Kudos where it’s due: not many design houses use tanks in their illustrations of a new road safety concept. Transparentius, as with most good ideas, is remarkably simple — you jack a camera onto the front of a truck, or lorry as they’re known in some places, and then project that image onto the back of your hulking transporter. The effect of this is to render the truck figuratively transparent for the driver behind, who is enriched with a lot more information about what lies on the road ahead. No word on how the rear projection is achieved or how sunlight glare is overcome, but knowing Art Lebedev, you can bet both challenges are solved in the most unaffordable fashion possible. Anyhow, now that you’ve got the idea, we’re throwing this one over to you dear mod-loving friends — can you build this without remortgaging the house?
It’s hard to imagine complaining about a stylish compact camera that packs a stabilized 28-128mm zoom range and does 720p video capture at 30fps, but Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-FP8didn’t garner any raves from the crew at PhotographyBLOG either. Image quality was found to be decent in well-lit conditions and no more than ISO 800 — typical limitations on cameras with such tiny lens and body. Little is said about the video quality but we were adequately pleased with the sample videos linked from YouTube. The only major flaw indicated was the “permanently exposed” lens, but we can’t imagine it being a deal breaker for most of you nice folks out there, right?
Good old December, the busiest time of the year for elves, reindeer, jolly old fat guys… and lawyers, apparently. Joining the rush to make momentous decisions before Santa arrives, the International Trade Commission has made a preliminary ruling in favor of Kodak in its dispute over digital camera patents with Samsung. Though the original lawsuit included LG, an out of court settlement has left only Sammy in the firing line, and this early decision has affirmed that two of Kodak’s patents were infringed in the production of its cameraphones. It’s still necessary for the full commission to look at and approve the judgment, but considering Samsung’s vast range of camera-equipped phones, we’d throw legal caution to the wind and start bombarding the ITC with “holiday cheer”pronto.
Photojojo’s new video-glasses let you shoot movies in glorious nerd-o-vision. The spectacles have a 320×240 pixel video camera in the bridge which is triggered by a switch on one of the arms, and the only real giveaway that these aren’t your usual hipster glasses is the rather hefty build of those arms.
Inside the video is piped at 25 fps to be stored on the built-in 2GB of flash memory, enough for five hours of footage. Happily, the rechargeable lithium battery also lasts for five hours on a charge, meaning you can just switch these on and forget about them.
If the heavy “1950s scientist” look isn’t for you, the clear lenses can be swapped out for shades. The You-Vision specs charge their battery and upload their video through a supplied USB cable. The price for this incessant observation? $150.
Sure, there are viable commercial options for taking photos in three dimensions, but if you really want to capture 3D images (and you happen to be attached to a major university) you can always go the route of Associate Professor Ishino Youzirou and company. The camera that they developed at the Nagoya Institute of Technology sports 158 lenses arranged on an 18.5-inch aluminum arc frame. The school’s combustion engineers will use it to study irregular flames — all the while content in the knowledge that they’ve entered the Guinness Book of World Records for building the camera with the most lenses. This is certainly safer than Youzirou’s other attempt to enter the Guinness book, Most Live Rattlesnakes Held in the Mouth (the record for that, by the way, is ten).
Whether making your own lens hood to create custom bokeh, breathing like a sniper to get a blur-free photo, or angling your body to look the best in pictures, we shared some great photography hacks this year.
Software and Photoshop tricks are great, but they’re a poor substitution for doing things in-camera. Over the last year we shared a variety of hacks for taking better photos, looking better in photos, and ways to get professional results without spending your rent money on camera accessories.
What’s a bokeh you say? It’s that oh-so-wonderful fuzziness in the background of photographs with a shallow depth of field and accompanying starry highlights. You can create you own bokeh effects with a little craftiness.
We live in a culture of oversharing, so odds are someone, somewhere will be snapping and posting photos taken of you at various events. To help ensure you look your best, heed where you position your tongue.
People often lament that they “just missed it!” upon seeing they failed to capture a pivotal moment in the action. You can avoid missing the action by treating your still camera like a video camera.
