It’s especially good when something like this happens. The scam artists in the BMW backed up and caused the “accident,” but anyone coming in afterward would assume that the front car was rear-ended. Notice the moment when our driver points out that all this is being recorded. -via reddit

It’s a short film. And you’ll probably see the ending coming. We’re sorry, Kurtis Hough. -via reddit

We showed you the night lights that Jason Hull (jayfish) makes out of vintage cameras. He has since opened an Etsy store, although the inventory is a little thin so far. But you can make your own! Hull has also posted the process for converting old flash cameras into night lights at Instructables. Link

WVIL is the name of a cool concept that the Artefact Group has come up with. It’s a camera that features a touchscreen that works pretty much like the iPhone.

The patent-pending WVIL system takes the connectivity and application platform capabilities of today’s smart phones and wirelessly connects them with interchangeable full SLR-quality optics. It is the inevitable solution for photographers who expect the power of modern mobile devices but who also demand uncompromised quality.

Link via GigaOM

(YouTube Link)

This smart, and very affordable, little device might not turn you in to the next George Lucas, but it will definitely help stabilize your home movie making, and might help you become the next net video sensation.It’s the Pico Dolly, made for the modern era of homegrown video stars, this modular mini camera dolly can be outfitted with attachments for lights, mics, and all the peripherals you need to step up your home cinematography skills. And with a price tag of around $65, it is affordable even for someone working on a no string budget.

Link -via LifeHacker

Wildlife photographers (and brothers) Will & Matt Burrard-Lucas created the BeetlCam. It’s a remote-control 4-wheel-drive miniature vehicle (toy) with a remote-control camera mounted on top, designed to take pictures of dangerous wild animals. Here we see the gadget in action in Tanzania. It appears to work very well! -via Laughing Squid

Link

Photographer David Slater had his picture taken by a crested black macaque in an Indonesian national park when the curious little critter figured out how to trigger the shutter release button on his tripod mounted camera. Soon, it seemed as if the monkeys actually knew that they were on to something, and they continued to snap shot after shot, showing an intelligence and problem solving ability macaques had been assumed not to possess. What’s next for the shutterbug macaque, a job directing in Hollywood?

Link

Jeremiah Warren attached a small (and tough) camera to fireworks and captured quite a few POV sequences. Some launches had the camera facing up and some were facing down. -via Cynical-C

For some reason, possibly to achieve a viral video, this guy puts his GoPro camera down on the ground, running. The temptation was too much for a seagull in Cannes, France. It snatched the bait and took off, saying “Mine. Mine. Mine.” There is no information on how he got the camera back. -via Metafilter

Previously: Cameras stolen by a lion and an octopus.

It looks a tad slumpy, but I don’t doubt that a lot of work went into making this cake-based replica of the FujiFilm X100 camera. It was made by the bakery-owning wife of photographer Gary Cruz for his birthday. He has more images on Flickr if you’d like a better look. Link

via Gizmodo | Image credit: garycruz

Where is the strangest place you can affix a tiny GoPro camera to get a radical “point of view” video? I would have never come up with the inside of a hula hoop, but someone did, and that’s awesome. -via I Am Bored

Does this camera look like a million bucks to you? How about $2 million? This Leica O-series is just one of 25 ever made to “test the market” in 1923, two years before the camera’s A-Series debuted, according to the auctioneer’s description. That was enough to make the winning bidder pay $1,890,000 for it just last weekend, making it the most expensive camera ever sold.

Link via the Daily What

If you leave a camera sitting in the open and drive off, you shouldn’t be surprised when someone makes off with it. Photographer Roger de la Harpe laid a running camera down when he retreated from a pride of lionesses in Tswalu Kalahari Game Reserve in South Africa. There was a happy ending for de la Harpe, although the lioness is presumably off in search of something tastier than a digital camera. Link -via The Daily What

We’ve featured Ben Heine‘s ‘Pencil vs Camera’ project before, and he’s back at it with a whole new series of photographs mixed with pencil sketches that mix reality and fantasy. Sometimes they’re whimsical and sometimes they’re meant to make you think, but they’re all quite creative.

Link via Flavorwire

All those settings and modes on your digital camera -what do they really do? You’ll be surprised! Another strange video from Sheepfilms. -via b3ta

This Camera Pencil Sharpener from the NeatoShop does two things very well: first, it sharpens pencils (duh!) and second, it makes for a wonderful gift for the photography lovers in your family.

