Imaging

…a novel, inexpensive, stereoscopic technique for generating 3D images from cellophane on a liquid crystal displays which are most typically used for a laptop screen or a camera phone screen. Stereoscopy requires independent manipulation of the left and right eye views. Our technique takes advantage of two facts; the first is that the light from the liquid crystal display of either a laptop computer or a camera phone is polarized light, and therefore we can easily manipulate its transmission with a polarizer sheet. The second fact is that a cellophane half-waveplate can change the direction of polarization of light. [via] Link.

Flickr gang- congrats on your 17 millionth photo! I never expected to use a photo sharing service so much and for it to be a daily part of work, play and everything in between. The MAKE Flickr photo group has been a great meta for us, thanks again! Lastly, for Flickr fans like me- there’s a new collaborative poster you can order with thousands of others- called the Flickrverse. Link.

Interesting- this new camera from Samsung will come with photo to text software “You can shoot documents such as books, papers and magazines then extract text from the image taken using the “Digimax Reader” text recognition software included in the box”. Kinda handy if it works well, I suspect the software would work with any image from other cameras. Current OCR software might be able to do this now, but not optimized for digital cameras. Would be neat to have this in cell phone cameras to auto-populate text messages. [via] Link.

MAKE pals over at iFabricate have a project I didn’t notice until now– Create your own super hi-tech 3-D laser scanner. Using just a laser pointer, wine glass, rotating platform, and a digital video camera, you can make accurate 3-D models of a object or person. Convert the video to an avi. Use an edge detection algorithm to find the location of the laser line. Reconstruct your 3-D model. Link.

Gizmodo has a story about the new Kodak EasyShare camera- the Wifi camera with a really slick UI. I’ve been looking forward to this for awhile, but now it seems like it will be delayed until October. More bad news- the camera might only upload to Kodak’s Ofoto service (not Flickr or your own personal site/blog/other service). When it comes out I think we can expect both firmware and DNS hacks (like the PSP browser tricks) from folks who want to use more than just Kodak’s service. For $400+ it really needs to send your photos where you want them to go. Unless Kodak plans to significantly subsidize the cameras carrier-style, seems like a really odd move that won’t help sales Link.

Here’s a secret: you can develop black & white film cheaply and cleanly in your very own bathroom. The site has a list of all the things you’ll need, where to get them and a good step by step (with black and white photos) on developing your own film. The comments are a great too for some additional tips too Link.

Handy way of testing for dead pixels. So you just bought a superb ultra-flat 25″ LCD monitor, but it looks like there are a few ‘spots’ on it. Depending on how many and it’ll mean return to the vendor or live with it. Or you could be about to buy one in a store and want to make sure there aren’t any dead pixels Link.