Technozyz™

Cameras at a Glance

rajeev.lee@gmail.com (Rajeev Nair) — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 05:12:00 +0000

The forerunner to the photographic camera was the camera obscura.^[1] In the fifth century B.C., the Chinese philosopher Mo Ti noted that a pinhole can form an inverted and focused image, when light passes through the hole and into a dark area.^[2] Mo Ti is the first recorded person to have exploited this phenomenon to trace the inverted image to create a picture.^[3]Writing in the fourth century B.C., Aristotle also mentioned this principle.^[4] He described observing a partial solar eclipse in 330 B.C. by seeing the image of the Sun projected through the small spaces between the leaves of a tree.^[5] In the tenth century, the Arabic scholar Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) also wrote about observing a solar eclipse through a pinhole,^[6] and he described how a sharper image could be produced by making the opening of the pinhole smaller.^[5] English philosopher Roger Bacon wrote about these optical principles in his 1267 treatise Perspectiva.^[5] By the fifteenth century, artists and scientists were using this phenomenon to make observations. Originally, an observer had to enter an actual room, in a which a pinhole was made on one wall. On the opposite wall, the observer would view the inverted image of the outside.^[7] The name camera obscura, Latin for "dark room", derives from this early implementation of the optical phenomenon.^[8]

The actual name of camera obscura was applied by mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler in his Ad Vitellionem paralipomena of 1604. He later added a lens and made the apparatus transportable, in the form of a tent.^[9]^[10] British scientist Robert Boyle and his assistant Robert Hooke developed a portable camera obscura in the 1660s.^[11]

The first camera obscura that was small enough for practical use as a portable drawing aid was built by Johann Zahn in 1685.^[12] At that time there was no way to preserve the images produced by such cameras except by manually tracing them. However, it had long been known that various substances were bleached or darkened or otherwise changed by exposure to light. Seeing the magical miniature pictures that light temporarily "painted" on the screen of a small camera obscura inspired several experimenters to search for some way of automatically making highly detailed permanent copies of them by means of some such substance.

Early photographic cameras were usually in the form of a pair of nested boxes, the end of one carrying the lens and the end of the other carrying a removable ground glass focusing screen. By sliding them closer together or farther apart, objects at various distances could be brought to the sharpest focus as desired. After a satisfactory image had been focused on the screen, the lens was covered and the screen was replaced with the light-sensitive material. The lens was then uncovered and the exposure continued for the required time, which for early experimental materials could be several hours or even days. The first permanent photograph of a camera image was made in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce using a sliding wooden box camera made by Charles and Vincent Chevalier in Paris.^[13]

Similar cameras were used for exposing the silver-surfaced copper Daguerreotype plates, commercially introduced in 1839, which were the first practical photographic medium. The collodion wet plate process that gradually replaced the Daguerreotype during the 1850s required photographers to coat and sensitize thin glass or iron plates shortly before use and expose them in the camera while still wet. Early wet plate cameras were very simple and little different from Daguerreotype cameras, but more sophisticated designs eventually appeared. The Dubroni of 1864 allowed the sensitizing and developing of the plates to be carried out inside the camera itself rather than in a separate darkroom. Other cameras were fitted with multiple lenses for photographing several small portraits on a single larger plate, useful when making cartes de visite. It was during the wet plate era that the use of bellows for focusing became widespread, making the bulkier and less easily adjusted nested box design obsolete.

For many years, exposure times were long enough that the photographer simply removed the lens cap, counted off the number of seconds (or minutes) estimated to be required by the lighting conditions, then replaced the cap. As more sensitive photographic materials became available, cameras began to incorporate mechanical shutter mechanisms that allowed very short and accurately timed exposures to be made.

The electronic video camera tube was invented in the 1920s, starting a line of development that eventually resulted in digital cameras, which largely supplanted film cameras after the turn of the 21st century.

[edit]Mechanics

[edit]Image capture

19th century studio camera, with bellows for focusing

Traditional cameras capture light onto photographic film or photographic plate. Video anddigital cameras use an electronic image sensor, usually a charge coupled device (CCD) or aCMOS sensor to capture images which can be transferred or stored in a memory card or other storage inside the camera for later playback or processing.

Cameras that capture many images in sequence are known as movie cameras or as ciné cameras in Europe; those designed for single images are still cameras. However these categories overlap as still cameras are often used to capture moving images in special effects work and many modern cameras can quickly switch between still and motion recording modes. A video camera is a category of movie camera that captures images electronically (either using analog or digital technology).

[edit]Lens

Main articles: Camera lens and Photographic lens design

The lens of a camera captures the light from the subject and brings it to a focus on the film or detector. The design and manufacture of the lens is critical to the quality of the photograph being taken. The technological revolution in camera design in the 19th century revolutionized optical glass manufacture and lens design with great benefits for modern lens manufacture in a wide range of optical instruments from reading glasses to microscopes. Pioneers included Zeiss and Leitz.