The retro pencil sharpener looks just like the classic twin-lens reflex camera like the Rolleiflex TLR. It’s wonderfully appropriate because using pencils that need sharpening is very retro! Link

See also: F-Stop Watch | More Gifts for Shutterbugs | Fun School Supplies

A swinging sword looks very different from the sword’s point of view! These guys duct taped a camera to the end of the sword before they put it through its paces. The effect may cause dizziness. -via The Daily What

F-Stop Watch - $35.95

Got a shutterbug in your family? Need a Christmas gift for a fellow photo enthusiast? Look no further than the NeatoShop's Gift Guide for Shutterbugs.

In addition to the really cool F-Stop watch (which tells time with relative aperture) above, we've got more photography-inspired stocking stuffers:

Camera Keychain	Camera Pencil Sharpener	Vintage Camera Keychain

Link: Gift Guide for Shutterbugs

You knew this was coming, and now its available to everyone. It’s a camera that records everything you see. Loop the Looxcie over your ear and go about your day. If you see anything you think may be worth saving, hit the button and the previous 30 seconds are saved, and even uploaded to your selected social networking site to be instantly shared, or you can watch and edit the video first if you prefer. And it stores up to five hours of video! yeah, this is neat to have yourself -but what about when other people wear them? Would you tend to turn your head or hide when you see one of these coming? Link -via Nag on the Lake

A lot of people use cardboard in their arts and crafts, but Kiel Johnson took that into a whole ‘nuther level with his cardboard cameras. This one above, the iconic twin lens, even works as a pinhole camera.

See more of Kiel’s cardboard camera over at OddityCentral: Link | Kiel’s Website | The Twin Lens Reflex, a video clip of the making of the camera above.

Have you ever seen an airplane propeller that looked like this? It’s called the rolling shutter effect {wiki}. A cell phone camera records what it sees by scanning from one side of the frame to the other (or top to bottom), and strange things happen when the scene you are shooting moves faster than the image scanner. Another video illustrates how the slow scanning process of a cell phone camera creates this effect. -via reddit

These are my favorite keychains in the NeatoShop: a set of camera keychains that are perfect for shutterbugs! If your loved ones love photography, these will make an excellent gift. Best of all, they’re only $3.95 each! Link

An award-winning story of a man and a digital camera. You might want to get a hanky ready. -via Flotsam

Remember Wolf Pig? After Takeuchi Taijin released his viral video (now over 2.7 million views on YouTube) Olympus created PEN Story, an ad using similar stop motion process with over 10,000 photographs (Takeuchi’s work was the inspiration).

Now, a year later, we have the sequel: PEN Giant, a stop motion project featuring 355 billboard-sized photos. And this time, Takeuchi is involved. Nice to see an indie artist get some props from Olympus.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks Sheila!

The camera never lies, so they say, but what about the camera overlaid with pencil drawings? Artist Benjamin Heine sought to answer this story by overlaying clever pencil drawings onto photographs. Sometimes these drawings were simple, just filling in what is covered up, and sometimes complex, adding detail or focusing on otherwise hidden aspects of the original photo. In any case, the result is a thought-provoking artistic piece.

Link – via stumbleupon

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.

Victor Huang was recording video underwater at Wahine Memorial near Wellington, New Zealand when something really strange happened.

while trying to get video of a wild octopus, it suddenly dashed towards me and rips my shiny new camera from out of my hands, then swims off, all while the camera is recording! he swam away very quickly like a naughty shoplifter. after a 5 minute chase, I placed my speargun underneath him and he quickly and curiously grabbed hold of the gun as well, giving me enough time to reach in and grab the camera from out of his mouth. I didn’t feel threatened at all during the whole ordeal. he seemed to be fixated on the shiny metallic blue digital camera. the only confusing behavior was how he dashed off with it like a thief haha. cheeky octopus.

-via Metafilter

I wanted to create a dynamic film that took the audience on a journey and showed off the many strengths of this new breed of HD DSLR cameras, such as the Canon 7D, which we shot this film with. The camera’s low light capabilities and light weight allow you to do things you’d never think to try with traditional cameras. This has been an amazing experience and it’s just the beginning.

I hope you enjoy this short – we had a blast making it!

The Story Beyond The Still: The Cabbie from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.

“The device was placed in a light fitting and was in place for 30 minutes before being discovered by staff.

“Unfortunately for the man he did not turn off the camera while placing it in situ and forensic examination of the data card shows an image of him while doing this.”

Link -via Arbroath

Andrew McDonald took that concept to the next level, with a whole stream of photos imploring the finder to return the camera.  Even the criminally minded would have second thoughts about stealing this camera.

To illustrate just how you can safeguard your camera from the crippling effects of Camera Loss, here are the pics that I always keep on my camera.

