Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Impossible Camera Touted As Brilliant

Crap Crop CameraI saw this Crop Camera from a project done by a St. Martin's design student in association with Hulger today over on Cool Hunting and it just kind of pissed me off. Anyone who knows anything about optics, the way the human eye works and the way cameras work would know that this thing would not work. I know it is just a concept, but I wouldn't say that it is a particularly good one. Here's why: There is no screen on the camera, just an open space in the middle where the image you are trying to capture would be "cropped". The problem is, there is no defined focal distance. If you hold the camera close to your eye, you could get your entire field of view in the open space. If you hold it at arms length, the area you see in the open space will be much smaller. This, however, would not change the focal length of the camera's lens, therefore making both images appear almost the same when the picture is taken. Being able to "crop" the image with the camera itself might change the image when the camera is held at a specified distance from your eye, but if you move the camera closer or further away from yourself it will change what you see in the open space but not in the lens of the camera. For example, take a regular digital camera and hold it close to your face. Now hold it at arms length and compare the image shown on the screen. They will look almost the same. This is not true for an open frame. If you want proof, take an empty picture frame and hold it close to your face and then at arms length and compare what you see in the frame. Completely different. Of course, the lens on the camera will not reflect these differences in your eye's focal length. If the camera had a screen on it that you could use to view what is in the "cropped" area, then it might be more effective. I suggest just using a regular digital camera and cropping the pictures later in Photoshop. Or you could use the zoom function that is present on every digital camera to crop the image. D'uh.

1 comment:

Setholonius said...

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