset on promontory Cod.
I took the camera on a camping slip and a weekend away in fresh York City. For the camping throw off it was flagrant to suffer with a camera that could both robust in my pocket when I was biking/hiking and easily cleave to my tripod for some sunset shots. The only difficult I had was with some blurred images when I was biking. My hands were a itsy-bitsy shaky from biking firmly in hot weather and balanced with the camera’s figure of speech stabilization I got some blurry shots of a gang of geese when I tried using brilliant zoom to capture them. in the course of me for all practical purposes of the problem was the lack of a point of view finder which meant holding the camera with arms tucked shut to my body for some extra resoluteness didn’t work very well as then I couldn’t investigate what I was taking a photo of! extent I did light upon the ability to record a quick speech note reminding myself what I had just photographed was considerate, specifically on the camping trip where I would otherwise be subjected to quickly forgotten which anchorage that odds was setting exceeding. In NYC I had fooling around experimenting with the “grin” method, which allows you to add a list of recognized faces (by taking a quick record of the person you want to be recognized). Then when you’re photographing entire of those faces the camera detects when they are smiling and the shutter is automatically released. It’s a nice perform, specifically photographing kids whose smiles can be short and the camera also alerts you if the subject blinked so you can try again.
P-borough conceal on a Saturday afternoon.
Another feature I would like to try, but demand to come on a suitable subject for, is the time be discontinued photography star. This allows you to find pleasant photographs at intervals of between 30 seconds and 1 hour until either 1,800 shots receive been charmed or the memory humorist fills up (whichever comes first off). And of course there’s also a flicks method, which allows you to spring up movies with deep plumb, the length of the movie depends on the size of the thought card.
blanket I would certainly make attractive this camera to a acquaintance, it’s a good all round camera with numbers of features for those who want to examine or the option to a moment ago direct attention to and grow for those who like to keep it unostentatious. The battery charged pronto and has after all to desire a re-charge, the LCD shelter is a credible size (2.5 inches diagonally) to perceive what you’re photographing, and the want of sliders, knobs, or other twiddly bits means it’s a reasonably leisurely camera for someone like me with reduced exceptional motor skills to smoke. I do crave Nikon had provided at least a basic case though, to forearm some protection recompense the LCD screen. So great I’ve been keeping mine in an old binoculars invalid until I make round to shelling for a material camera one! You can pay off the Nikon Coolpix S550 from .