Innovation in photography
Pick up a camera and see how many innovations you can find in it. That shouldn’t be hard. There are lots of them. The camera, like all inventions, started with a core idea. From there, it continued to evolve and improve though time. It might surprise you that a single innovation pattern, Multiplication, formed the premise of all photography. The cameras you use today evolved from multiplication. The entire photography industry continues to benefit thanks to this powerful pattern.
Multiplication is one of five simple patterns innovators have used for thousands of years. These patterns are the basis of Systematic Inventive Thinking, a method that channels your thinking and regulates the ideation process. The method works by taking a product, service, or process and applying a pattern to it. This changes the starting point. It morphs the product into something weird, perhaps unrecognizable. With this altered configuration (we call the Virtual Product), you work backwards to link it to a problem that it addresses or new benefit it delivers. The process is called Function Follows Form.
Photography, in essence, is multiplying the subject onto a piece of paper. Something unique happens when light from an object passes through a pinhole. A small image of that object will be projected on any surface on the other side of the pinhole – only upside down. This “pinhole effect” was discovered thousands of years ago. Aristotle noted in 4 BC that “sunlight travelling through small openings between the leaves of a tree, the holes of a sieve, the openings wickerwork, and even interlaced fingers will create circular patches of light on the ground.” From that humble beginning, we have photography. Hardly a day goes without looking at an image of something: a framed family photo, a magazine cover, an outdoor billboard. Images are all around us.
Let’s get back to cameras. Were you able to find these innovations?
Red Eye Reduction: In 1993, the Vivitar Corporation patented a novel way to beat red eye. The solution: a camera with a dual flash. The first flash constricts the subjects’ pupils. Then the camera shoots off a second, “multiplied,” flash that provides sufficient light for the actual photograph. Since the subjects’ pupils are slightly closed from the initial flash, no red eye appears in the final image.
View Finders: Modern cameras have not only the traditional viewfinder to line up a shot, but also an LCD version. This allows you to compose your image while seeing more of what’s going on around you
Aperture: Pull out your smart phone and you will see one camera aperture on the back and another on the front of the phone facing you. Why? It’s seems obvious in hindsight. The second aperture allows you to photograph your favorite subject…you!
Stereoscopy: Oliver Wendell Holmes invented the stereoscope viewer in 1861. It creates the illusion of depth in an image by presenting two offset images separately to the viewer’s left and right eyes. Think about that next time you see a 3D movie.
Panorama: Thomas Sutton patented the first panoramic camera in 1859. By taking multiple photos of the same scene, he was able to merge them together to create a wide screen, panoramic view.
Film Negatives: Developing paper film creates a negative of the image – the colors are reversed. When the negative film is developed again using the same process, images come out as “positives.” The two-step process allow photographers to create multiple copies of the positive film.
Color Film: Taking three photos of an image but each with a different colored filter – red, green, and blue – allows them to be combined to yield a color image.
Lenses: Photographers use a variety of lenses depending on the particular effect they want to achieve: close up, far away, wide angle, and so on.
Movies: In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge used 24 cameras to photograph a galloping horse. Each camera captured the horse in a different state of motion. When he combined the images, the horse appeared to be galloping. Muybridge created the first “moving picture.” Multiplication launched not one, but two global industries.
by Drew Boyd innovationexcellence.com
Filed under news by on Dec 22nd, 2011. Comment. 
Virtual tour of famous sites
No one needs to tell us anything that makes exercise more interesting is a good thing. Time to banish the vacant stares and wandering minds at the gym with a new app that turns your iPad or iPhone into a virtual tour of scenic locations.
The Virtual Active app measures your speed on an exercise bike, treadmill or elliptical by measuring the vibration of your machine. Once you download the app you just put your device on the machine, and off you go. An accelerometer tracks your pace and translates it into the speed you zip through the videos.
While Virtual Active is free to download, you do purchase the videos — ranging from the Alps, the streets of Venice, the Grand Canyon and more. They don't come cheap at eight dollars each, and they are space hogs requiring around 800MB for a half-hour video.
The whole thing started as Project Excite when an industrious hacker hooked up his exercycle to his Xbox 360. The rest is history as it evolved into the Virtual Active app.
BitGym provides the technology behind the videos, and is planning to expand the concept into games and other entertainment around the concept of exercise propelled interactivity. They list plans for Fit Freeway, which will use the accelerometer to control speed and head movement tracking to steer.
For those of us who can't walk and chew gum at the same time it may provide some challenges, though we're probably the minority in gaming circles. But, in principle anything with the potential to motivate gamers to exercise and let them get their game on at the same time sounds pretty freakin' clever.
Via TechCrunch
Filed under news by on Dec 22nd, 2011. Comment.