Camera lenses are made in a wide range of focal lengths. They range from extreme wide angle, wide angle, standard, medium telephoto and telephoto. Each lens is best suited a certain type of photography. The extreme wide angle may be preferred for architecturebecause it has the capacity to capture a wide view of a building. The normal lens, because it often has a wide aperture, is often used for street and documentary photography. The telephoto lens is useful for sports, and wildlife but it is more susceptible to camera shake.^[14]

[edit]Focus

Auto-focus systems can capture a subject a variety of ways; here, the focus is on the person's image in the mirror.

Due to the optical properties of photographic lenses, only objects within a limited range of distances from the camera will be reproduced clearly. The process of adjusting this range is known as changing the camera's focus. There are various ways of focusing a camera accurately. The simplest cameras have fixed focus and use a small aperture and wide-angle lens to ensure that everything within a certain range of distance from the lens, usually around 3 metres (10 ft) to infinity, is in reasonable focus. Fixed focus cameras are usually inexpensive types, such as single-use cameras. The camera can also have a limited focusing range or scale-focus that is indicated on the camera body. The user will guess or calculate the distance to the subject and adjust the focus accordingly. On some cameras this is indicated by symbols (head-and-shoulders; two people standing upright; one tree; mountains).

Rangefinder cameras allow the distance to objects to be measured by means of a coupled parallax unit on top of the camera, allowing the focus to be set with accuracy. Single-lens reflex cameras allow the photographer to determine the focus and composition visually using the objective lens and a moving mirror to project the image onto a ground glass or plastic micro-prism screen. Twin-lens reflex cameras use an objective lens and a focusing lens unit (usually identical to the objective lens.) in a parallel body for composition and focusing. View cameras use a ground glass screen which is removed and replaced by either a photographic plate or a reusable holder containing sheet film before exposure. Modern cameras often offer autofocus systems to focus the camera automatically by a variety of methods.^[15]

Some experimental cameras, for example the planar Fourier capture array (PFCA), do not require focusing to allow them to take pictures. In conventional digital photography, lenses or mirrors map all of the light originating from a single point of an in-focus object to a single point at the sensor plane. Each pixel thus relates an independent piece of information about the far-away scene. In contrast, a PFCA does not have a lens or mirror, but each pixel has an idiosyncratic pair of diffraction gratings above it, allowing each pixel to likewise relate an independent piece of information (specifically, one component of the 2D Fourier transform) about the far-away scene. Together, complete scene information is captured and images can be reconstructed by computation.

Some cameras have post focusing. Post focusing means take the pictures first and then focusing later at the personal computer. The camera uses many tiny lenses on the sensor to capture light from every camera angle of a scene and is called plenoptics technology. A current plenoptic camera design has 40,000 lenses working together to grab the optimal picture.^[16]^[17]

[edit]Exposure control

The size of the aperture and the brightness of the scene controls the amount of light that enters the camera during a period of time, and the shutter controls the length of time that the light hits the recording surface. Equivalent exposures can be made with a larger aperture and a faster shutter speed or a corresponding smaller aperture and with the shutter speed slowed down.

[edit]Shutters

Main article: Shutter (photography)

Although a range of different shutter devices have been used during the development of the camera only two types have been widely used and remain in use today.

The Leaf shutter or more precisely the in-lens shutter is a shutter contained within the lens structure, often close to the diaphragm consisting of a number of metal leaves which are maintained under spring tension and which are opened and then closed when the shutter is released. The exposure time is determined by the interval between opening and closing. In this shutter design, the whole film frame is exposed at one time. This makes flash synchronisation much simpler as the flash only needs to fire once the shutter is fully open. Disadvantages of such shutters are their inability to reliably produce very fast shutter speeds ( faster than 1/500th second or so) and the additional cost and weight of having to include a shutter mechanism for every lens.

The focal-plane shutter operates as close to the film plane as possible and consists of cloth curtains that are pulled across the film plane with a carefully determined gap between the two curtains (typically running horizontally) or consisting of a series of metal plates (typically moving vertically) just in front of the film plane. The focal-plane shutter is primarily associated with the single lens reflex type of cameras, since covering the film rather than blocking light passing through the lens allows the photographer to view through the lens at all times except during the exposure itself. Covering the film also facilitates removing the lens from a loaded camera (many SLRs have interchangeable lenses).

[edit]Complexities

Professional medium format SLR cameras (typically using 120/220 roll film) use a hybrid solution, since such a large focal-plane shutter would be difficult to make and/or may run slowly. A manually inserted blade known as a dark slide allows the film to be covered when changing lenses or film backs. A blind inside the camera covers the film prior to and after the exposure (but is not designed to be able to give accurately controlled exposure times) and a leaf shutter that is normally open is installed in the lens. To take a picture, the leaf shutter closes, the blind opens, the leaf shutter opens then closes again, and finally the blind closes and the leaf shutter re-opens (the last step may only occur when the shutter is re-cocked).

Using a focal-plane shutter, exposing the whole film plane can take much longer than the exposure time. The exposure time does not depend on the time taken to make the exposure over all, only on the difference between the time a specific point on the film is uncovered and then covered up again. For example an exposure of 1/1000 second may be achieved by the shutter curtains moving across the film plane in 1/50th of a second but with the two curtains only separated by 1/20th of the frame width. In fact in practice the curtains do not run at a constant speed as they would in an ideal design, obtaining an even exposure time depends mainly on being able to make the two curtains accelerate in a similar manner.

