We present the Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera which captures a full spherical panorama when thrown into the air. At the peak of its flight, which is determined using an accelerometer, a full panoramic image is captured by 36 mobile phone camera modules.
Neat idea, though the “you can see what’s behind you” gave me a creepy 70’s/80’s horror flick vibe. The call is coming from inside the ball!
Super Small: Top 20 Microscope Photos of the Year
We’re never disappointed with the photos from the Nikon Small World contest, and the top 20 judges picks contained in this gallery suggest that the photographers just keep getting better. These photos were selected from more than 2,000, but if you disagree with the judges, you can still pick your favorite in the popular vote contest throughout October.
A time-lapse taken from the front of the International Space Station as it orbits our planet at night.
via The Bad Astronomer, who makes a recommendation
Make sure you set it to the highest resolution, then make it full screen. You’re welcome.
A micro camera is installed onboard an r/c plane F-16. The camera transmit live the video to ground and I wear video goggle to fly the plane in real time like if I was in the cockpit. The camera replace the head of the pilot and the movement of the cam is control by the movement of my head on ground via a head mount gyroscope (head tracker)
Big Money Project, Giant Coin Makes Stuff Look Tiny In Tilt-Shift Photos
Lars Marcus and Theo Tveterås of Skrekkøgle, an independent design studio in Norway, crafted a 20:1 heavily lacquered wood replica of the Euro 50-cent coin to use in their Big Money Project. The project creates the illusion that the coin is actually small and the objects around it, such as a sports car and a dumpster, are actually tiny using tilt-shift photography effects.
Mine is only 3″ but it’s what you can do with it that counts. Or so I’m told.
But I could totally see Mission:Impossible doing it. Spy vs. Spy: Casinos Can’t See The Cameras Hidden Up Gamblers’ Sleeves
In January, at the newly opened $4-billion Cosmopolitan casino in Las Vegas, a gang called the Cutters cheated at baccarat. Before play began, the dealer offered one member of the group a stack of eight decks of cards for a pre-game cut. The player probably rubbed the stack for good luck, at the same instant riffling some of the corners of the cards underneath with his index finger. A small camera, hidden under his forearm, recorded the order.
After a few hands, the cutter left the floor and entered a bathroom stall, where he most likely passed the camera to a confederate in an adjoining stall. The runner carried the camera to a gaming analyst in a nearby hotel room, where the analyst transferred the video to a computer, watching it in slow motion to determine the order of the cards. Not quite half an hour had passed since the cut. Baccarat play averages less than six cards a minute, so there were still at least 160 cards left to play through. Back at the table, other members of the gang were delaying the action, glancing at their cellphones and waiting for the analyst to send them the card order.
I performed an experiment to see what the differences were between semi-automatic pistols and revolvers. The advantage of shooting under water is that you can see the boundary of the gas flow fields almost perfectly.
Wild Close-Ups of Rare Mammals From Huge Camera-Trap Study
A massive camera trap survey of tropical mammals around the world has returned a magical series of glimpses into animal life.
The survey was conducted by Conservation International and partners and partners in South America, Africa and Asia. They installed 420 camera traps in key protected areas, amassing some 52,000 photographs between 2008 and 2010.
Protip: add a few drops of milk to water to make lasers show up better. You want particulates to scatter the light, and little globules of fat do just fine.
Here you can see total internal reflection of the laser off of the surface of the water. The structure of the beam is probably because I didn’t stir the water, so the milk was only mixing due to the residual motion of it and the water. You can see it’s settled a bit at the bottom.
Close-up pictures of things