3d travel experience without…
Ever wonder what it’s like to trek to Mount Everest? Unless you’ve got a month of vacation and a big bank account, the next best answer may soon be sitting right in front of you.
Opening to the public on Saturday, Journey to Everest promises to bring Nepal to your computer screen via interactive 3-D. Along the way, the program offers a glimpse into the future of virtual tours.
The Journey was created by Singapore-based 3rd Planet Pte. Ltd. as a portal and marketing tool for the Nepal Tourism Board (NTB). “[This] enables us to showcase our country in a totally new dimension,” said NTB CEO Prachanda Man Shrestha in a statement.
Or several. After registering (free) on the 3rd Planet website, users can explore Kathmandu, navigate around Tribhuvan Airport and fly over the Himalaya to the town of Lukla. Right-click your mouse to activate “fly-through” mode and the scenes get surprisingly realistic.
In Kathmandu, for example, users can walk the streets, peer around corners, even pass through the exterior columns of the Chyasim Deval temple in Patan Durbar Square. (Careful, it takes some coordination not to walk into the walls.) Later, in a scene straight out of “Lost Horizon,” you can ride along as a prop plane works its way over the mountains to the remote town of Lukla.
For now, that’s where the journey ends with the rest of the trek to Everest expected to go live next year. Even so, 3rd Planet CEO Terence Mak believes interactive 3-D travel is ready for prime time. “Pictures and words don't do justice to a location,” he told msnbc.com. “Of all the various ways of remembering information, the human mind remembers it best through experience.”
Others in the industry appear to agree. Last year, 3D Travel of Honolulu launched 3-D portals that combine Google Earth imagery with travel-specific information for Hawaii and Las Vegas.
For Sin City, for example, users can fly along a videogame-like representation of the Strip, ducking under the Eiffel Tower at Paris Las Vegas, following along the roller coaster at New York New York and passing through the fountains at Bellagio. Sidebars let users get more information on hotels, shows and other attractions and, in select cases, make immediate bookings.
The company expects to launch a similar offering for San Francisco in January.
Whether as a marketing platform or booking tool, interactive 3-D travel is still in its infancy. However, it’s likely to become more common as the technology improves, more destinations opt in and more people incorporate tablets and other mobile devices into their travel planning.
“There’s a lot more planning going on with iPads and other tablets,” said Norm Rose of Travel Tech Consulting Inc. “The more you can give people an opportunity to experience the virtual world, the more it will encourage actual travel to those destinations.”
Or, as Mak puts it, “We live in a 3-D world and the best way to understand a destination is in 3-D.”
source: By Rob Lovitt, msnbc.com
Filed under 360 virtual tours, Articles, news by on Dec 11th, 2011. Comment.
Better Photography, a magazine on photography
BANGALORE: Better Photography, a magazine on photography, organised a competition on India’s best family photograph called the Fun Frames contest recently. The winners are yet to be announced. Winners will get the opportunity to spend a holiday package from Club Mahindra for an entire family and a fabulous Olympus PEN E-P3 camera, the candidate would also be recognised on a national level by the magazine.
The concept was to capture precious memorable moments shared with family and friends through photographs and send the entries to the Fun Frames contest.
The contest was categorised in six sections namely,? family portraits, going places, kids at play, togetherness of the joy , photo series—‘A Travelogue in Frames’ and photo series—‘A Family Photoessay.’
The contest was promoted on a large scale through television promos on CNBC TV18, CNN IBN, Awaaz, CNN IBN, IBN Lokmat, magazine advertisements in Better Photography, Overdrive, T3, Chip, AV Max, Better Interiors, Entrepreneur, Burrp, Noise Factory along with banner ads across web18 sites including In.com , moneycontrol.com , ibnlive, ibn khabar, cricketnext.com. Social media was targeted and the contest was highlighted on facebook and twitter with various continuous promotions across Club Mahindra properties through banners, standees and fliers.
The entries were collected through a dedicated website (betterphotography.in/funframes/ ) as well as physical print entries by post were accepted. The last date for receiving the entries was November 15 and the magazine received an overwhelming 6,000 entries from towns and cities all over India.
Better Photography editor, K Madhavan Pillai said, “The number of entries was incredible and to receive a response from the smallest towns to the biggest metros in India was astonishing. We plan to conduct many more opportunities through photography to explore the talent and capabilities of the people of India.”
Renowned photographer Madhur Shroff? has been bestowed with the responsibility of selecting the final six entries that would go ahead to participate in the final face off.
The face off would require the participation of the families so the finalists would get an opportunity to stay with them at Club
Mahindra in Coorg. The winner of the final face off would be announced on? December 7 at an event in the Club Mahindra property in Coorg.
Express News Service , The New Indian Express
Filed under news by on Dec 5th, 2011. Comment.
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