When photographing rapidly moving objects, the use of a focal-plane shutter can produce some unexpected effects, since the film closest to the start position of the curtains is exposed earlier than the film closest to the end position. Typically this can result in a moving object leaving a slanting image. The direction of the slant depends on the direction the shutter curtains run in (noting also that as in all cameras the image is inverted and reversed by the lens, i.e. "top-left" is at the bottom right of the sensor as seen by a photographer behind the camera).

Focal-plane shutters are also difficult to synchronise with flash bulbs and electronic flash and it is often only possible to use flash at shutter speeds where the curtain that opens to reveal the film completes its run and the film is fully uncovered, before the second curtain starts to travel and cover it up again. Typically 35mm film SLRs could sync flash at only up to 1/60th second if the camera has horizontal run cloth curtains, and 1/125th if using a vertical run metal shutter.

[edit]Film formats

French 12×12" collodion camera (ca. 1878) next to a 35 mm SLR Nikon F (ca. 1970)

Main article: Film formats

A wide range of film and plate formats has been used by cameras. In the early history plate sizes were often specific for the make and model of camera although there quickly developed some standardisation for the more popular cameras. The introduction of roll film drove the standardization process still further so that by the 1950s only a few standard roll films were in use. These included 120 film providing 8, 12 or 16 exposures, 220 film providing 16 or 24 exposures, 127 film providing 8 or 12 exposures (principally in Brownie cameras) and 35 mm film providing 12, 20 or 36 exposures – or up to 72 exposures in the half-frame format or in bulk cassettes for the Leica Camera range.

For cine cameras, film 35 mm wide and perforated with sprocket holes was established as the standard format in the 1890s. It is still used for nearly all film-based professional motion picture production. For amateur use, several smaller and therefore less expensive formats were introduced. 17.5 mm film, created by splitting 35 mm film, was one early amateur format, but 9.5 mm film, introduced in Europe in 1922, and 16 mm film, introduced in the US in 1923, soon became the standards for "home movies" in their respective hemispheres. In 1932, the even more economical 8 mm format was created by doubling the number of perforations in 16 mm film, then splitting it, usually after exposure and processing. The Super 8 format, still 8 mm wide but with smaller perforations to make room for substantially larger film frames, was introduced in 1965.

[edit]Camera accessories

Accessories for cameras are mainly for care, protection, special effects and functions.

Lens hood: used on the end of a lens to block the sun or other light source to prevent glare and lens flare.
Lens cover: covers and protects the lens during storage
Lens adapter: sometimes called a step-ring, adapts the lens to other size filters
Lens extension tubes allow close focus in macro photography
Flash equipment: including light diffuser, mount and stand, reflector, soft box, trigger and cord
Care and protection: including camera case and cover, maintenance tools, and screen protector
Large format cameras use special equipment which includes magnifier loupe, view finder, angle finder, focusing rail /truck.
Battery and charger^[18]^[19]

[edit]Camera designs

[edit]Plate camera

The earliest cameras produced in significant numbers used sensitised glass plates and are now termed plate cameras. Light entered a lens mounted on a lens board which was separated from the plate by an extendible bellows. Many of these cameras, had controls to raise or lower the lens and to tilt it forwards or backwards to control perspective. Focussing of these plate cameras was by the use of aground glass screen at the point of focus. Because lens design only allowed rather small aperture lenses, the image on the ground glass screen was faint and most photographers had a dark cloth to cover their heads to allow focussing and composition to be carried out more easily. When focus and composition were satisfactory, the ground glass screen was removed and a sensitised plate put in its place protected by a dark slide. To make the exposure, the dark slide was carefully slid out and the shutter opened and then closed and the dark slide replaced. Glass plates were later replaced by sheet film in a dark slide for sheet film; adaptor sleeves were made to allow sheet film to be used in plate holders. In addition to the ground glass, a simple optical viewfinder was often fitted.^[20]

Cameras which take single exposures on sheet film and are functionally identical to plate cameras are still used for static, high-image-quality work; see Large-format camera, below.

[edit]Large-format camera

Main article: View camera

The large-format camera, taking sheet film, is a direct successor of the early plate cameras and remain in use for high quality photography and for technical, architectural and industrial photography. There are three common types, the view camera with itsmonorail and field camera variants, and the press camera. They have an extensible bellows with the lens and shutter mounted on a lens plate at the front. Backs taking rollfilm, and digital backs are available in addition to the standard dark slideback. These cameras have a wide range of movements allowing very close control of focus and perspective. Composition and focussing is done on view cameras by viewing a ground-glass screen which is replaced by the film to make the exposure; they are suitable for static subjects only, and are slow to use.

[edit]Medium-format camera

Main article: Medium-format

Medium-format cameras have a film size between the large-format cameras and smaller 35mm cameras. Typically these systems use 120 or 220 rollfilm. The most common image sizes are 6×4.5 cm, 6×6 cm and 6×7 cm; the older 6×9 cm is rarely used. The designs of this kind of camera show greater variation than their larger brethren, ranging from monorail systems through the classic Hasselbladmodel with separate backs, to smaller rangefinder cameras. There are even compact amateur cameras available in this format.

