The Scanner Photography Project
Michael Golembewski builds a "scanner camera" by attaching a cheap flatbed scanner to the back of a large format camera. The results are surprising. Slashdot discussion here. His site is slashdotted at present, so loads will be slow or time out until later in the day or tomorrow. And though he can show the scanner distortion on the web, the incredibly high resolution (over 100,000,000 pixels) would only be viewable through a hard copy. [slashdot]
My first scanner camera was made from lots of duct tape, a cardboard box, and the cheapest flatbed scanner that I could find. I expected this to be a quick little art project, one that would take a week or two at the most. But when I got my first homemade digital camera to work, I noticed that some wonderful things were beginning to happen.
The objects in the scene that were stationary photographed normally, while the objects that were moving were twisted and distorted into wonderful shapes. At first, I thought that this was a mistake, that something was wrong with my new contraption. But I soon realized that the motion of the scanner was meshing with the motion of the recorded scene, creating unexpected, yet predictable, results. These motion distortions are similar to the effect created by moving a sheet on a photocopier mid-copy, except that they extend into three dimensions and only effect objects in motion.
Previous Posts:
Harebrained Pot and Wheat Decisions
Why a paper ticket if an SMS will do?
Compare and Contrast
Thinking about Loompanics going out of business
Could America ever produce another Martin Luther King Jr.?
A Non-Non-Libertarian FAQ: Responses to Mike Huben
Weather Underground
The tolerant base URL
Logs disabled; The future of billstclair.com
Take a leap into hyperspace
amazing technique
amazing technique
Edit comment