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Comments (6)
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Save/ShareDigital cameras continue to shrink in both size and weight year after year. Clever people are coming up with inventive uses for the smaller devices, especially for travel.
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The equipment Harris used two years ago was expensive and cumbersome, but manufacturers are making new cameras that are cheaper and more versatile. Pretty soon, you may be able to buy a camera that lets you perform a similar trick to Harris's. A company called Metascopic is developing a "wearable," lightweight, still-image digital camera that will let you record tens of thousands of pictures a day. The images will be high-resolution and wide-angle, according to a presentation recently given by the company to a panel with technologist Kevin Kelly.
The advantage of taking so many images is that whenever there's a priceless moment—such as an encounter with a street performer, a cute animal, or a meteor shower—you can rest assured that the moment will be captured because your camera will be perpetually, noiselessly snapping away.
High-speed software will let you quickly fast-forward through the recording of your vacation (or wedding, workday, or whatever else you wish to record). Find the precious moment, and clip it out to share it.
In other words, you'll be able to "TiVo" your vacation.
Post images of your favorite moments online. Turn it into a mini-video (such as an audio slide show, with your voice-over narrating events). Then, your friends will be able to "annotate" your video clip by posting their comments on it, perhaps using a technology recently purchased by Google and added to selected YouTube videos in a trial period.
What do you think? Would you like to have a "perpetual camera" snapping fleeting moments from your vacation?
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Hmmm, it would free me up to focus on what I'm doing instead of hiding behind my camera. But couldn't you get obsessed with constantly looking at your day's pictures instead of enjoying your trip?
Posted By Dana on January 23, 2009, 5:43 PM
It seems interesting but logistically how could this work? Is the camera clipped to your person, what about movement? How does the image get centered? Jonathan's images were great, but it seems he used a tripod. How often does it really take a picture? You could easily miss a critical moment using this method whereas if you held your camera you are guaranteed to catch, for example, the first kiss at your friend's wedding
Posted By Dana on January 26, 2009, 1:52 PM
Would I be able to turn it off, say, while on the toilet? If so, sign me up.
Dana, in order to catch the first kiss at a wedding, take another camera! I, for one, got some excellent shots by taking frames of movies I shot on a video camera using this program: http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Products/Consumer+Products/Home+Video/Studio+Family/ That and WordPerfect are the only things I ever wanted to trade in my Mac to get a PC for, and WordPerfect is dying thanks to OpenOffice, which IS Mac compatible!
Posted By Jim Michalek on January 26, 2009, 4:23 PM
That is super cool. I love the http://thewhalehunt.org/whalehunt.html web site. Fun!
Posted By Risamay on January 26, 2009, 5:14 PM
As someone who travels with multiple cameras, including a video camera, this would be great. I love photography too much to leave my digital still cameras home, but to have access to all of the moments that are now lost would be awesome.
Posted By George E on January 27, 2009, 12:51 AM
My S>O> has been dreaming of having the ability to record every moment of an event simply by looking at it. This is coming close to his dream. However, we are still weeding out the good from the bad from our last vacation in August. I picture getting totally overwhelmed in past images and not being able to live in the current moment.
Posted By Jackie Kreitzer on January 27, 2009, 1:14 PM