[edit]Folding camera

Main article: Folding camera

The introduction of films enabled the existing designs for plate cameras to be made much smaller and for the base-plate to be hinged so that it could be folded up compressing the bellows. These designs were very compact and small models were dubbed vest pocketcameras. Folding rollfilm cameras were preceded by folding plate cameras, more compact than other designs.^[20]

[edit]Box camera

Main article: Box camera

Box cameras were introduced as a budget level camera and had few if any controls. The original box Brownie models had a small reflex viewfinder mounted on the top of the camera and had no aperture or focusing controls and just a simple shutter. Later models such as the Brownie 127 had larger direct view optical viewfinders together with a curved film path to reduce the impact of deficiencies in the lens.

[edit]Rangefinder camera

Main article: Rangefinder camera

As camera and lens technology developed and wide aperture lenses became more common, rangefinder cameras were introduced to make focussing more precise. Early rangefinders had two separate viewfinder windows, one of which is linked to the focusing mechanisms and moved right or left as the focusing ring is turned. The two separate images are brought together on a ground glass viewing screen. When vertical lines in the object being photographed meet exactly in the combined image, the object is in focus. A normal composition viewfinder is also provided. Later the viewfinder and rangefinder were combined. Many rangefinder cameras hadinterchangeable lenses, each lens requiring its own range- and viewfinder linkages.

Rangefinder cameras were produced in half- and full-frame 35 mm and rollfim (medium format).

[edit]Single-lens reflex

Main article: Single-lens reflex camera

Olympus E-420 Four Thirds entry-levelDSLR with a 25mm pancake lens.

In the single-lens reflex camera the photographer sees the scene through the camera lens. This avoids the problem of parallax which occurs when the viewfinder or viewing lens is separated from the taking lens. Single-lens reflex cameras have been made in several formats including 220/120 taking 8, 12 or 16 photographs on a 120 roll and twice that number of a 220 film. These correspond to 6x9, 6x6 and 6x4.5 respectively (all dimensions in cm). Notable manufacturers of large format SLR include Hasselblad, Mamiya, Bronica andPentax. However the most common format of SLRs has been 35 mm and subsequently the migration to digital SLRs, using almost identical sized bodies and sometimes using the same lens systems.

Almost all SLR used a front surfaced mirror in the optical path to direct the light from the lens via a viewing screen and pentaprism to the eyepiece. At the time of exposure the mirror flipped up out of the light path before the shutter opened. Some early cameras experimented other methods of providing through the lens viewing including the use of a semi transparent pellicle as in the Canon Pellix^[21] and others with a small periscope such as in the Corfield Periflex series.^[22]

[edit]Twin-lens reflex

Main article: Twin-lens reflex camera

Twin-lens reflex cameras used a pair of nearly identical lenses, one to form the image and one as a viewfinder. The lenses were arranged with the viewing lens immediately above the taking lens. The viewing lens projects an image onto a viewing screen which can be seen from above. Some manufacturers such as Mamiya also provided a reflex head to attach to the viewing screen to allow the camera to be held to the eye when in use. The advantage of a TLR was that it could be easily focussed using the viewing screen and that under most circumstances the view seen in the viewing screen was identical to that recorded on film. At close distances however, parallax errors were encountered and some cameras also included an indicator to show what part of the composition would be excluded.

Some TLR had interchangeable lenses but as these had to be paired lenses they were relatively heavy and did not provide the range of focal lengths that the SLR could support. Most TLRs used 120 or 220 film; some used the smaller 127 film.

[edit]Subminiature camera

Main article: Subminiature camera

Cameras taking film significantly smaller than 35 mm were made. Subminiature cameras were first produced in the nineteenth century. The expensive 8×11 mm Minox, the only type of camera produced by the company from 1937 to 1976, became very widely known and was often used for espionage (the Minox company later also produced larger cameras). Later inexpensive subminiatures were made for general use, some using rewound 16 mm cine film. Image quality with these small film sizes was limited.

[edit]Ciné camera

Main article: Movie camera

A ciné camera or movie camera takes a rapid sequence of photographs on strips of film. In contrast to a still camera, which captures a single snapshot at a time, the ciné camera takes a series of images, each called a "frame" through the use of an intermittent mechanism.

Ciné-Kodak Special II - 16mm movie camera (ca. 1948)

The frames are later played back in a ciné projector at a specific speed, called the "frame rate" (number of frames per second). While viewing, a person's eyes and brain merge the separate pictures to create the illusion of motion. The first ciné camera was built around 1888 and by 1890 several types were being manufactured. The standard film size for ciné cameras was quickly established as 35mm film and this remains in use to this day. Other professional standard formats include 70 mm film and 16mm film whilst amateurs film makers used 9.5 mm film, 8mm film or Standard 8 and Super 8 before the move into digital format.

The size and complexity of ciné cameras varies greatly depending on the uses required of the camera. Some professional equipment is very large and too heavy to be hand held whilst some amateur cameras were designed to be very small and light for single-handed operation. In the last quarter of the 20th century digital camcorders supplanted film motion cameras for amateurs. Professional video cameras did the same for professional users around the turn of the century.

