Wednesday Morning – Get Your Camera
I don't know what it was that jogged my memory bank, but maybe it was the huge motel fire in Kissimmee the other day…. yes, I think that's what it was. What popped up was the old bit of advice to carry a smoke detector with you when you travel so that you can set it on a tabletop in your hotel or motel room at night. The reason for doing that is obvious, so I don't need to get into the "why" of it, but I got to wondering if anybody does that anymore?
Over the years, updated building codes have been mandating all hotels to install smoke detectors in their rooms and now we can be reasonably certain that anyplace we stay (in the U. S., anyway) will have one. But being in the fire business, we know that we cannot always be certain that the darned things are going to be in working order while we are snoozing away. Waaay back, I used to toss one into my luggage whenever I went on a trip, but since they've been showing up in every decent hotel now, I long ago discontinued the practice. But just the same, I began thinking about it. Do you, or does anybody you know still do this?
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There was a splash in the photography websites the other day when a press release announced the $50 million infusion of start-up money for a new type of digital camera technology called Lytro. This innovative lens and sensor capture all the light in the image and then permit you to focus the photo later when you bring it up on your computer. In other words, you don't need to focus your camera before the shutter fires to capture the image. It grabs what they call the "light fields" and saves it all for processing later.
TODAYdigital prepared this video report that gives an introductory explanation:
The online articles about this new technology have some fascinating examples posted where you (the reader) can click your cursor on any part of the image and it comes into focus while leaving the the other areas that are out of the focal range in a slightly blurry presentation.
Lytro has posted a picture gallery where you can play with the new technology on your computer now. Just CLICK HERE and have fun.
Now let's have fun getting this equipment checked out. I'm going to have even more fun and make some more coffee. See you back in the day room in a little while.
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