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Dennis Manarchy’s ambitious project is to travel across the United States and take pictures of people vanishing from the American experience, such as Native Americans, cowboys and Medal of Honor winners from World War II. That itself is nothing new, but to complete the project, Manarchy plans to build a camera so large that it must be towed by a truck.
Link -via DVICE (where there’s a video) | Previously: The World’s Largest Photo
Allegedly, this is a photograph of the beginning of a nuclear detonation. It was taken in 1952 during the Tumbler-Snapper tests in Nevada. At this point, the fireball is about sixty-six feet across. How was the photographer able to get a shutter speed fast enough to do it? He used a Kerr cell, which is a device that uses polarizing filters to block the passage of light.
Link -via The Presurfer
Jason Hull finds vintage flash cameras at garage sales and flea markets and converts them into night lights! He removes parts that don’t show in order to make them lightweight and then adds a plug-in and different types of lights. Hull is considering opening an Etsy shop when he has enough lights made. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Jayfish)
Mental Floss has a great post featuring a variety of weird cameras, but my favorite has to be this weird gun camera. The trigger works just like one on a regular gun, which gives a whole new meaning to shooting wildlife.
I love the idea of this project by web designer Matthew McVickar. He sent this camera in the mail with a message asking the postal workers to take pictures on the camera’s trip to its destination. The result is fun and educational, and it would be a great school project for any teachers out there.
Link Via Laughing Squid
Kenny at Lensrentals.com was cleaning a bunch of UV filters and, for idle amusement, decided to mount them on a camera. Pictured above is a stack of 50. Then he and his co-worker Roger went out and took pictures. Below is one of them, paired with a shot without any filters. Link -via Technabob
I had no idea that a set of lenses was such an incredibly complex piece of machinery! Michael Zang acquired on eBay a Leica Tri-Elmar-M 28-35-50mm that had been sliced in half. It was made by students as a graduation project.
Link via Boing Boing | Photo: Duncan Meeder
Photographer John Crane went hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park and captured pictures of ice formations. At one point, he realized that he needed a green flash gel to get a certain shot just right. But Crane didn’t have one. He did, however, have a Fruit Roll-Up (a kind of sugary snack) in his pocket:
Behind the flow there was a nice little cave carved out, full of tiny wonders. Between climbing we were in there geeking out shooting pics and I was trying to get the right mood on the ceiling of the cave. I’d brought my SB-600, SB-800 and SU-800 and was running wireless off the D3S. Crazy white balance adjustment wasn’t getting it done, and in my effort to (for once) minimize the kit brought to keep the pack light, flash accessories were limited. The ceiling of the cave was full of a beautiful, green, soft moss and “Lord of the Rings” style blades of pure, crystal-clear, perfectly smooth ice. “Wish I had a green gel…” I said. And that’s when it happened; the flash of synergistic genius fired. “What about one of your fruit roll-ups?” Ben said. I looked at him for a moment and thought hey-great idea.
Link via CrunchGear
The future is not entirely unknowable. There are ways to predict what is coming using semi-scientific techniques such as scenario scripting and trend “trigger” analysis. Often, projections can be made by extrapolating from current trends. Indeed, trend trackers and futurists make a living describing what is coming. But there are also the psychics, village idiots, witches, trance channelers, sensitives and scryers who sometimes through effort or by accident tap into what the future holds. Science fiction writers, especially the best ones like Jules Verne or Arthur C. Clarke, have been able to see trends far enough ahead to describe what is coming. And there are inventors, tinkerers, designers and cartoonists who also try to tap into the same “web” of thought that mysteriously spans past, present and future and who in some instances come up with astounding images of future trends and products. (Image source: Blackberry Planet)
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The Electrical Engineering Institute at the École Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne, Switzerland, has developed a camera that can see 3D images in all directions. The design is based on insect eyes, which are hemispherical and contain many individual photoreceptors. Potential applications include gaming, media production, and robot navigation systems.
Link and Video via DVICE | Photo: GearLog
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.