[edit]Image gallery

1922 Kodak
Opened up Cine Kodak, used 16mm movie film
Silvestri Flexicam
Voigtländer Brillant twin-lens reflex camera.
Contax S of 1949 — the world's first pentaprism SLR
1952 Voigtlander Vito II
Asahiflex IIa of 1955
Kodak Retina IIIC of 1957
Nikon F of 1959 — the first 35mm system camera
Voigtländer Vitoret of 1962
1988 A Soviet-era LOMO LC-A camera
2003 — Canon EOS 300D, a model that sparked the popularity of consumer-level DSLRs
Nikon Coolpix 5200 One in a line of small cameras by Nikon

Run Android on Your Netbook or Desktop

rajeev.lee@gmail.com (Rajeev Nair) — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 13:38:00 +0000

Would you like to try out Google’s Android OS on your netbook or desktop? Here’s how you can run Android from a flash drive and see how fast Android can run on real hardware!

Install Android On Your Flash Drive or Memory Card

First, make sure you have a flash drive or memory card inserted into your computer with around 256MB or more storage space. Remove any files you may need off of the drive, so you can use it to run Android on your computer.

Now you’re ready to download and setup Android on your drive. Head over to the Android x86 download page (link below), scroll down to the StableRelease section, and click View under android-x86-1.6-r2.iso. This will start the iso file downloading to your computer.

In the mean time, head over to the UNetbootin site (link below), and download it as well.

Once your downloads are complete, run UNetbootin. Click the bullet beside Diskimage, then click the “… “ button and select the Android ISO file you just downloaded. Finally, select the correct flash drive or memory card in the menu on the bottom, and click Ok.

UNetbootin will now copy the files to your flash drive. This may take a few moments, depending on your flash drive’s speed.

Once it’s finished, it will ask if you wish to reboot. If you want to go ahead and run Android, you can click Reboot; otherwise, just exit and run Android from your flash drive when you want.

If you want to try Android on a computer that has a CD/DVD drive, you could just burn the ISO to a disk and boot from it. Netbooks don’t have CD drives, and even on a desktop, it can be nice to not waste a CD just for this. If you want to burn it to a disk, you can do it easily from Windows 7 or with a free program such as ImgBurn.

Using Android-x86 On Your Computer
Now you’re ready to run Android on your netbook, laptop, or even a full desktop computer. Simply reboot your computer with the USB drive, and select to boot from it. Not all computers will automatically boot from a USB device, so you may have to press F2, F10, or another key, depending on your computer, and change the Boot options in the bios.

Now, when you boot from the USB drive, select Live CD – Run Android-x86 without installation.

You’ll see a text prompt for a few moments as Android begins to load.

Then you’ll see the Android boot screen, though we only saw it for a moment, as our computer booted really fast into Android.

After a couple seconds, you’ll see the Android desktop … on your netbook or computer! You can quickly access one of the apps on the home screen, or open the menu to see more options.

Click and hold to open a context menu, such as to change the background or add a desktop widget.

Or, press your mouse’s right button to open a menu, such as to open a new tab in the browser.

It works very good as a quick way to get online; the Android browser is actually quite capable for normal browsing, and worked very well in our tests. With a 10 second or less boot time, you may enjoy using this as an alternate to Puppy Linux or other light distros for a quick way to get online securely.

You can even install new applications with the included AndAppStore, though these will only be installed while this Android session is running. If you reboot your computer, you’ll only see the default applications and settings again.

Android x86 supports all of the hardware, including cameras and Wi-Fi, on several Netbooks and laptops; check the link below to see if yours is supported. In our test, our camera wasn’t supported, and we additionally had to connect to the internet via Ethernet since it didn’t detect our Wi-Fi card.

For the most part, Android was very responsive, but anything that would fade out the desktop such as opening a dialog box or a menu would run very slowly and even make the mouse feel jerky. Additionally, we couldn’t get it to boot on our desktop with an AMD processor. You could install Android to your hard drive, but we wouldn’t recommend it considering the limitations and issues it has. But, it is very fun to play with from a flash drive or memory card, and you may even feel adventurous enough to try installing it. Be warned, though; this isn’t for the weak of heart!
Conclusion
If you’re curious about how Android works and would like to try it out on a real machine, this is a great way to see how fast a mobile OS can be on a netbook or desktop. We wish it was more stable and could actually store programs and settings on the flash drive, but it did work as a nice substitute for Puppy Linux or other light, Live CD distros. It runs much faster on a real computer than in the emulator. Since you’re running it from a flash drive, you don’t have to worry about messing anything up, so go ahead and try it for research or fun.
Or, if you’d rather just try out Android from inside Windows, check out our articles on How to Test Drive Android in the Android Emulator and How to Enable the Android Market in the Emulator to try out the best Android has to offer.
Links
Download Android x86
Download UNetbootin
See if Your Netbook or Laptop is Fully Supported

Infocus-Focus as you blurred

rajeev.lee@gmail.com (Rajeev Nair) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 11:59:00 +0000

The Smartest Simple Sharpening Solution

The Topaz InFocus plug-in pairs the latest advancements in image deconvolution technology with superior sharpening

capabilities to improve overall image quality
by reversing blur while restoring, refining and sharpening image detail.