You have a camera and a willing subject, but you’re not sure how to break your portraits out of the flat blandness that plagues many snapshots. Avoid boring compositions with these tips.
Many a photography enthusiast has assumed the equipment necessary is far too expensive for quality high speed photography captures. A high speed capture studio on the cheap can be had with this handy guide.
Making abstract wallpaper and gorgeous slow-exposure shots doesn’t require a bunch of design apps or photography lessons. Learn how to literally toss your camera to make abstract light art.
Whether you head 30 or 3000 miles away, you’ll want to bring back great photos of your vacation. The New York Times posts questions and answers on how to achieve great vacation photos.
Taking a good self-portrait is both a handy skill and a way to expand your photographic repertoire. Save your next profile picture from the camera-held-at-arms-length cliche with these tips.
Daytime photo tricks don’t always translate when you’re trying to capture the perfect night shot. The Photography Bay web site outlines tips for taking a stellar post-sunset shot without relying on a tripod or expensive flash system.
When the camera comes out, a lot of people instinctively declare that they look awful in pictures. Learn how to be more photogenic and put your best face forward.
If the DIY Fiber Optic Ring Flash we wrote about required too many specialist parts for your taste, check out this much simpler remix. The construction is easy and done with common household items.
Photography is a creative art, no doubt, but creative doesn’t mean doing everything willy-nilly however you want. Use these basic rules of composition to give your photos an extra boost of visual appeal.
Beauty dishes are great flash modifiers for portrait photographs, but even a cheap model will set you back at least $100. Skip it—a surprisingly effective DIY beauty dish costs less than $20.
Gizmodo’s John Mahoney explains how to take high dynamic range (HDR) photos so that the results of your photograph more accurately recreate what you were seeing when you snapped the shutter.
You don’t need a blockbuster budget to get high-quality light for your portraits. By coaxing the sun to help in your photographic endeavors, you can create stunning portraits on a tiny budget.
Lightboxes aren’t just for the professionals any longer. Using them to illuminate your Craigslist and eBay listings can help make a sale, and amateur photogs can get professional-looking shots with one. Create your own using K’nex and a little know how.
Panoramic software has come a long way toward making panoramic images child’s work. Great software or not, there’s no substitution for good source material. Take better panoramic pictures with these tips
Whether you’re interested in learning more about lighting to add to your photography skill set or you’re just curious how proper studio lighting works, this handy guide will provide some photo-enhancing insight.
Tilt-shift lenses create a great miniature effect on photographs of everyday things. The problem? These specialized lenses are insanely expensive (think $1,000 range). This video from Make demonstrates how to make a DIY tilt-shift lens on the cheap.
Sunsets are one of nature’s more spectacular displays, and a good one is worth preserving with a photograph. Take pictures that will capture the perfect dusk moment with these photography tips.
The right flash can make or break your shot. Unfortunately, not all built-in flashes are created equal. DIY web site Instructables demonstrates how to create a worthy on-the-spot flash diffuser using an empty cigarette packet.
A high-end macro lens for your camera can easily run upwards of a thousand dollars, but you can make a super-simple macro lens for a few bucks out of old binoculars.
Have a favorite photography-related hack from 2009 that wasn’t featured here? Let’s hear about it in the comments.
Incredulously enough, no other major camera maker has come out and mimicked Samsung’s front-facing LCD approach found on the TL225 (or ST550 in some areas), so if you’re in the market, it’s either this one or the lesser-specced TL220 (ST500). If you’re considering picking up the former as a bang-up gift for your special someone, you’d probably do yourself a solid by taking a peek at a few reviews around the web. The long and short of it is this: the camera’s dual LCDs are well implemented, and they actually do come in handy for those looking to handle the “self-portrait” duties in the relationship. Beyond that, however, there wasn’t a lot of praise to go around. For starters, the camera relies only on microSD memory, so those spare SD cards you’ve got laying around are no good here. Then there’s the so-so image quality coupled with the staggeringly weak battery life; Photography Blog was only able to squeeze out around 100 shots while making heavy use of the touchscreen. Everyone seemed to agree that the cam wasn’t for everyone, so be sure and take a look around before committing.
