If you think Booty Sweat and the personalized marketing in Minority Report was a taste of a wacky marketing hell to come, wait until you see this.
Julius von Bismarck’s ‘Image Fulgurator’ projects stealth images into the photographs of strangers, while keeping those images invisible to human eyes. Depending on whom you ask, it’s either a clever hack or an obnoxious intrusion.
[…]
The device is a modified camera — in this case, an old manual Minolta SLR. A flashgun fires through the camera in reverse, from the back. The flash picks up the image of a slide inside and projects it out through the lens and onto any surface.The trick is in the triggering. The Fulgurator lies in wait until an unsuspecting photographer takes a picture using a flash. When the device’s sensor sees this flash, it fires its own unit, throwing up an image which is captured by the hapless photographer’s camera while remaining unseen by the naked eye.
Now, imagine for a moment that an ad agency gets hold of this. You couldn’t take a photograph of a tourist attraction ever again without worrying that some marketing crap would be pushed into your camera. As Julius told me, “I see it as a piece of media art. It could be a dangerous attack on media. [But] if people do shit with it, I feel bad.”
Sure it’s annoying if you get commercial garbage on your pictures, but what this guy have done is pretty darn clever!
One of the links from the linked page in the article leads to this page. It’s perhaps something you want to wear when traveling to Great Britain. 😉
I am not sure why you are shocked. Digital still and movie cameras have had serial number tracking embedded in their images since the technique was perfected for printers.
You shoot a picture of something you shouldn’t and the feds get it, they can trace the picture back to the camera that took it and then to who purchased that camera. Assuming, of course, you didn’t buy it with pennies.
Pfft.
So what happens when someone figures out how to hack it so everyone gets goatsed?
Also, people will subvert the idea by imposing a negative message onto the ad to harm the companies’ image.
#2 my reading of the story is that you do not see the ad when you take the picture, but when it is developed or printed, then you have “Bily Bob’s Bar-B-Que and Breast Enhancement Service” emblazened across what you hoped was a picture of a pretty church or whatever.
This could be a very creative item, too. The core concept of using the square wave rise in light that a xenon flash tube puts out to trigger micro-moment events could usher in a new era of lighting, decoration, and yes, paid advertising, for certain public venues.
What if it blasted a “lucky number” onto architecture or props, that only the one photographer who fired the camera at that instant would have a record of? The next flash wouldn’t display the same info.
Or how about the shot triggers a re-configuration of certain lighting fixtures, re-painting the environment to something only visible in a flash photo?
Could be fun. Or annoying. Depending on the mind behind it.
This is nothing more than photo spam. The first time someone with one of these units screws up a digital photo of mine he’s going to be in deep doo-doo.
This is fascinating. I’ve played with light for many years and have had a darkroom at home (and work) for nearly half a century. My brother three decades ago used to take a 35 m.m. projector and display movies from three stories up to roads and buildings and it was great fun to walk through the scenes from “The Third Man” or several of W.C. Fields’ movies.
But that was only practical at nighttime. I’ve had several big bruiser strobes over the years that could illuminate objects 100 meters away with fast telephotos and high speed film to capture images, without assistance of other light sources. And used slave triggering for remote strobes with wonderful effect and a few well placed units could turn a very difficult scene to be illuminated practically as if it were captured in a studio. Always also had to consider the recycle times of the capacitors for further bursts of energy from the strobes if they were battery powered….
Anyone out there also remember a wonderful product called Liquid Light years ago that you could mix and paint on a wall (in only a safe-light lit room) that created an emulsion upon which you could project an image from your enlarger, develop using standard developers/fixers (sponges or rollers worked well) and make rather amazing murals. Even more fun.
Thought the old Minolta SLRs had a collapsible pin on the hinge that would permit the replacement of the camera back for a bulk film unit for use with a motor drive that would give one up to 250 frames per immediate session…. I’ve used Minoltas for a few rolls of film and they were good image capturers, but they weren’t the camera systems of my choice. So I don’t think there was the necessity of cutting a hole in the camera back.
The problems mentioned in the Wired article’s thread about keystoning of a superimposed image are not all that important in my imagination because that could be solved beforehand, But I still think most of this is impracticable. Ask any projectionist the skill required to project an image on a known screen of luminance.
Shooting landmarks? Get a fast lens and use natural light. Use a tripod if you wish. Don’t use a flash because a majority of camera flashes don’t reach out more than a dozen feet, depending upon ISO.
Besides the cheesy image provided by Wired Magazine of a black laptop bag with “Image Fulgurator” supposedly projected on to it, I really need to be convinced this could be done in average lighting conditions for more than a few dozen feet without the use of a limelight-powered strobe. If I weren’t a lazy ass, I could construct similar equipment from my camera shelves in 90 minutes to verify this.
Were this to be viable, it could be used for some artistic purposes. Yet I tire of mixing chemicals and would prefer to use odor-free Photoshop layers. And yet the fun of a laser powered unit upon traffic cams deserves some dreams….
As Tihz Ho would say, “Cheers!”
b.
Is this how those ghost pictures get produced?
#7 – boru – As Tihz Ho would say, “Cheers!”
Is that you?
#9, Jag,
Unless it’s him.
I have to go with Hopper on this. As soon as someone starts messing around with my digital camera expect me to be pissed.
I was in a chain drugstore recently and saw that someone was having film developed. She is a true rare breed today. As high end and specialty cameras continue to improve, even large format film is dying.
In actuality, I don’t understand the reason behind this. Why?
#10 – Mr. Fusion
That’s what I think.
Seems like a great idea if your objective is to make people loath you and boycott your products.
Sorry but a class action law suit would seem the least you could expect.
#1
Now my tinfoil hat and auto tag will have infrared LEDs. Damn, I’m going to need a buttload more rechargeable batteries for the hat.
smart motherfucker.
To Jagermeister and Mr. Fusion–
No, I’m just Boru. Noticed, Jag, you’ve contributed to Tihz Ho’s blog. He resides in Shanghai. I live in Florida. I just liked his sign off salutation, “Cheers.”
Best regards,
b.