Whether employing it to make an unusable image good, a good image better or giving a great image that extra edge, Topaz InFocus produces unparalleled sharpening and deblurring results that add distinction and definition while accentuating key details.

InFocus Highlights

Ability to restore color and detail (obscured by natural haziness) to image features.
Micro-contrast tools for fine detail enhancement.
Built with advanced deconvolution technology to help in reversing the effects of blur.
Estimate blur tool for unknown / complex blur types.
Targets four types of blur: generic, out-of-focus, straight motion and unknown.
Easily integrates into any part of your post-processing workflow.

Download

Noiseware-The Better way to remove noises

rajeev.lee@gmail.com (Rajeev Nair) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 11:31:00 +0000

The Better way to remove Noise

Noiseware is a high-performance noise suppression software tool designed to decrease or eliminate noise from digital photo or scanned images.
Unlike most image processing software techniques that utilize simple methods (such as median filters) to treat digital noise in images, Noiseware features a sophisticated yet fast noise filtering algorithm.
Using the adaptive noise profile capability and sharpening function, Noiseware greatly reduces the visible noise while preserving the details in the images.

Portraiture-The Skin Feathuring tool

rajeev.lee@gmail.com (Rajeev Nair) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 11:20:00 +0000

Bring out the Best in Your Portraits

Portraiture is a Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture plugin that eliminates the tedious manual labor of selective masking and pixel-by-pixel treatments to help you achieve excellence in portrait retouching. It intelligently smoothens and removes imperfections while preserving skin texture and other important portrait details such as hair, eyebrows, eyelashes etc.
Portraiture features a powerful masking tool that enables selective smoothening only in the skin tone areas of the image. What makes Portraiture’s masking tool truly unique is its built-in Auto-Mask feature. It helps you quickly discover most of the skin tone range of the image automatically and, if preferred, you can manually fine-tune it to ensure optimal results, providing unmatched precision and productivity.
For finer control, you can specify the smoothening degree for different detail sizes and adjust the sharpness, softness, warmth, brightness and contrast.
Portraiture comes with pre-defined presets for one-click effects and, as with all Imagenomic plugins, you can capture your own signature workflow in a custom preset tailored to your specific requirements and photographic portfolio.

Google Picassa 3.9 Review

rajeev.lee@gmail.com (Rajeev Nair) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 11:03:00 +0000

Interface Picasa 3.9's interface remains largely similar to its preceding versions. Folders on your computer are shown in a panel on the left, as are entries for Albums, People, Projects. The folders are organized by year and sorted in chronological order. Buttons at lower-right let you show People, Places, tags, or photo info in a right panel. At center bottom are the buttons that let you share to Google Plus, email, export, star, or quick rotate. A neat little touch is the animated star that flies up and spins when you start a photo. At lower-left is a tray that helpfully lets you pick photos to work on temporarily. A new side-by side comparison view helps in choosing the best of a pair of images or edited versus un-edited. Once you click into a folder, you'll get the shuttle control on the right instead of the standard scrollbar you see when you're in an album. I previously thought this shuttle was a nifty interface innovation, but now it just seems inconsistent within the program. Oddly, when working in the Recently Updated auto-Album, Picasa wouldn’t let me scroll to the bottom of the photo set, though I could see more thumbnails peeking up from below the window edge. After I clicked into a photo, Picasa's editing tools appeared in a left panel, with a couple new additions. Now there are five tabs here, where formerly there were three. The new ones are for effects presumably brought over from Picnik. I still like the easy rotate and view zooming choices below the photo view, as well as the histogram. I could also show full EXIF info in the right panel. Nice clear buttons let you Undo any effects you've applied. And adding a caption (which will be transferred to the online gallery) was easy as pie from the space below the image. Importing and Organizing A prominent Import button gets you started, and Picasa helpfully adds a choice to the Autoplay dialog that pops up when you insert camera memory into your computer. Groups of shot thumbnails are grouped in the import dialog by time periods, similar to the Events in Apple iPhoto and you can see larger previews of the photos you're about to import on the right side of the window. To its credit, Picasa had no trouble importing camera raw files from my Canon DSLR—Windows Live Photo Gallery (Free, 4 stars) requires a codec installation for this, while iPhoto is equally adept out of the box. You can star or reject photos even before import, but you can't apply tags or preset edits to the group, as you can in many other photo apps. Windows Live Movie Maker lets you rate with one to five stars as opposed to Picasa's simple on or off star, but the single star will suffice for most users. You can also apply effects in batch, or even copy multiple adjustments from one image and apply them to a selected group.

Download Picassa

Android Rooting

rajeev.lee@gmail.com (Rajeev Nair) — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 12:00:00 +0000

I’d like to clear up some misconceptions: rooting doesn’t mean installing a custom ROM like CyanogenMod, and it doesn’t necessarily mean wiping your internal storage. All it means is unlocking your device so that you gain some extra system privileges, giving you the ability to install a custom ROM like CyanogenMod (and do a number of other neat things).
The method for doing this varies from device to device, and could change over time. So, rather than writing a guide that will only be relevant to one type of device and may soon go out of date, I’ll show you how to find the best way to root your specific phone or tablet — assuming there is a way. I’ll also include a walkthrough of how I rooted my HTC Desire, with photos, so that you can see how quick and easy the process can be.

