Spring Bees
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For those in need of something seasonal. Bees at work on a few flowers.
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cameras | reviews | spain | Switzerland | Uncategorized | virtual reality
Experimenting with Spherical photographs
I was in Spain with the Ricoh Theta S last week so I took the opportunity to experiment with the Ricoh Theta S in a number of locations. What I like about such a device is that it takes a click to get pictures. I experimented with a manfrotto monopod and a smaller monopod. The Manfrotto base was clearly visible in shots so the immersive experience is degraded. With the smaller monopod the base is the same width as that of the camera. This means that at least the support was hidden.
runners in Denia, Spain – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA
The first image was taken at Denia port, showing two runners running along the port wall/promenade. You can look around and see that the sea was flat, that the car park is relatively full and buildings behind the scene. It provides you with context.
Post from RICOH THETA. – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA
The second image is taken with the monopod fully extended so that it is among the branches of the trees. You can see a light house ahead and you can look at the tree at the same time.
theta archaeology. 🙂 – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA
It would be interesting to experiment with archeology and 360 pictures and video. Instead of placing the camera to one side and having the camera operator choose what you see the action could take place around the camera and the viewer, sitting in a swivel chair could turn and look at where the most interesting thing is happening next. You can zoom in and out within reason, to see details or to see a wider picture.
Post from RICOH THETA. – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA
At the Denia Marina part of a bar is floating on the water. it has a sphere of sun shades around with speakers and lights. You can sit in comfortable seats and look up. A conventional image would show the dome from outside but with a spherical camera you can capture the feeling of being in the centre of the structure.
my camera and I, between shots. 🙂 – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA
This image was taken in Basel during a recent trip. This location is ideal for 360/spherical images because each wall is covered with paintings, the clock is decorated and more. As it surrounds you the subject lends itself well to 360° photography.
a rock outcrop – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA
For the last image I went to sea level and photographed the view from a headland and beaches on either side. One of those beaches has bars and a number of people whereas the other beach is nice and quiet. It is nice to look at these images and get a feel for the place.
The challenge in taking these photos is how to get the camera in to an interesting place and hide yourself or the support for the camera. I usually knelt down and tried to stay directly below the camera. The other option is to find a system to stand the camera at the right height but make the monopod invisible. With multi-camera setups parallax makes hiding tripods and other objects easier. The next step is to find a base that makes hiding the stand simple.
Cosmic Trip – Physical Video gaming – Throw it like a frisbee
Physical Video Gaming
Physical video gaming is coming of age thanks to the HTC Vive and related Games. Cosmic Trip is one of these games. You can use both controllers to prepare machines that will prepare robots for mining and defence. These two sets of robots are autonomous. The more resources you mine and the more robots you have. These robots are attacked on a regular basis so defence is important. The laser robots provide some assistance. You can attack the enemy bots by throwing disks at them as if you were throwing frisbees. Most people should find this instinctive.
In the last 17 hours more than half a million people watched the video on how to play this game. The game is still in development and building up hype for when it is released properly. The creator of the video above now has eleven million subscribers on youtube. When he produces a video eleven million people are notified that there is a new video to watch.
Out of those 11 million subscribers on youtube only 1.6 million follow on twitter and a quarter of a million on Facebook. Within the next year or two I would like to see social networks such as Youtube and others expand and become niche communities where people can find content of interest without using Facebook or Twitter. I found Jack Septiceye content when I was searching for VR demos. I use youtube rather than Twitter and Facebook because I don’t want content creators and sharers to tell me how to feel or why the content is of value. I want to make that decision for myself. Youtube and social networks that allow us to browse and discover content based on niche interests are going to become increasingly important.
The creators of the game have just two thousand eight hundred followers on Twitter and approaching one thousand on Facebook. When youtube personalities make videos about products they provide companies with a lot of extra visibility. You reach game players, people who want to see what new technology such as the HTC Vive can do and people who like to watch gameplay videos without necessarily being game players themselves.
Niche Audiences
Twitter and Facebook haveĂ‚Â focused on broadcasting rather than niche audiences. As a result of this strategy they have lost their stickiness. This leads to people spending less and less time on their social networks. This opens up opportunities for Youtube and other content aggregation sites. The more content you watch on Youtube the more recommendations you will get based on your taste. This cuts out the middle man, in this case Facebook and Twitter. We reduce the signal to noise ratio. We increase the user’s Return on Investment.
Google’s shift from narrow casting to broadcasting.
Earlier this week Google decided that it would shift from subsidising narrowcasting content makers to favouring “broadcasters”. This was demonstrated with their shift towards rewarding content creators with higher requirements. In order to be a youtube partner, you need people to have viewed 4000hrs worth of content and have over 1000 subscribers.
A few years ago when you browsed Youtube you would easily browse through hundreds of videos before finding content worth watching. You would then browse and find more content. It was organic.Â
In recent months I have noticed a shift towards the sensationalist and tabloid. Most headlines are now clickbait. As an experiment log out of Google and look at the top youtube content.Â
Instead of seeing 16-30 videos you see ten videos. The content that they want you to see has been whittled down. This means that unless you have a big audience, clickbait titles and are already authoritative you will be invisible. The amateur aspect of Youtube is gone. It is being replaced by the authoritarianism of mass appeal.Â
The Upside
There are hundreds of thousands of content creators that had accepted to have adverts as pre-roll, as banners or at the end of the videos. Google and Youtube no longer take advantage of the long tail. Most of us create content that is seen a few hundred times and the revenue is minimal. Marketers still paid youtube for the visibility and youtube still made money off our backs. We were never going to see that money. It would have taken years for us to earn enough for an electronic transfer to be made. Youtube was the clear winner until they decided to stop making free money from us
The second upside is that we’re going to be able to browse videos and find acceptable content more easily until recently we were forced to watch from 5 seconds to two minutes of advert before watching five seconds and clicking away. Without adverts, we will see the video is mediocre and move on sooner.Â
The opportunity
When youtube was young it provided a unique opportunity because it gave us “unlimited” space and bandwidth for the sharing videos. Neither of these is scarce anymore. The barriers to sharing videos on our websites have decreased. HTML5 and above, h.265 and H.264 make it lighter for us to upload and share video content from our own websites.
Conclusion
Youtube was a great place for browsing and finding interesting content to watch but as algorithms and populism took over the website so the ease with which we could find random interesting content has decreased. From 30 videos to choose