This miniature camera, currently being developed by a research group at IAMAS, Japan, allows you to frame scenes using your fingers – just as you would form a rectangle with your hands to help decide the composition of a particular shot.
The camera has a fixed focal length, meaning it can’t zoom in or out. Instead, an image is framed using one’s fingers as a viewfinder, and a range sensor on the rear of the camera determines the distance between itself and the photographer’s face to determine the degree of digital zoom to apply afterward using external software.
While doing away with the conventional viewfinder or LCD screen has its own merits – think size, weight and battery life – this does seem like a step back in time in some respects. For one, their’s no immediacy of results that provided much of the initial excitement around the introduction of digital cameras in the first place. Although, that said, there’s no reason why these couldn’t be transmitted immediately and wireless to your smartphone or cloud storage.
Holding the camera at arm’s length will undoubtedly introduce camera shake too – the closer the camera is to your body, the steadier it can be held.
This type of ‘sixth sense’ technology provides us with an exciting peek into the future, just don’t expect it to go mainstream this decade.
Via: DigiInfo TV