Link

(YouTube Link)

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) pilot and out-of -work electrical engineer Cy Brown strapped a camera to his GPS-enabled plane and had some friends launch fireworks at it.  A rural farmland becomes a miniature war zone, as Cy pilots and swivels the lens, hunting down the active thrillseeker sect’s base camp.

A few weeks ago we were asked to participate in this neat little Sweep Panorama photo contest. Sony provided Neatorama with this sleek and very pretty Cyber-shot DSC-WX1 camera to play with. The task was to take a bunch of panoramic photos and submit them to compete against other photos by bloggers around the web. I'm not a professional photographer by any means, but I sure had fun anyway.

The camera is very little and a real treat to tote around. I am used to lugging around a huge SLR. As long as I am not having a particularly fat day, this compact Sony will actually fit in my pocket. But, the really nice thing about this Sony camera is that I don't feel like I am giving up quality for convienince. Yes, it's really really easy to use but has lots of bells and whistles to boot. The camera is 10.2 mega pixels, has a 5x optical lens, 24 mm wide-angle lens (35mm format), anti-motion blur, take movies and so on. Frankly this little guy is way smarter then I am.

The panoramic feature they asked us to test out is super cool. All you do is set the camera to the "sweep panorama" mode and you are ready to go. The camera shoots multiple images and seamlessly pieces the together into a panoramic image as you move the camera. You can take vertical or horizontal pictures. The fun thing about the mode is that you can fit a lot visually into one picture. The way it scans actually allows you to achieve a certain amount of depth that you can't get with other still cameras.

We are still playing with camera and we have been asked to submit even more photos. We can't tell you which ones we provided but we think you will have a good time looking at everyone's interpretation of the assignment. Check out the cool panoramic photos at WeSay and vote for your favorite panoramic photo today. The winner is allowed to choose which school they would like 10 additional cameras to be given so you are voting for a good cause.

Link

Disclosure: We do get to keep the camera (Thanks Sony and Technorati! It rocks), but the opinion above was 100% ours. There was no pressure to write only positive reviews.

This camera, made by the Nagoya Institute of Technology, has 158 lenses — more than any other camera in the world, according to Guinness World Records. It was made by associate professor Yojiro Ishino and his students in order to take 3D pictures of a flame. The lenses are arranged in four rows, and the entire rig is 47 centimeters across.

Link | Image: Sankei News

(YouTube Link)

Be sure to see the Making Of as well.  via todayandtomorrow

Steve Irvine makes ceramic pinhole cameras. He writes “I like the organic look of these cameras which contrasts with our usual notions of cameras being machine-made, high tech devices.” The cameras are quite functional, as you can see from the photograph below, taken with the camera above.

Link via Make | Photos: Steve Irvine

This cane designed by Wonjune Song is meant for the blind, but there are two big innovations that set it apart from the classic cane:

1) Its got a sensor lens fitted at the bottom of the cane. So when a blind person approaches a traffic light or stairs, the cane senses it.

2) It warns the user of the obstacles via a vibrating handle.

The Eye Stick is fitted with a sensor lens towards the bottom part, from where it picks up location bearings, like is the person nearing a staircase, or is he near the traffic lights. It then sends feedback to the blind commuter via vibrations, communicating the scenario, so that the person can be aware of his surroundings and take his next step with confidence.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Design Freak.

Oobject rounded up some of the best Altoids tin hacks from around the Web. From cameras to flashlights to headphone amps, nothing is safe from the DIY community!

The almighty Altoids tin has been torn apart, beat to death and drilled upon all in the name of science. DIY enthusiasts can attest to the solid build of the tin and how delicious the mints were that formerly resided in it. This list is a collection of some of the finest hackery around that incorporates an Altoids tin.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by vveneziani.

Gizmodo has a photogallery of ten extraordinary cameras, such as the the above picture of the world’s largest camera. Constructed in 2006, it consisted of a modified aircraft hangar at the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro. The resulting silver emulsion print was three stories high and ten stories long.

Link

There’s not much information at Kwanghun Hyun’s webpage for his DIY cameras. Ttechnically, they aren’t camera obscuras as he titled them, but who cares? They are mechanically gorgeous! Link

Back in April we had put up a time lapse video clip by Samuel Cockedey called Remanence : Variance and folks seemed to have enjoyed watching it. Samuel, was kind enough to have contacted Neatorama recently with the news that he had just created a new video for us to watch hot off the proverbial presses.

The video shot in gorgeous HD is a lot more cinematic with grand vistas of Tokyo, various shots of the city coming alive with the buzzing traffic and buildings lighting up. My favourite part of the video has got to be the shot he has at the 1:00 mark with the clouds storming in over the city

* It goes without saying you gotta watch this in HD. You can either hit the expand button on the video as it plays (for full screen viewing) or head to the Vimeo link below the clip to watch it in a larger size.

