Hasta La Gadget!

Ole Wolf’s ring flash adapter uses 150 optic fibers to channel the camera’s own light

I know what you’re thinking. “That idiot Sorrel is writing about another DIY ring-flash?” The answer is “yes,” but I guarantee this is both the coolest ring flash you have ever seen, and also the only one that looks like a kind of cyberpunk schoolgirl, complete with fiber-optic pigtails.

The project was carried out by Ole Wolf, who painstakingly put together this rather precise setup. It uses 150 fiber optic cables, fused together at one end separated into a ring at the other. The ring is made from acrylic, and has 150 tiny holes drilled in it in concentric circles, which are themselves offset to give a more even light.

Fiber optics are designed to transmit light, and therefore are way more efficient than even the best commercial ring flash adapters. And because the cables come in a relatively small bundle, the light from your camera’s built in flash is plenty.

Wolf’s design is simple but effective, and manages to convey almost all of the flash’s light to the subject. It has another advantage, too: because the light is coming from the built in strobe, it is measured and controlled by the camera’s brain. Wolf suspects that slight inefficiencies in the adapter might cause a “miscalculation of the target flash intensity,” but as far as I know, DSLRs calculate the flash exposure on the fly, with pre-flashes and clever tricks. this should mean you get perfect exposures.

So there you go: yet another DIY ring flash. But it’s cool, right? Also, it should work just fine without fusing the fibers together at one end, so next time you see an old fiber optic lamp at a yard-sale, snap it up. Now you know just what to do with it.

DIY Ring Flash with a 150-Element Optical Fiber Whip [Blazing Angles via Hack-a-Day]

See Also:

• $40 Ring-Flash Adapter Cheaper Than Home-Made
• Lomo Ring Flash: Cheap and Fun
• Raid the Kitchen to Build a DIY Ring Flash
• LED Of The Rings: The $60 Macro 'Flash'

Sneaker speakers kick out the jams originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Mar 2011 21:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Technabob  |  Art & Sole  | Email this | Comments

Nintendo Entertainment Systems have proven to be fertile ground for the DIY community — purses, guitars, and belt buckles are just a sampling of the more unusual NES mods out there. We’ve also seen our share of NES PCs, and now an enterprising Finn going by the name Ana-5000 has crammed a fully-fledged home theater PC into everybody’s favorite 8-bit console. An Asus AT3IONT-I Deluxe motherboard with an Intel Atom 330 dual-core processor and an NVIDIA Ion GPU provides the computing power and offers HDMI and VGA ports, six USB 2.0 ports, optical and RCA audio connections, integrated 802.11b/g/n wireless and Gigabit ethernet, and Bluetooth connectivity. Ana-5000 gave the repurposed Nintendo a fresh black and white paint-job to set it apart from your garden variety NES as well. Hit up the Source link for pics and an explanation of the entire mod process if you feel like doing some console recycling yourself.

NES becomes an HTPC, turns your FOF upside down originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Mar 2011 03:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Nintendo HTPC  | Email this | Comments

If your ambition was to travel the world, and your job to push the buttons of three cellphones located in South Korea, you might go insane. That seems to be what happened to Mok Young Bak, at least, when he invented the crazy contraption depicted in the video above. Called the Caduceus, it’s a telepresence machine that does just one thing — it controls every single button on each of those three phones with a series of servo motors and actuator cables, and moves a pendulum-like webcam so he can clearly see each screen from wherever he happens to be. That way, he can enjoy tourism while leaving his livelihood within reach, at least so long as concerned neighbors don’t assume the terrible din is, say, a killer robot assembly line, and insist that police investigate.

Man builds machine to push phone buttons from half a world away (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Feb 2011 11:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Hack a Day  | Email this | Comments

If art always seemed a little bit too passive for your liking, we have a little something that might change your mind. Wall artist Alexandre Farto has been creating images without paint, pen or charcoal, opting instead for very precise explosions. He places charges into a wall and then detonates them, blowing off bits of plaster to create large murals, with the contrast between the exploded bits and intact wall forming the image. 

The murals can be found around London and Moscow and are part of a series called “Scratching the Surface”. His site contains images of other pieces he’s made with explosives, as well as links to his other works (mostly of the more tame, non-volatile variety).

The artist, also known as Vhils, collaborated with the musician Orelha Negra to create a video of the creation of the pieces, explosions and all. Watching the bits of plaster fly off the wall, leaving behind a simple slogan or picture is honestly breathtaking, especially given how carefully targeted these blasts had to be to make this happen. Can’t help but think that required art classes would be a bit more fun using his technique. Check out the video after the break.

[via Hack-a-Day]