Flash Bulbs and Artifact Preservation: Myth Debunked!
I’ve been to a ton of museums that have said flash photography damages the works, but it seems like it’s not exactly true. “300 amateur flashes a day is equivalent to adding five minutes to the display day. In order to actually increase damage by 10% on a ten hour day, one would need to experience 3600 flashes per day. Two large professional flashes would raise the ante a little, they would need 225 flashes a day to add 10%. For museums at 150 lux (15 footcandles) these numbers become 10,000 amateurs, or 700 pros, every day. To actually double fading would need 100,000 amateurs a day. Most museums would kill for those attendance figures!” Sounds like a good MythBusters thing too, Full story here – Link.
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Universetoday.com on DIY high altitude photography – “Paul Verhage has some pictures that you’d swear were taken from space. And they were. Amateur Radio High Altitude Ballooning allows individuals to launch functioning satellites to “near space” at a fraction of the cost of traditional rocket launch vehicles. Paul’s balloons have been as high as 35 km, and the photographs he’s taken are out of this world.” Thanks Fraser! 
Monopole writes in about an open source 3D camera – “Stereoscopic Camera and Camcorder Synchronizer using the commonly available LANC camera control ports. Based on the Atmel ATMega8 microcontroller. Both the software and the hardware is open source, with board layouts on the website.” 
Wow, this stereoscopic motion picture camera uses two Mac mini’s as its brain – “The built in recorder of the 3DVX3 is comprised of two extensively modified Apple Mac Mini computers. The compact size and CPU horsepower offered by the Mac Mini coupled with the power of Mac OS X make the 3DVX3 a truly unique camcorder. Flash memory modules replace hard drives in the Mac Minis for fast booting and reduced operating temperature.” [
Slashdot has a post about Michael Golembewski’s homemade digital camera projects. He writes – “For the past three years, I’ve been taking apart cheap secondhand flatbed scanners and turning them into homemade large format digital cameras. They are well over 100 mexapixel in resolution, and produce results that are both similar to and significantly different from traditional digital and conventional cameras.” [
Flickr member Filmosity’s modded a CVS disposable video camera to include a built-in USB cable for easy transfer of video – “…Side view of the CVS One time use Camcorder, hacked with a USB Cable. The cable now has some velcro that keeps it flush to the side of the cam. Still a few more mods I’m going to make to the cam, including changing the logos that show up when you turn the cam on and off.” 