From TIME magazine’s 50 Best inventions in 2009,

Rob Spence, a 37-year-old Canadian filmmaker, sustained permanent damage to his right eye when he was 9. Fast-forward to 2009, when Rob’s quest to regain vision in his right eye takes an unusual spin. With the help of Kosta Grammatis, John Polanski, Martin Ling, Phil Bowen and camera provider OmniVision, he is attempting to replace his prosthetic eye with a battery-powered, wireless video camera, thereby making himself into an “Eyeborg,” with the power to record exactly what he’s looking at as digital video.

[via Alan Sawyer]

As the rumors of the upcoming camera equipped model continue to appear, a recent report by Digitimes claims that Omnivision, one of the suppliers for the CMOS sensors in the iPhone 3GS, will be supplying new 3.2 megapixel CMOS image sensors for the new iPod line-up as well.

This seems to validate prior rumors of the a camera equipped iPod Touch and iPod Nano.

This rumor seems quite legitimate as we’ve seen photos and even video of the iPod Touch with a camera.

El OV2710 es un chip creado por OmniVision que es capaz de hacer que un dispositivo portátil (como un teléfono o un ordenador portátil) sea capaz de grabar vídeos a 1080p.

Pero tranquilos, ahora vamos a profundizar un poco más:

• Tipo de sensor: CMOS
• Resolución: 2MPx

Este producto trabaja también con imagenes a 720p y a 640×480 pixeles. Si grabáramos con la resolución primera, este chip trabajaría con 60 fps, mientras que si lo hacemos con la última, lo haría a 120 fps, esto nos daría una sensación de cámara lenta.

Ahora bien, miramemos a lo que nos interesa, ¿Podía Apple poner estos chips en los próximos iPhones y MacBooks? Suponiendo que Apple acepte, imaginaos la calidad de las conversaciones por iChat o los vídeos del iPhone… bestial, pasaríamos de que todos pidieran grabación de video, a que todos quieran un iPhone por eso..

Es que me parto con las historias que me monto, pero bueno, ¿que opináis vosotros sobre esto? ¿Sería una buena opción?

This week I reached into my folder and pulled out a rejection from OMNI magazine:

If you’re going to get rejected, you could definitely do worse than getting rejected by Ellen Datlow.  Although I never did get into OMNI magazine, my old website did receive an OMNIVISION award wayyyyy back in the 1990s.  This site no longer exists, of course, but you can see it on the Wayback Machine on those days when it’s functioning properly.  And although I never got into any of Ellen Datlow’s anthologies, either, I did manage to score a mention in the 15th Annual Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror collection:

Given how many other books are listed here this isn’t necessarily such a big deal, but I’ll take what I can get.

Don’t forget, this is the last week to vote for the book from which the July Scene-Of-The-Month will be taken!  It looks like my unfinished werewolf book The Wolf is way out ahead now — can anything catch it?  We’ll find out!

Bild: Apfeltalk

Apple hat 3.2 und 5-Megapixel Kamerasensoren bei OmniVision bestellt. Der 3.2 Megapixel-Sensor dürfte für die kommende iPhone Generation gedacht sein, während die 5 Megapixel für ein seperates Produkt bestellt wurden.

Das iPhone erster Generation und das iPhone 3G benutzen eine 2-Mega-Pixel-Kamera. Es wurde bereits über ein Update der Auflösung der Kamera diskutiert. Auch das Auftauchen des “Publish-Video-Screens” in der iPhone OS 3.0 Beta gilt als Indiz für eine neue, bessere Kamera.

Incase you hadn’t figured it already, the demo I was teasing with before the show was our “Zero shutter lag” imaging demo. We’ve posted a picture and a link to the associated Flickr stream already but I think a more detailed write-up is in order now…

Smile! You’re on camera…

We were demonstrating a camera application that could take pictures the instant you press the capture button. To date, there is always a slight delay on camera phones between the user pressing the button and the camera actually capturing the image. Since our set-up elimates this delay we’ve dubbed it “Zero shutter lag“.

To make it a bit more fun we had a few effects that could be applied to the photos such as black & white, sepia, milky and more. Some of these also worked in real-time on the camera view-finder. There were also a number of celebrity lookalikes to pose with: Posh’n'Becks*, Del boy (a character from “Only Fools and Horses” for the non-Brits reading this), Jean-Luc Picard, Austin Powers and Kylie Minogue.

