I always assumed that the process of making a hologram was so complex that it was limited to only those with access to expensive lasers and other fancy optical equipment. But when I heard that the Maker Shed started carrying Litiholo’s Hologram Kit, I was surprised that such a thing existed and I was eager to give it a try. After carefully following the directions, my first hologram was visible, but just barely. This was better than I expected, actually. The manual stresses that controlling vibration is the most important factor in creating a good hologram, but I live in a busy Brooklyn apartment building that often feels the low rumble of the subway trains rolling by. I tried to make another, but this time I increased the exposure time from five minutes to fifteen as the instructions suggested. The result was a surprisingly sharp hologram of a toy car.
The science behind the why holograms work and how they’re made is fascinating. In the video above, I explain that the holographic film is sensitive to the interference between the laser beam hitting the plate directly and the beam bouncing off the object. I won’t try to explain it any further, and I’ll leave it up to those who do it best: How Stuff Works has a great write-up of the principles behind these amazing 3D images.
What a difference a couple of years make. Back in 2009, you had to scrounge together a bunch of lenses and glue them to a jar lid if you wanted a smartphone lens carousel. Nowadays you’ve got options.
Looking for a set of workhorse lenses? Check out The iPhone Lens Dial from Photojojo. For considerably more than the cost of a subsidized iPhone you can outfit your latest handset with three lenses: wide angle, fisheye, and telephoto.
How about some fun without breaking the bank? Then try the Holga iPhone Lens Filter Kit SLFT-IP4. It costs an order of magnitude less than the Lens Dial, but comes packed with four novelty lenses and five filters for creative picture taking.
Whether you’re building your own or buying an off the shelf mod, you’ll have a ton of fun extending your gear well beyond its intended use.
Bored with Instagram yet? How about building your own camera to capture lomographic imagery? Joe Pirela‘s DigiLomo camera is one smart looking DIY digital camera built by repackaging the guts of a point-and-shoot into a larger (and nicer looking) walnut and aluminum body that accepts a SLR lens. [via crave]
Karol Łuszcz is studying electronics at Poland’s Gdańsk University of Technology. I’d say he’s on-track for an impressive career. This vector-graphics laser projector, his third prototype, includes three laser modules at 650, 532, and 405 nm wavelengths (making it more of an RGV projector, really). Many parts were salvaged, for instance, from a DVD burner, a printer, and a “disco ball.”
Kinematic mounts for optical elements, and electronics to drive the mechanical scanners, were custom-fabricated. Components are mounted on a 3mm aluminum plate mounted in an aluminum briefcase modified with a projection aperture on the side. Magnificent, inspiring build. [via Hack a Day]
Need to keep the glare off your screen so you can get get your work done? Creative professionals have used monitor hoods for years in order to cut down glare from sources such as the sun and overhead lighting. Roger Sacul‘s step-by-step instructions show you how to build one for yourself out of almost any ridged sheet material. [via DIYP]
Take your 3D model and make it real in a new and amazing way. The Autodesk® 123D™ Make Technology Preview turns any 3D model into a pattern of flat parts that can be cut and assembled into an artful creation. The Autodesk® 123D™ Make Technology Preview is currently available only for Mac OS X. The preview software will expire on 1/31/12.
Every year, tens of thousands of people join forces in the Nevada desert to express themselves, be it with art, carpentry, costumes, or burning large objects. This is Burning Man, and these people are Burners. Burners can be sociologists, too. Just check out The Playa Time Lapse Project, which captured a bird’s eye view of 27 days of Burning Man set up, break down, and lots of burning. And it all fit into a five minute video. The view is stunning. If you appreciate it, consider helping to fund the next one. Playa Time Lapse 2.0 is live on Kickstarter. Support now and get prints from the Burning Man gallery!
Matt Goodman and a crew of friends hiked up Old Razorback mountain on the east side of the Black Rock Desert and left a camera. For the next ten weeks, it snapped photos every six minutes and transmitted them over wifi every day.
According to Matt,”The confluence of having seen this view of the playa from Old Razorback, and my new-found interest in photography, got the engineer gears turning in my head. With the support of several friends, I decided to do a time-lapse video of the playa bringing the viewer from its pre-Buring Man state, through the event, and past the entire cleanup efforts. This turned out to be a non-trivial, but extremely rewarding, undertaking.”
On the Project homepage, creators and Langton Labs roommates, Matt Goodman and Peretz Partensky, outline exactly how you they did the project: equipment needed, setup, networking, film editing, and problems they ran into. Want to try this at home? Check out the tutorial they made.
My Q&A with Matt:
What were your motivations for doing the time-lapse video?
I think that most people don’t realize or appreciate how much time and effort goes in to prepping for the event. The week of Burning Man is like the sporulation of a stalk that took a long time to grow. In the process of editing the movie, we talked about how that was an important aspect to communicate.
What did you learn?
It requires more work than anticipated, helpful friends are the best resource, Eye-Fi cards don’t work as advertised. I’m proud that what took so much effort is now being enjoyed by so many people.
What highlights from the video aren’t obvious to the viewer?
We are making an editor’s cut to highlight all of the awesomeness that flies by at 30-frames per second, from hot air balloons, to huge kites, to gigantic smoke rings and sky divers. We want to encompass it all, or at least whatever can fit in three minutes and thirty seconds. Instead of five weeks, it’ll focus on 10 days centered on the event. (EG: Expect the editor’s cut online in a couple weeks.)
What is Burning Man, in your own words?
It’s a place where people actively engage in any non-specific activity, very actively. A place for personal, social, and cultural exploration.
Going to do it again?
We’re kicking off a kickstarter to fund a gigapan rig and a better lens. Hopefully we’ll make a whole movie where every frame is a gigapixel that will require a matrix of screens to show!
Anything else we should know?
The video, the raw photos, and the edited photos are all released under a Creative Commons license. We welcome other people to use them and make their own videos and remixes and image analysis tricks!
Inspired to make something for Halloween? Be sure to enter it in our MAKE Halloween contest to win cool prizes. Costumes, decor, food, whatever you create for Halloween, is welcome in the contest.
Back in June, I was excited about the idea of so-called “light field” photography – a digital raster process that captures not only intensity and color for each pixel, but also the direction of inbound light. The upshot? So-called “light field” cameras actually record a vector field for each image that allows software ray-tracing to produce images of the scene arbitrarily focused at any depth, including infinite.
I’m still excited about that idea, and I thought it was worth mentioning that the first commercial devices produced by the inventor’s start-up are now available for pre-order, with shipping expected in 2012. I am a late adopter, by nature, and it’s extremely unlikely I’ll be plunking down the $400 Lytro is asking for its 8GB model, sight unseen. For me, at least, the focus-later feature doesn’t justify that kind of expense. I hope they make it, though, so I can eventually buy a cheaper model. And I’ll be very curious when the reviews start coming out. [Thanks, Laura!]
Kim Keever’s elaborate method produces remarkable results. This, from a statement at Denver’s David B. Smith Gallery:
Kim Keever’s large-scale photographs are created by meticulously constructing miniature topographies in a 200-gallon tank, which is then filled with water. These dioramas of fictitious environments are brought to life with colored lights and the dispersal of pigment, producing ephemeral atmospheres that he must quickly capture with his large-format camera.
