A retracted bit of code in the newest version of Android (4.4 KitKat) has appeared this week with Google looking to boost the software-based camera functionality of mobile devices. One part of the equation in making a smartphone take high-quality photos is in the camera’s lens itself, while another is in the image processing provided […]
"So your gonna think this sounds crazy but im sooo sure that im the guy in picture 11 on the article," read the email that photographer Michael Galinsky received from Jamie Rutina. "You cant see my face cuz im looking down at something, but I know its me, the hair is mine, the coat, the stance/mannerism. I was 20 yrs old then."
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Beautiful beaches probably aren’t the first thing that come to mind when thinking of jolly olde England, but seaside resorts have been popular getaways for city-dwellin’ Brits for nearly two centuries. People do still go visit, but the Victorian-era piers that dot the coast have seen some better days.
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Android has come a long way as a platform in the last couple of years, but one drawback of the phones is that for the most part their cameras lag behind
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Photographer Romain Veillon recently traveled to the deserts of Namibia, where he photographed the abandoned village of Kolmanskop, an extraordinarily evocative collection of old wooden houses now filled with waves of sand.
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Nokia may be the first to have delivered RAW photography in a smartphone, but there’s evidence to suggest that Google isn’t too far behind. A month-old batch of code, recently spotted by app developer Josh Brown, reveals that work has been underway on a new Android camera API that could allow smartphones to store uncompressed images alongside JPEG ones, drastically increasing the amount of correction and manipulation that can be accomplished after an image has been captured.
A second snippet from the API suggests that Android may get some level of stock support for modular or external cameras, perhaps like Sony’s QX10 and QX100, although the meaning of the words is slightly ambiguous:
The camera device is removable and has been disconnected from the Android device, or the camera service has shut down the connection due to a higher-priority access request for the camera device.
Ars Technica has pointed out some other potential changes that are buried in the documentation, and rightly suggests that any imaging-related improvements would be a good thing for Android right now. Even with Sony’s Xperia Z1, which contains one of the most powerful sensors currently found in an Android phone, it’s the software that holds things back more than anything else, so extra features in the underlying OS could provide manufacturers with just the nudge they need.
Filed under: Cellphones, Cameras, Mobile, Google
Via: Ars Technica
Source: Google Git, Josh Brown (Google+)
Many of history’s most iconic memories endure in written form, as paintings or, perhaps at best, as cringe-worthy photographs. But what if those historic moments had been cheekily snapped and posted on Instagram?
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If you love staring at gadget teardowns, check out photographer Brandon Allen’s Deconstructed. It’s a series of images of dissected video game controllers, their parts neatly arranged for the camera. All of the controllers in Brandon’s series were donated and heavily used (some of them don’t work anymore) hence the dust and worn out parts.
I would’ve loved to see labels for the parts as well, but I guess they would only clutter the images.
There are 18 controllers from different consoles in Brandon’s series; you can see the rest here and here. If you really want to take a closer look at the parts you’d be better off looking at the desktop wallpaper-sized images, which Brandon so generously made available for free. You can also buy prints of the dissected NES, SNES, PS3 and Xbox 360 controllers from his online shop.
[via Laughing Squid]
Stories about weird local laws always begin like urban legends. You might have heard that in Wisconsin, the Dairy State, all restaurants are required by law to serve cheese with every dish, including placing a slice of certified Wisconsin cheese on top of each and every order of apple pie.
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It can be hard to take a good picture of something moving relatively fast, but it’s really hard to take a good picture of a jet moving at 400-ish MPH through the sky. Yuri Acurs, stock photographer extraordinaire, tried to tackle that challenge with excess—in the form of 30,000W of flash.
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