App Connects Two Smartphones to Take Synchronized Photos

SynchroCam is not just another app. Really, it's a step toward a new age of photography: a collaborative level that is perfect for the social-media world.

SynchroCam lets you wirelessly link multiple devices (on the same wi-fi network or via Bluetooth), freeze a moment in time and save it as a 3D-like animated GIF.

Hopefully, projects like the Apollon concept will come next, allowing your camera to be physically combined with your friends’ cameras. This would let you snap images together to create things like panoramas and 3D photographs. Check out the idea below.

Hey, we can dream. In the meantime, download SynchroCam for free here.

Say Goodbye to Exes in Your Photos -- Forever

How many times have you wished a certain someone wasn't photobombing a great picture of you from the past? Now, a new app from Scalado lets you remove the offending face forever.

This interesting photo-taking system, called Remove, will allow you to selectively remove people (or objects) from a photo. Remove automatically highlights and deletes whatever you want removed from a captured photo. And it's the world's first object-removal software for mobile devices.

How does it work? Basically, the software interpolates a “clean” version of the scene by examining its moving, live objects. This allows it to separate the wanted objects from the unwanted ones.

Scalado, a world-leading provider of high-performance imaging technologies, applications and services for the mobile industry,will demonstrate a working version of Remove at MWC, a major telecom event, in Barcelona this year. After that, it should launch for iOS and Android soon.

Amazing 'Hexacopter' Lets Photography Go Airborne

Image Source: engadget

Your dreams of creating amazing aerial photography are about to become a reality.

Thanks to one gadget-loving couple, your DSLR may be taking flight sometime soon. Meet the eye3 hexacopter, a six-armed carbon-fiber UAV that was created to take your camera airborne. It uses Google Maps and open-source code to navigate, and it's modular for simple repairs after unintentional crash-landings. 

The eye3 features three CPUs and a 350-watt motor on each arm. Surprisingly, it can carry a payload of 5 to 10 pounds, plenty of power for your DSLR to take to the air.

Check out some sample shots on engadget's video, here.

‘Customizable’ Camera Software to Revolutionize Photography?

The way we use cameras may be about to change—forever, according to MIT't Technology Review website.

New software is making it possible for photographers to reprogram their digital cameras and create images that have previously been impossible.

Researchers at Stanford University created the software, which runs on Nokia N900 phones and will enable a broad range of apps. With certain apps, you can already gain greater control over your N900 phone: capture both light and dark parts of a scene, create extremely sharp photos, even in low light, and automatically stitch panoramic photos together.

Although digital photography has always been constrained by a camera’s manufacturer software, “computational photography” seeks to change all that. With CP, software gives the user more control over the camera’s components. This type of work has seen some modest success with traditional digital cameras, including Stanford's "Frankencamera." But now, smart phone cameras are opening up even greater possibilities.

The images captured using computational photography can be stunning. Now, cameras can shoot a series of images at focuses, then combine them to make a single image in which objects at any distance appear sharp.

The View From Above: In Hard Focus Round-up (September 8, 2011)

AHNE – Audio-Haptic Navigation Environment from Matti Niinimäki on Vimeo.

Kinect helps you make sweet music, well sounds anyway: We cover a lot of Kinect applications for vision, but let’s not forget the other senses that can be engaged with this technology. Researchers in Helsinki have created a method to make sounds within a 3D space utilizing a Kinect sensor. Called Audio-Haptic Navigation Environment (AHNE), the system designates sounds, tone and volume based on one or more individuals’ positions in space. Not exactly symphony quality yet, but worth checking out. See video above via Engadget.

Photo compression technology allows for efficient photo storage: TechCrunch reports on a new startup, JPEGmini, which is pioneering a method for compressing JPEG photos for quicker sharing and more efficient storage. The technology, which can reduce overall file size by up to 5 times, imitates the way we analyze images in order to compress select portions of a photo that don’t contain “visible artifacts.” While professional photographers may not find this technology any better or cost effective than using RAW files and programs like Adobe Photoshop, there are many everyday uses where this method of compressing files could come in handy, especially in small devices like smartphones and cameras. 

Mobli takes photo filters and sharing to the next level: Mobli, a platform that allows users to “see the world through other people’s eyes” via a shared photos and video platform, is pushing ahead of competitors like Color with some interesting updates. Mashable reports that the new version, available now on Android and BlackBerry in addition to its original iPhone app, grants users a portal to take, share and view photos and video, which they can then tag or create filters for based on location-based data (such as check-ins at a concert or baseball game). What’s really interesting is the CEO’s vision behind the app: to create a visual diary experience through the lens of a smartphone… perhaps this vision seems way cooler when Paris Hilton is on-board.