Read – Photography Blog Read – About Read – Photography Bay Read – Digital Camera Info Read – CNET Read – Steves Digicams
We love DIY projects here at Lifehacker. Whether we’re building computers, backyard projects, or turning office supplies into artillery, we’re always tinkering. Today we’re taking a peek at the most popular DIY projects of 2009.
Inspired by a tutorial we posted last year, we decided to make our own DIY sun jars. The trendy summer time lighting accessory retails for $30+ but we were able to make ours for around $10 each. The sun jars proved to be our most popular non-computer DIY of the entire year and readers shared their own creations with us.
Building your own computer is a great way to get exactly what you want, the way you want it, without being constrained by the limits and high-prices of mass produced computers. We showed you how to build a computer from start to finish and have fun doing it.
What’s standing between you and some office mayhem? Certainly not a lack of Sharpie markers and keyboard dusting spray. Combine the two with this fun DIY project and you’ve got one of the most awesome pieces of office-machinery we’ve ever featured.
You need to be properly erasing your physical media: all the time, every time. Our guide will show you how to get the job done and done right whether you use software to scrub your disks or you send them to the great data mine in the sky with a 21-gun salute.
Why settle for a digital picture frame when, in the same wall space, you could mount an entirely functional computer/slideshow player/TV tuner? One Lifehacker reader turned an old laptop into a super-charged digital frame.
We’ve always been keen on DIY laptop stands, but reader Aaron Kravitz—inspired by an attractive $50 stand—went above and beyond, creating one of the most attractive DIY laptop stands we’ve featured to date.
If the Hive Five on best home server software got you excited about setting up a home server but you’re not keen on another unsightly PC in your home, check out this DIY IKEA NAS.
We’ve shown you how to make an air conditioner (even for as low as $30), but what if you wanted something you can put in your car and take with you? While it’s no substitute for a fully-charged and factory-fresh AC system, it’ll keep you cool.
Who hasn’t dreamed of having a mystery-story-style secret passageway? While a trick bookshelf is pretty awesome in itself, this secret passage hides a home office with clever style. One industrious Lifehacker reader and his girlfriend had grown tired of seeing their office from their living space, so they hid it behind a wall of books.
You’ve ripped a movie on your laptop, and now want it on that fancy new home theater PC next to your TV. If you’ve got the time, wiring your house with Cat-5e cable could make transfer times a distant memory.
We’re all about creative cable management here at Lifehacker, so we were instantly drawn to reader Seandavid010‘s rain-gutter cable management setup. He was awesome enough to send detailed photos and step by step instructions to help other readers recreate his setup.
The lights went out on analog television this year and we were there with a guide to help you build a great DIY antenna for boosting your reception and getting that crisp digital picture you crave.
Lifehacker reader Matt Lumpkin saw our monitor stand from door stoppers post and thought we might like his laptop rack hack as another space-saving desktop solution for laptop-lovers. He was right.
Suppose you were inspired by the cheap DIY home pizza oven—but weren’t so sure your home insurance would cover oven modifications. It’s time to build a safer, more eye-pleasing oven, and we’ve got a thorough guide.
Two years ago we highlighted how to crack a Master combination padlock for those of you who may have lost the combination to your bulletproof lock; now designer Mark Campos has turned the tried-and-true instructions into an easier-to-follow visual guide.
We’ve covered the invisible floating bookshelf once or twice before, but if you liked the idea but weren’t keen on ruining a book in the process, weblog May December Home’s got you covered.
Instead of storing your books upright on top of the shelf, the inverted bookshelf holds all of your books in place using elastic webbing so you can hang them below the shelf—all the while allowing you to still take them out and put them back on as needed.
If you’d like to have delicious home-grown tomatoes but lack a garden to grow them in, you’ll definitely want to check out this ingenious and inexpensive self-watering system.
A few years ago, blogger Jimmie Rodgers’s camera was stolen while volunteering in an impoverished Brazilian community, so he did what any sane person would do: He bought a new camera and made it ugly. With his uglified camera, Rodgers was able to snap pictures freely during the rest of his trip without worrying too much that his ostensibly crappy camera would end up stolen.