Preparation

Before you start, make sure you actually want to do this; check our article, To Root or Not to Root, for the pros and cons.
Then, back up your phone. No, this might not be strictly necessary, as rooting doesn’t always involve wiping your phone, but it’s a good idea. Check out our guide, How to Back Up Your Android Device Without Rooting, for the details of how to do this.
Next, you might want to upgrade to the latest version of Android available to you as an OTA update. It’s generally good to be up to date. To do this, go to Settings | About phone | System software updates and press Check now. If there are any new updates, you’ll be given the option to install them. Make sure you’ve got at least 25MB of internal storage free before doing this, or it won’t work; see Clear Storage Space on Your Phone Without Rooting for more.
You’ll also want to make a note of all the information in Settings | About phone | Software information (Android version, Baseband version, etc.). I suggest emailing it to yourself (if you’re using some webmail service like Gmail) so that you won’t lose it. This is useful in case you want to un-root later, or need to get help from the Internet if something does go wrong.
Last thing to do before rooting: charge your phone. You don’t want it to run out of battery at a critical moment.

Finding a Guide

My top recommendation for finding a guide on rooting your device is the Android How To’s section on TheUnlockr.
That site seems to have video guides for every Android phone available — and a couple of tablets, too.
If TheUnlockr’s guides aren’t suitable for you, you should check out the XDA-Developers forum. This is where the top Android experts hang out — they really know what they’re talking about when it comes to rooting!
Trouble is, it’s not really the place for beginner questions, and it can be hard to find the most relevant thread for your phone. So, check out this excellent post on the Android sub-reddit; it contains links to the most relevant threads on the XDA-Developers forum.
If all else fails, just Google something like [root htc desire]. Be extra wary of any methods you find this way, though.

Whatever you do, don’t follow any guide designed for a different device to the one you’re using. It’s easy to think, “Oh, I have an HTC Desire, and that’s basically the same hardware as a Nexus One, so I’ll just follow the Nexus One guide.” Bad idea. You’ll brick your phone. Some devices can’t be rooted (at least not easily); if yours is one of them, then I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do about it.

That’s it! You’re ready to go

My Experience

Here’s how it went for me, rooting an HTC Desire with a Windows PC. Remember: don’t follow this as a guide, even if you have an HTC Desire. Find a guide using one of the methods above. I’m using this guide to rooting via the Unrevoked method, from TheUnlockr.
I installed and then uninstalled the latest version of HTC Sync.

Yep, I'm sure.

I downloaded the latest version of Unrevoked and the HBOOT drivers.

Downloading...

I unzipped the drivers, powered off my phone, plu
gged it in to my PC via USB, and held the power and volume buttons to make it enter HBOOT USB PLUG mode.I installed the HBOOT drivers.

I put my phone in USB Debugging mode, plugged it in to the computer again, and clicked OK. Unrevoked worked its magic (which took about five or ten minutes)…
…and that’s it! The whole process took less than an hour, and I spent most of that time just waiting for things to install or uninstall.

It's Rajeev's Pajamas

rajeev.lee@gmail.com (Rajeev Nair) — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 11:46:00 +0000

