vincent bidaux  freelance web and application design

The video piece has been released several months ago, and still it leaves me speechless. I like everything in this concept : the white dominant color, the textures, story and animations.

I can’t figure how long it takes to endup with such an animation…

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

I also love this one, filmed by charlywashere for Youtube :

• More videos from Blu on Vimeo
• Blu’s home on blublu.org

UPDATE : a very recent flick appeared this morning on Le Collagiste blog, a time lapse giant painting in Berlin. I’m still a fan.

Friend Clement Keyms sent me this link this morning. Google could be testing a Mac version of Picasa. Could be. No one made commentaries neither answered questions.

This could be the best photo news for OS X since… since never, as iPhoto never tried to correct itself from the huge interface and philosophy mistakes. If this was true, it could make me seriously reconsider using Picasa Web Albums again… reconsider only, it will need really strong enhancements to make me leave Flickr and the already fast-growing social network I’m building on it.

Could could could… Won’t talk about it again till it’s real NEWS!

• Appleinsider
• Picasa
• Picasa Web Albums
• iPhoto

SO whatever happens, it’s going to be disponible very soon everywhere and especially here in Paris! Yeah.

“One day, or another…”

I was browsing Keith Loutit blog this morning and I found new tilt shifted video bits. You should go back to his blog regularily because he is very productive these days.

Metal Heart from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

The North Wind Blew South from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Very inspiring! If you still think these are models animation, please check this post for an explanation.

From 2006, there’s a popular video around that every geek have seen many times. It features some 3D objects floating in a live video scene.

Do you remember it ?

Today, you can play with this in your office with your webcam. It’s as simple as going there : http://interactive.digitalpictures.com.au/?p=392 , having a flash player running, and a printer. You have to first print a symbole like this one :

… and then show it up to the camera, who is going to recogize it to place a 3D object, live, on it, respecting angles and depth. Here my first test:

First Augmented Reality test with webcam and Papervision from vincent.b on Vimeo.

• Augmented Reality on Wikipedia
• try it by yourself!

Everyday I have this feverish look to the Google Photos Blog section of my Netvibes dashboard, deseperately waiting for an OS X annoucement of Picasa. But no. It’s been two years now and nothing.

Some good news for Windows users

Today, however, Picasa 3 is no more a beta. Google is very often accused of volontarily leaving its product into beta stage forever, such as Gmail, but this is not true for a lot of services and softwares. Picasa 3 is amazing. It has this new feature that allow you to synchronize your albums with their online storage on Picasa Web Albums. Just put it on and you don’t even have to worry about putting your pics online, they’ll go by themselves. Even better, if you change your mind on some edits or recrops the next day, just proceed with the new versions in Picasa and online update will follow. This is truly amazing, because keeping things stupid simpleallowed the Picasa dev team to cut out the whole photo upload process.

Of course, I think, this feature is only available for Picasa Web Album online storage. Wich is sad. I have been a customer for that service, one of the earliest. I uploaded my whole pictures collection on it. Tons of files. And I’ve been very disappointed with the service, especially the lack of full size preview and the speed of the servers. So I moved to Flickr. This was a pain in the ass because I had so much pics, but with a litle help from friends and things like a PERL uploader on a linux server, I could go through it quite easyly.

Picasa is free, to advertise Picasa Web Albums

I understand that Picasa is free and is intended to advertise Picasa Web albums. But in my dream, I can synchronize it with Flickr too. I would pay for such a version of Picasa.

Since my last post about it, I wrote about these issues and whishes in google forums, I found a lot of people feeling the same way, but couldn’t get any feedback from Google.

Picasa is open to third party plugins

For a long time I thought Picasa was totaly closed and had no open API. It has. On Picasa, plugins are called buttons, and they take place in the button bar at the bottom of the app. As soon as it’s pressed, an HTML interface pops up, to propose you, for example, a Flickr or ImagesHack upload.

• Picasa 3 is for Windows, it’s final, and it’s free

Sunday TV is back! With a bunch of recent films that are definitely making the buzz around them.

First one is Rêverie from tha American photographer Vincent Laforet. You may find it very cheesy with a truly bad music, and you may be right. What is important in this movie is how it has been done, and how much beautiful are the images taken. Because there’s a trick : Vincent laforet has been the first photographer to beable to play around with the upcoming Canon EOS 5D Mark II video feature. 3 days, a lot of memory cards, one single battery and mutiple charges, one helicopter, and here is  small piece shot in a perfect 1920×1080 H264 36Mbits/s video file. Full HD it is, enhanced by the ability to use Canon’s pro lenses and to benefit from the short depth of field they offer. Have a look.

Vincent Laforet from Vilis Skuja on Vimeo.

And here is the camera! Can’t tell you how much I am eager t be late November to get it. It’s been  5 months now I have no decent body to play with.

Looks good and simple as the previous model isn’t it? Will probably get this lens too:

I’ve never been found of video capabilities of camera bodies, but I have to say I m really excited to try this one out. Hey, it’s not like a small video feature, it’s a video feature that looks better than what actual video cam are producing… let’s wait and see.

Also this week I’ve been amazed by Keith Loutit’s work. He has tilt-shift shot beach and sea scenaries, to ply them at a higher speed. Tilt-shifting consist in reducing the depth of field range by tilting the lens. You can achieve this effect with this kind of lens:

This one comes from a company named Lensbaby, and is not that much expensive ($100-150). When tilt-shifted, a shot appears as if it was a reduced model shot. The effect here is really enhanced by the increased speed, also called time-lapsed. Here are the threee pieces Loutit’s came up with. It’s like magic.

Beached from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Bathtub II from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Check these links to get more info:

• 5D Mark II video samples on Dpreview.com
• 5D Mark II hand on preview on Dpreview.com
• Vincent Laforet website
• Vincent Laforet blog
• Vincent laforet on wikipedia
• Keith Loutit’s home on Vimeo
• Tilt-shift, wikipedia
• Tilt-shift pool on Flickr
• Lensbaby lenses for tilt-shifting

Is Fraunhofer Institute a name that sounds familiar to you? Well, it could. Back in he early 90’s, they invented the Mpeg1 Audio Layer 3 format, better known as MP3. Yeah. Heroes indeed.

This German is working on a very wide range of projects involving technology. At Photokina 2008, thy were presenting one of their newest live face analysis software.

Quite fun, as it detects not only the faces but their expression. And it’s pretty accurate.

It also get the gender, and we could not fool it even with many tricks.

Chances are that the first wide commercial application for it will be for advertisers, to get live and massive analysis of people reaction in front of a advertisement, a TV show or any other manifestation. More complex systems interracting instantly with the audience will follow.

Fraunhofer

I am in Köln for the biggest european photo fair. I could not imagine this was this big and awesome. Conferences in Paris are so lame compare with. After one full day I barely saw half of it, and already had a lot of very good surprises. I’m spending a very nice time with Thierry and Arnaud from the “D” project… Lots of laughs. (More to say about the “D” project in november.)