Nothing adds space to a desk or home theater setup like a simple monitor or TV stand, and weblog IKEA Hacker details how to build your own stand on-the-cheap with a few inexpensive items from IKEA.
You don’t need to run out and buy a new TV because of the DTV switchover. If you did anyways, Make Magazine has put together quite a guide to giving old TVs new life.
If you need some cheap and novel ambient lighting for your next party, you’re only a box of ping-pong balls and a string of lights away from solving your lighting worries.
DeviceGuru blogger Rick Lehrbaum, inspired by the cheaper set-top boxes, made his own higher-powered “BoxeeBox” for the free, open-source media center. He posted all the parts, the how-to details, and lots of pictures.
You already shelled out your hard earned cash for a swanky laptop, why drop more cash on an overpriced laptop stand? Cardboard alone can do the trick, as detailed in this step-by-step tutorial.
Have a favorite DIY from 2009 that wasn’t highlighted here? Sound off in the comments with a link to your favorite project. Want to see more popular DIY guides courtesy of the ghost of Lifehacker past? Check out our huge DIY guide roundup from 2008.
Welcome to the Engadget Holiday Gift Guide! The team here is well aware of the heartbreaking difficulties of the seasonal shopping experience, and we want to help you sort through the trash and come up with the treasures this year. Below is today’s bevy of hand curated picks, and you can head back to the Gift Guide hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the holiday season.
Whether you want them to or not, there’s a good chance you’ve got a family member or two (or more) that feel compelled to capture every single moment on video, including those times when all you’re doing is sitting around watching previously recorded memories. That’s just an inevitably we face each and every family gathering, and if you must endure, might as well get them the best possible fidelity, right? Then again, maybe you are that memory-capturing individual — in either case, we think we’ve got a few suggestions to maximize your holiday enjoyment.
Ah, the MIT Media Lab, home to Big Bird’s illegitimate progeny, augmented reality projects aplenty, and now three-dimensional gestural computing. The new bi-directional display being demoed by the Cambridge-based boffins performs both multitouch functions that we’re familiar with and hand movement recognition in the space in front of the screen — which we’re also familiar with, but mostly from the movies. The gestural motion tracking is done via embedded optical sensors behind the display, which are allowed to see what you’re doing by the LCD alternating rapidly (invisible to the human eye, but probably not to human pedantry) between what it’s displaying to the viewer and a pattern for the camera array. This differs from projects like Natal, which have the camera offset from the display and therefore cannot work at short distances, but if you want even more detail, you’ll find it in the informative video after the break.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Whether making your own lens hood to create custom bokeh, breathing like a sniper to get a blur-free photo, or angling your body to look the best in pictures, we shared some great photography hacks this year.
Whether you head 30 or 3000 miles away, you’ll want to bring back great photos of your vacation. The New York Times posts questions and answers on how to achieve great vacation photos.
Taking a good self-portrait is both a handy skill and a way to expand your photographic repertoire. Save your next profile picture from the camera-held-at-arms-length cliche with these tips.
Daytime photo tricks don’t always translate when you’re trying to capture the perfect night shot. The Photography Bay web site outlines tips for taking a stellar post-sunset shot without relying on a tripod or expensive flash system.
Photography is a creative art, no doubt, but creative doesn’t mean doing everything willy-nilly however you want. Use these basic rules of composition to give your photos an extra boost of visual appeal.
We love DIY projects here at Lifehacker. Whether we’re building computers, backyard projects, or turning office supplies into artillery, we’re always tinkering. Today we’re taking a peek at the most popular DIY projects of 2009.
Why settle for a digital picture frame when, in the same wall space, you could mount an entirely functional computer/slideshow player/TV tuner? One Lifehacker reader turned an old laptop into a super-charged digital frame.
You’ve ripped a movie on your laptop, and now want it on that fancy new home theater PC next to your TV. If you’ve got the time, wiring your house with Cat-5e cable could make transfer times a distant memory.
The lights went out on analog television this year and we were there with a guide to help you build a great DIY antenna for boosting your reception and getting that crisp digital picture you crave.