Technology is the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve a preexisting solution to a problem, achieve a goal or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, modifications, arrangements and procedures. Technologies significantly affect human as well as other animal species' ability to control and adapt to their natural environments. The word technology comes from Greek τεχνολογία (technología); from τέχνη (téchnē), meaning "art, skill, craft", and -λογία (-logía), meaning "study of-".^[1] The term can either be applied generally or to specific areas: examples include construction technology, medical technology, and information technology.
The human species' use of technology began with the conversion of natural resources into simple tools. The prehistorical discovery of the ability to control fire increased the available sources of food and the invention of the wheel helped humans in travelling in and controlling their environment. Recent technological developments, including the printing press, the telephone, and the Internet, have lessened physical barriers to communication and allowed humans to interact freely on a global scale. However, not all technology has been used for peaceful purposes; the development of weapons of ever-increasing destructive power has progressed throughout history, from clubs to nuclear weapons.
Technology has affected society and its surroundings in a number of ways. In many societies, technology has helped develop more advanced economies (including today's global economy) and has allowed the rise of a leisure class. Many technological processes produce unwanted by-products, known as pollution, and deplete natural resources, to the detriment of the Earth and its environment. Various implementations of technology influence the values of a society and new technology often raises new ethical questions. Examples include the rise of the notion of efficiency in terms of human productivity, a term originally applied only to machines, and the challenge of traditional norms.
Philosophical debates have arisen over the present and future use of technology in society, with disagreements over whether technology improves the human condition or worsens it. Neo-Luddism, anarcho-primitivism, and similar movements criticise the pervasiveness of technology in the modern world, opining that it harms the environment and alienates people; proponents of ideologies such as transhumanism and techno-progressivism view continued technological progress as beneficial to society and the human condition. Indeed, until recently, it was believed that the development of technology was restricted only to human beings, but recent scientific studies indicate that other primates and certain dolphin communities have developed simple tools and learned to pass their knowledge to other generations.
The use of the term technology has changed significantly over the last 200 years. Before the 20th century, the term was uncommon in English, and usually referred to the description or study of the useful arts.^[2] The term was often connected to technical education, as in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (chartered in 1861).^[3] "Technology" rose to prominence in the 20th century in connection with the Second Industrial Revolution. The meanings of technology changed in the early 20th century when American social scientists, beginning with Thorstein Veblen, translated ideas from the German concept of Technik into "technology." In German and other European languages, a distinction exists between Technik and Technologie that is absent in English, as both terms are usually translated as "technology." By the 1930s, "technology" referred not to the study of the industrial arts, but to the industrial arts themselves.^[4] In 1937, the American sociologist Read Bain wrote that "technology includes all tools, machines, utensils, weapons, instruments, housing, clothing, communicating and transporting devices and the skills by which we produce and use them."^[5] Bain's definition remains common among scholars today, especially social scientists. But equally prominent is the definition of technology as applied science, especially among scientists and engineers, although most social scientists who study technology reject this definition.^[6] More recently, scholars have borrowed from European philosophers of "technique" to extend the meaning of technology to various forms of instrumental reason, as in Foucault's work on technologies of the self ("techniques de soi").
Dictionaries and scholars have offered a variety of definitions. The Merriam-Webster dictionary offers a definition of the term: "the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area" and "a capability given by the practical application of knowledge".^[1] Ursula Franklin, in her 1989 "Real World of Technology" lecture, gave another definition of the concept; it is "practice, the way we do things around here".^[7] The term is often used to imply a specific field of technology, or to refer to high technology or just consumer electronics, rather than technology as a whole.^[8] Bernard Stiegler, in Technics and Time, 1, defines technology in two ways: as "the pursuit of life by means other than life", and as "organized inorganic matter."^[9]
Technology can be most broadly defined as the entities, both material and immaterial, created by the application of mental and physical effort in order to achieve some value. In this usage, technology refers to tools and machines that may be used to solve real-world problems. It is a far-reaching term that may include simple tools, such as a crowbar or wooden spoon, or more complex machines, such as a space station or particle accelerator. Tools and machines need not be material; virtual technology, such as computer software and business methods, fall under this definition of technology.^[10]
The word "technology" can also be used to refer to a collection of techniques. In this context, it is the current state of humanity's knowledge of how to combine resources to produce desired products, to solve problems, fulfill needs, or satisfy wants; it includes technical methods, skills, processes, techniques, tools and raw materials. When combined with another term, such as "medical technology" or "space technology", it refers to the state of the respective field's knowledge and tools. "State-of-the-art technology" refers to the high technology available to humanity in any field.
Technology can be viewed as an activity that forms or changes culture.^[11] Additionally, technology is the application of math, science, and the arts for the benefit of life as it is known. A modern example is the rise of communication technology, which has lessened barriers to human interaction and, as a result, has helped spawn new subcultures; the rise of cyberculture has, at its basis, the development of the Internet and the computer.^[12] Not all technology enhances culture in a creative way; technology can also help facilitate political oppression and war via tools such as guns. As a cultural activity, technology predates both science and engineering, each of which formalize some aspects of technological endeavor.

Science, engineering and technology

The distinction between science, engineering and technology is not always clear. Science is the reasoned investigation or study of phenomena, aimed at discovering enduring principles among elements of the phenomenal world by employing formal techniques such as the scientific method.^[13] Technologies are not usually exclusively products of science, because they have to satisfy requirements such as utility, usability and safety.
Engineering is the goal-oriented process of designing and making tools and systems to exploit natural phenomena for practical human means, often (but not always) using results and techniques from science. The development of technology may draw upon many fields of knowledge, including scientific, engineering, mathematical, linguistic, and historical knowledge, to achieve some practical result.
Technology is often a consequence of science and engineering — although technology as a human activity precedes the two fields. For example, science might study the flow of electrons in electrical conductors, by using already-existing tools and knowledge. This new-found knowledge may then be used by engineers to create new tools and machines, such as semiconductors, computers, and other forms of advanced technology. In this sense, scientists and engineers may both be considered technologists; the three fields are often considered as one for the purposes of research and reference.
The exact relations between science and technology in particular have been debated by scientists, historians, and policymakers in the late 20th century, in part because the debate can inform the funding of basic and applied science. In the immediate wake of World War II, for example, in the United States it was widely considered that technology was simply "applied science" and that to fund basic science was to reap technological results in due time. An articulation of this philosophy could be found explicitly in Vannevar Bush's treatise on postwar science policy, Science—The Endless Frontier: "New products, new industries, and more jobs require continuous additions to knowledge of the laws of nature... This essential new knowledge can be obtained only through basic scientific research." In the late-1960s, however, this view came under direct attack, leading towards initiatives to fund science for specific tasks (initiatives resisted by the scientific community). The issue remains contentious—though most analysts resist the model that technology simply is a result of scientific research.