Check out his site here – Link

A simple, weatherproof camera designed for the garden or wildlife enthusiast.   It can be programmed to take photos at variable intervals for the creation of time-lapse movie files.

It can focus as close as 20″ away to illustrate petal growth or, with its wide 54″ field of view, it can capture perennials as they grow to conceal your spent spring bulb foliage. The camera takes a picture at one of six pre-determined intervals (five seconds to 24 hours) and combines them into a single 1280 x 1024 resolution AVI movie file for easy playback on a computer. It has a light sensor that turns off the camera at dusk and back on at dawn, allowing for continued video capture each day. Movies are timestamped and stored on the camera’s removable 2GB USB flash drive, which can take up to 18,000 pictures.

Link – via gizmodo

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.

Evan Booth created this awesome "gaping hole" costume for Halloween using a travel DVD player with video feed from a digital camera strapped to his back.

I don’t know what is more awesome, Evan’s wig or the gaping hole costume! Link – via Unique Daily

Wildlife photographer Enrique Aguirre was on a boat piloted by Captain Yohn Gideon with other photojournalists when they spotted an otter in the water with something odd in its paws …

“I was like, did I actually see an otter with a video camera or was I hallucinating?” he said.

The screen on Aguirre’s digital camera soon confirmed what he’d seen: an otter floating on its back, video camera grasped in its paws, lens aimed at the boat of excited photographers. The humans had a bad angle, but Aguirre managed to snap a single clear shot before the otter dived, video camera in tow.

“He’s the only one who got the photo,” Gideon said.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Jake.

Link

From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by Muppetmaker.

I visited the Tokyo Eco Products convention the other day (2008/12/12) to be exact and naturally I headed straight for the Nikon booth where my gaze immediately fell upon this beauty: a Nikon D3 cut in half for all of our camera porn pleasures! For a technophile camera lover as myself, I was for once happy to be a foreigner in Japan: the staff politely ignored my feeble attempts to take a decent photo through the counter glass. I felt slightly incestous: a Nikon D60 photographing a crippled D3. Behold all the beauty that is Nikon technology! And pray that you never see anything like this again.

Link - via designzen

From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by Fatgadget.

CultCase blog has a really nifty post about 20 of the most creative re-use of egg cartons. So next time you’re done eatin’ the eggs, don’t throw away the carton: they make for awesome arts and crafts projects.

This one above is a homemade egg-carton-and-water-bottle camera by sashamd of Shoup House blog.

Link

Wayne Martin Belger of Boy of Blue Industries created this pinhole camera, named Yama, out of a human skull! Yama is the Tibetan God of Death:

Yama’s eyes are cast from bronze and silver with a brass pinhole in each. A divider runs down the middle of the skull creating
two separate cameras. A finished contact print mounted on copper is inserted in to the back of the camera to view what Yama saw in 3D.

Yama is made from Aluminium, Titanium, Copper, Brass, Bronze Steel, Silver, Gold, Mercury with 4 Sapphires, 3 Rubies (The one at Yama’s third eye was $5000.00), Asian and American Turquoise, Sand, Blood, and 9 Opals inlayed in the Skull. The film loading system is pneumatic. A 300psi air tank in the middle of the camera powers 2 pneumatic pistons to move the film holder forward and lock it into place. The switch to open and close the film chamber is located under the jaw.

Link – via Notcot

Previously on Neatorama: The Wonderful World of Early Photography

Priya Ganapati of Wired Blog has the story:

Rob Spence looks you straight in the eye when he talks. So it’s a little unnerving to imagine that soon one of his hazel-green eyes will have a tiny wireless video camera in it that records your every move.

The eye he’s considering replacing is not a working one — it’s a prosthetic eye he’s worn for several years. Spence, a 36-year-old Canadian filmmaker, is not content with having one blind eye. He wants a wireless video camera inside his prosthetic, giving him the ability to make movies wherever he is, all the time, just by looking around.

"If you lose your eye and have a hole in your head, then why not stick a camera in there?" he asks.

Spence, who calls himself the "eyeborg guy," will not be restoring his vision. The camera won’t connect to his brain. What it will do is allow him to be a bionic man where technology fuses with
the human body to become inseparable. In effect, he will become a "little brother," someone who’s watching and recording every move of those in his field of vision.

Link | More on Rob’s blog: Eyeborg | Not squeamish? Check out the surgery video: Link [Dailymotion] – via ligress

(Photos: Steve Mann)