"A functional superlens would be a major breakthrough in optics and was first envisioned five years ago. The idea is to use exotic types of materials, proposed in the late 1960s, to create ‘negative’ refraction of light, which literally means steering it in the opposite direction of that found in the natural world. The first materials that could do this were created a few years ago and the field is one of significant scientific interest, but many obstacles remain…"
Month: January 2006
GREYCSTORATION: insane, open source image scaling, denoising, and inpainting
(Before & after: inpainting (type removed))
"GREYCSTORATION is an image regularization algorithm which processes an image by locally removing small variations of pixel intensities while preserving significant global image features, such as sharp edges and corners. The most direct application of image regularization is denoising. By extension, it can also be used to inpaint or resize images."
The results of the resizing tool look a lot like Polaroid Time-Zero emulsion manipulations.
Check it out at www.greyc.ensicaen.fr/~dtschump/greycstoration, it’s quite impressive (and free!).
New Zeiss lenses announced: ZF (Nikon F mount) and ZS (M42 mount)
Zeiss announced their new range of ZF lenses a day early in issue 23/Jan 2006 of Camera Lens News.
Highlights:
- As previously hinted, they will indeed be in Nikon F mounts. They will all be primes.
- Announced are a 50mm Planar T* (7 elements in 6 groups) and an 85mm T* Planar (6 elements in 5 groups). Both are f/1.4 – f/16, click-stopped in half-stop increments. There’s a technical data sheet here. They’re expected to be available in early summer 2006.
- They will have "round" irises but the number of blades wasn’t mentioned.
- As a surprise, the same lenses will be issued in parallel as the ZS range with identical optics but with M42 mounts, with the idea that they be used with adpater rings, which will make this range useable on, among other systems, Canon EOS and FD bodies as well. I didn’t see any mention about whether the lenses will be shorter to compensate for the thickness of the adapter ring or not, so infinity focussing ability for the ZS range is currently unknown [to me].
- The lenses will be made by Cosina.
- Zeiss will be setting up a new distribution network to replace? in addition to? their normal distributors. Details will be announced at www.zeiss.com/photo
There’s also a Q&A about the range with Dr. Winfried Scherle, VP & General Manager, Camera Lens Division and Kornelius Mueller, Marketing Manager of Zeiss.
Polaroid to discontinue 85 pos/neg film, 55 unaffected
The 85 product info page at Polaroid says:
"Please be advised that Polaroid will be discontinuing 85 film within the first 3 months of 2006 due to the phasing out of components used in the production of this film.
"The discontinuation of 85 does not impact the supply or manufacture of 55 film, an alternative to 85. For information on 55 film and the equipment needed to use it, please click here."
(85 and 55 are unique peel-apart instant films in that you can get either a positive or a negative whereas other instant films only give you positives. 85 is a medium format version, perfect for use in the Holgaroid Polaroid film back for Holgas; 55 is 4×5.)
Upcoming toy camera photography exhibition: Toy Joy, FotoFest 2006
I’ve just received word that two of my pieces have been accepted for the Toy Joy show as part of FotoFest 2006! FotoFest looks insanely cool: photo, new media, installation, film and video exhibitions are taking place in over 100 galleries, shops, muesums, restaurants, and corporate and alternative spaces all over Houston, TX, US from March 10 through April 23, 2006.
The Toy Joy exhibition, organized by Laura Burlton, will be at London Hair Company, 2227 Richmond Ave. and features 63 toy camera-shot pieces of photographic goodness, so come check it out!
See the FotoFest 2006 site for a complete list of participating spaces.
Official Polaroid camera disassembly instructions
In compliance with the upcoming Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive, Polaroid have published disassembly instructions with exploded diagrams for most of their current camera range. Roid hackers rejoice!
Check out the instructions here at Polaroid.
Via f/295 International Pinhole Photography Discussion Forum
Image gamma redirector (open source PHP)
This open source PHP script will choose from two different gamma-corrected images based on whether the page is being viewed from a Windows/*nix machine or a Mac. Macs generally have a target gamma of 1.8 while Windows and non-Apple *nix has a target of 2.2 or 2.4 (which usually nets out to about 2.2 in average lighting). The result is that images made on Macs look too dark on everything else and images made on everything else look too light on Macs. This script solves the problem by detecting which platform the browser is running on and automatically redirects the request to an appropriate gamma-corrected copy that you’ve prepared ahead of time.
This is free and open source software and is licensed under the GNU General Public License.
More info and download here in the Tools & Reference section.
Review posted: HP Combi-Plan T 4×5 daylight film developing tank
I just wrote a review of the HP Combi-Plan T 4×5 daylight film developing tank that explains why I think it’s a steaming pile of crap for daylight processing.
Insanely high speed photos of atomic bomb detonations
"Developed by Dr. Harold Edgerton in the 1940s, the Rapatronic photographic technique allowed very early times in a nuclear explosion’s fireball growth to be recorded on film. The exposures were often as short as 10 nanoseconds, and each Rapatronic camera would take exactly one photograph."
Intro with photos and another gallery from Simple Thinking, and a few more from Nevada Surveyor.
Via digg
Perl script for adding EXIF data to JPGs
Sean Scanlon of bluedot has written an open source Perl script that will add camera make and model EXIF fields to JPGs.
EXIF is a standard for embedding exposure-related metadata such as camera make, model, lens focal length, shutter time, f/stop, etc. in image files. The data can be searched by image management databases, remind you of how you shot an image when you’ve long since forgotten, and many photo sharing sites like Flickr display them for uploaded photos. Dead useful! The hitch is that while digital cameras automatically add this info to every shot, you’re generally out of luck when it comes to adding this info to film or print scans. This script allows you to do that, and that’s why this script rocks.
Thanks, Sean!