[UA] Wired News :Waterlogged Camera Turns Magic

Mon Apr 1 22:11:11 PST 2002

A note from Hopt:

   A mageekian with his camera.

============================================================

 From Wired News, available online at:
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,51205,00.html

Waterlogged Camera Turns Magic  
By Michelle Delio  

2:00 a.m. April 1, 2002 PST 

Want to teach old technology new tricks? Pray for a random disaster.  

Farrell Eaves' camera was a perfectly ordinary Nikon CoolPix 990 until
he accidentally knocked it into a pond last summer. Now it's a magic camera.   
See also:  -
Digital Cameras Come Into Focus  -
IPhoto Completes Apple's Picture  -
Finally, a Photoshop for OS X  -
Art: Interact with Thee  -
Part Man, Part Film, All Mann  -
Discover more Net Culture  -
Tinker around with Gadgets and
Gizmos

After the accident, Eaves spent weeks broiling, baking and blow-drying
the camera ... but it still sloshed. So he decided to see what a soggy Nikon could do, and soon discovered the resurrected camera was creating curious effects in each image.  

Glowing auras, symmetrical rainbow-hued streaks or pools of brilliant
color appear in every image Eaves captures with the camera. The effects aren't visually random; they make perfect sense within the context of each image.  

"The same effects could probably be created in an image-editing
program by a skilled artist with a lot of free time," Eaves said. "But in my pictures the effects are created by the camera between the moments when I focus the lens and press the shutter. I never know what I'm going to end up with, and I'm always amazed."  

A recently retired security engineer, Eaves, 69, said his magic camera
has given him a new lease on life. His images have been exhibited in a traveling art show in Tennessee, and he's beginning to make prints for sale. He's also been invited to speak at several camera clubs around the country.  

"These really are magical photos taken by a magical photographer,"
said Bruce Dale, a staff photographer for National Geographic for 30 years. "Farrell's work and spirit inspires me."  

Eaves worked as a Navy photographer 50 years ago, and has continued to
study photography seriously over the years, but never earned his living at it. He was attending Dale's annual Pecos River Photo Workshop last August when the incident occurred.  

At the end of the weeklong workshop, Eaves and some classmates decided
to take one last trek along the banks of the river. Eaves spied some interesting textures formed by the curling grasses at the edge of a pond. He mounted his camera on a tripod and prepared to make some photos when -- distracted by noise in the woods -- he bumped into the tripod, sending it and the camera into the pond.  

Eaves waded in and fished the camera out. The slot housing the compact
flash card that serves as a digital camera's "film" had popped open, and water fully flooded the camera. He watched sadly as the lens, viewfinder, monitor, control panel and flash lens slowly fogged over.  

Back at the conference center, Eaves began a salvage operation. He
blew the camera out with compressed gas, broiled it in the sun during the day and baked it over the pilot light of a gas stove at night. He followed this ritual every day for several days, but the camera still gurgled.  

Since he paid $800 for the camera less than a year ago and didn't want
to spend hundreds of dollars to fix it, Eaves tied the camera to the windshield of his car and started driving, hoping exposure to the warm, dry New Mexico air might be a cure.   

After a week on the windshield, the fog on the camera's components
dissipated. Eaves knew it was now time to test the camera. He composed his first shot, pressed the shutter button, and was stunned by what he saw in the camera's preview monitor.  

"The image that appeared in the monitor that first time was different
from any I had ever seen before," Eaves said. "It was not distorted or misshapen, but it revealed colors and patterns that were not at all consistent with what I saw with my eyes."  

Eaves describes that moment as "sheer joy. Or, as the kids put it, a
total rush. A whole new approach to photography was in my hands and on my mind. The years fell away and I felt like a child seeing the world for the first time."  

Each of the 8,000 or so photos Eaves has since taken with the camera
features a different effect. 

"You'd expect to see, say, the same big green blotch or a blue smear
in pretty much the same position in every picture he took," Larry Andell of Cohen Cameras in New York said. "But he's getting effects that look as if they were designed specifically for each image. I would guess the camera is responding to particular color densities in the images it's capturing."  

Eaves has discovered the angle at which the camera is held and the
color temperature of the reflected light alter the effects and colors of the images the camera captures. He's also discovered that the camera does not function well in bright light, "but that's no bother because neither do I," he said.   

Related Wired Links:  

Part Man, Part Film, All Mann  
March 12, 2002 

Smile, You're on Bootleg Camera  
March 8, 2002 

Scholars Who Dig-itize Gutenberg  
March 4, 2002 

Finally, a Photoshop for OS X  
Feb. 25, 2002 

IPhoto Completes Apple's Picture  
Jan. 8, 2002 

Digital Cameras Come Into Focus  
Dec. 22, 2001 

Photoshop: It's All the Rage  
Nov. 19, 2001 

Digi Pens: Anybody Need 'Em?  
Nov. 5, 2001 

_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua