I-Movix SprintCam v3 NAB 2009 showreel from David Coiffier on Vimeo.

An example of an accurate suggestion:

An example of an inaccurate suggestion:

iPhoto is also Linux friendly, well at least in terms of recognizing Tux:

iPhoto also likes to play Where’s Waldo:

Overall it is an impressive feature. I can’t speak to how it compares to the face recognition feature of Google’s Picasa, other than iPhoto does all the work locally whereas Picasa only provides face recognition on Picasa Web. I’m not about to upload my entire photo library to the web (with the exception of my Amazon S3 backup) so the local face recognition with name tagging is perfect for me.

Posted by Al Degutis

]]> http://www.degutis.com/blog/iphoto09-amazing-face-recognition/feed/ 13 http://www.degutis.com/blog/photosynth-mickey-christmas-tree/ http://www.degutis.com/blog/photosynth-mickey-christmas-tree/#comments Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:00:07 +0000 Al http://www.degutis.com/blog/?p=569 I’ve wanted to experiment with Photosynth some more, so I decided to try a 360 degree synth of Judy’s Mickey Mouse Christmas Tree. I set up a backdrop behind the tree, put the camera on a tripod and snapped 26 pictures while slightly rotating the tree in between shots. About half way through I realized that as I rotated the tree, I was also inching it forward and to the left so I started inching it back during the remaining shots. I’m not sure how much the movement affected the results, but my goal of having a photo that you can “scroll around” didn’t work out. I also wonder if the problem was the backdrop which kept the background the same. My thought was to keep the background neutral so it only saw changes in the tree. At this point I’m uncertain if the problem was my technique or Photosynth’s limitations.

It claims to have used all 26 photos but I don’t see how they’ve been synth’d. Here’s the result, which unfortunately require Internet Explorer on a Windows PC:

Here are all of my attempt at Photosynth:

http://photosynth.net/Search.aspx?query=aldegutis

Note – you will need to install the Photosynth browser plug-in to see the images below. At this time you have to install the client and browser plug-in at the same time, which you can do by click on the below.

While I still can’t get Microsoft’s Photosynth to display the web images on my Windows XP or Vista running in VMWare Fusion v1 (Fusion v2 Beta is required), I was able to get some interesting results with a series of pictures I took of our house and property.

The steps to creating a synth are very simple:

1. 1. Take pictures, preferably enough “connecting photos”
2. 2. Feed the photos to the Photosynth program and it does the rest

My first attempt at creating the necessary photos for a good synth was a simple 360 degree view from a center-ish point in the backyard: camera on a tripod, snapping pictures and slightly rotating the camera for the next shot.  Of the 42 photos I feed it, 76% of them were synthy and the following is the result.

The Photosynth Photography Guide (1Mbyte PDF) says a minimum of 9 photos are needed to create a good synth around a corner.  So I took 103 shots of the southeast corner and east side of our house.  While taking the pictures I ran into an obstacle, our inflatable pool.  I only took a few shots around it concerned that the varying distance will cause a problem or the photos to be dropped from the synth.  I was pleasantly surprised that it was able to incorporate all of them, providing a 3D-ish scrolling effect.  I wish I would have taken more photos going around the pool.

After the synths are uploaded to the Photosynth web site, you can rename them, add or change the description, and delete them.  There is no way to add to, or update an existing photosynth by adding photos.  Also, it doesn’t allow for manual geocoding and I’m not sure how it uses photos with the geodata embedded.  It would be cool if geocoding was an option that could be enabled or disabled for privacy. Maybe these changes will be coming in a future update.

Photosynth is fun.  Taking the pictures isn’t a lot of work, but more effort is required to get a good synth. Luckily the software does all of the complicated work.

Posted by Al Degutis

It should work as I’ve seen reports of a video showing Photosynth working in a VMWare Fusion VM but maybe they were using the v2 beta of Fusion.

So, I installed Photosynth on my Windows XP computer running IE7 and got the exact same error.

I finally got it working on a computer running Windows Vista Business.  Of the 40 images I had it process, it was only able to synth 3 of them.  I went back and was more selective, this time only feeding it 9 images all from the front of the house.  Again, it was only able to synth 3 photos.  This surprised me because i thought there were enough common elements in at least 6 or 7 of these 9 photos.

My third attempt, this time only using images from the back of the house, used 4 of the 9 that I feed it.  The problem was that it stalled at the Publishing Synth stage where it uploads the processed images to the website.  I stopped it after 15 minutes and tried it again.  I still stalled at the publishing step.  While it sat there “publishing” my third synth, I fed it three sunset photos that I used to do a panoramic image in Photoshop over the weekend.  I was curious how well it would handle it.  It failed to connect any of the pieces but I’m not surprised because it had very little common ground, the ground actually, to work with.  Ironically, it finished and uploaded before the stalled third synth completed.  In fact, after 40 minutes I cancelled it.

Good thing this is still in beta stage.  It needs some work just to make the synth’s viewable, more less creating them.

You can see my Photosynth’s here.

Posted by Al Degutis

It is a breathtaking – and death-defying feat – which redefines the term extreme sport.

Battling both gravity and the elements, the climber claws her way up a granite boulder by just her fingertips.

For most, the lack of ropes and safety equipment would be a perilous step too far.

But this woman has gone even further and abandoned her clothes to take part in the new sport of naked rock climbing

Looking at the pictures, my gut instinct is that these women (or it is just one woman?) are not doing this for sport but as a modeling job.  These are the thoughts that come to mind to justify my gut feeling:

• The pictures are all black and white.
• The women appear to be posing more than climbing.  It is possible that Mr. Fidelman is the pro photographer that sits quietly and waits for the right picture.  More realistically he shoots hundreds of digital photos just to get the perfect shot (or pose).
• There is no sense of real height in any of these photos.  The women could be a mere few feet off the ground.
• They don’t seem muscular enough to climb without gear.
• Why aren’t there any pictures of men climbing in the nude?

I searched for Dean Feldman via Google and l found he’s selling a book called “Stone Nudes.”  Maybe he got the idea for the book after capturing these women doing what they love, rock climbing, or maybe it was the other way around.

I think the news outlets are taking advantage of the nudity and the sensationalism of the danger, while Mr. Fidelman reaps the rewards.  By no means I am accusing Mr. Feldman of any wrongdoing.  I’m just saying “I don’t buy it.”

What do you think? Post your comments below.

- Al Degutis