The finished images could then be uploaded directly to Flickr and from there were then downloaded and displayed on the main Symbian stand (behind the coffee bar) and the ScreenPlay demo. You could also get your photo printed out onto a keyring, bottle opener or fridge magnet for added freebie goodness!

The ingredients

The demo was built on Symbian OS 9.5 and running on a Texas Instruments 3430 development board with a 3.2 mega-pixel OmniVision camera. Although they don’t look like phones, such dev boards are representative of mobile phones – same CPU, memory, peripherals etc. – but have some extra connections to help software development.

The software that enabled the zero shutter lag feature was by Scalado. By working closely with them, we have pre-integrated Scalado’s imaging solutions into Symbian OS. This means that it’s a lot quicker, cheaper and easier for Symbian OS licensees to use Scalado’s software in their products if they so desire. A great example of the Symbian Parter Network in action!

How the magic happens

You may be wondering why we haven’t had zero shutter lag before. Well, traditionally phone cameras will send a low-resolution stream of images while the viewfinder is being displayed. This is because using full-sized images for the viewfinder is prohibitively CPU and memory intensive. When the user presses the capture button the camera therefore has to switch into full-resolution mode first and this takes some time (largely because it involves re-calibration for which the camera needs to capture a few frames as reference). That’s where the delay is introduced.

Enter Scalado. They have some incredibly clever and effecient JPEG-decoding software. In fact, it’s so nippy that it allows us to use a full resolution feed from the camera for our view-finder (and that’s all running ARM-side btw). When it comes to capture time that means we already have a full sized, JPEG file that we just need to save to disk. No more switching camera modes equals no more lag!

Although our demo app didn’t do this, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to buffer the last few seconds’ worth of camera frames so that when you capture it could present you with photos from just before you pressed the button. That way even if you were a bit late to press the button you still wouldn’t miss those once-in-a-lifetime moments! You could also implement a burst capture mode along similar lines.

With higher spec camera hardware and sufficient bandwidth on the camera connection you could up the mega-pixels quite significantly too. Scalado recons that with the CPU we were using their solution could comfortably decode up to 20 mega-pixel images. Sweet!

* Incase you were wondering: The Posh’n'Becks were the same ones that appeared on Dragon’s Den!

The imaging demo instantly snaps up a brace of symbianites. No taking a pic of your kneecap any more, this will ensure cameras on phones have the kind of processing abilities to give regular point and shooters a terminal kicking.

Make sure you immortalise yourself at one of the imaging booths. You too can look as gormless as me.

Un nou design al senzorilor foto, dezvoltat de OmniVision,promite îmbunătăţirea semnificativă a performanţelor acestora. Noua arhitectură (backside illumination) se bazează pe răsturnarea senzorului, pentru a optimiza absorbţia luminii. Mai multe detalii aici.

Omnivision is already the the largest supplier of CMOS image sensors in the world, and now its new OmniBSITM chip design promises the world’s first consumer 8 megapixel cellphone camera. The new chip uses a technique that’s been around for a while, called backside illumination, that allows more light to reach each pixel. And that allows the chip to use a small 1.4-micron pixel that’s better than current larger versions.

Normal CMOS sensors use “front side” illumination: incoming light travels through many shallow layers of electronics before hitting the sensor pixels themselves. Backside illumination simply turns all that the other way up, so that incoming photons don’t have to journey through interfering layers before they hit the pixels. That means less get lost along the way, meaning the pixels are more sensitive to light, and can be made smaller for the same responsiveness. (Gizmodo)

Cuando los estudiantes de Medicina ingresan a sala de operaciones para observar una operación, lo único que ven muy bien es la espalda de los cirujanos. La operación en sí, los órganos que se exponen y se reparan los ven muy lejos que los deja frustrados. No pueden acercarse mucho porque pueden contaminar el material estéril y constantemente están escuchando: “¡No te acerques¡” “¡Sal de ahí¡”..”¡Ponte más lejos!”.

Para solucionar este problema, he creado el espejo “Omnivisión”, un espejo rectangular de 30 x 20 cm, adherido a un plano de madera y sostenido por un poste también de madera, que el estudiante puede manipular en diferentes ángulos por encima de la cabeza de los cirujanos y así poder observar la operación sin temor a contaminarlos.

(Foto:Luis LaMadrid, estudiante de Medicina)

Ver más fotos: Omnivision Custodio