hacked.works
James Brown"Animated Bokeh" has been on my whiteboard for a long time, and this is the result.
I thought it would just be for cheesy novelty effects, but it also does lightfield manipulation that was cooler than I expected.
YouTube
I made a deliberate decision not to put Bad Apple or Doom on this, YouTube commenters be damned.
But I'm going to put Doom on it, aren't I?
The firmware is now here: https://github.com/AncientJames/aperture
There's a simulator if you're interested in exploring what it does. I'm still tidying up the hardware.
Doom on a circle of confusion
I'm not planning to sell these, but I'm tempted to start selling cleaning cloths which apparently nobody's heard of.
evilstevie@ancientjames I'll admit to getting twitchy a couple of times watching the vid.
/speccy idiot and photographer
Had another go at this - A more artificial setup, but easier to see what's going on.
It is playable by the way. In the sense that you can move and fire, that is, not in the sense that it's at all *playable*.
root42@ancientjames wow. So in a couple of words: you put a monochrome LCD in front of the sensor of a DSLR and have it play Doom, which you can see if the lens is out of focus?
Jonathan@ancientjames wow, glad you did it.
@ancientjames I feel like this tech is going to make it into some indie scifi movie before too long, its too good.
@jonbro I like it in this rut. It's cosy.
Hanneke@ancientjames wow that’s way more recognisable than I expected 😄
Sam@ancientjames that has got to be one of the dumbest things I've ever seen and I love it.
River WangI knew that's what you would do.
I knew it from the beginning.
halcy 
@ancientjames holy shit
Graham Sutherland / Polynomial@ancientjames took me three watches to realise I was supposed to be looking at the marble, but as soon as I figured that out... holy crap! that's remarkable.
F4GRX Sébastien@ancientjames @gsuberland ah. Thanks!
@gsuberland Sorry, terrible framing
@ancientjames all good, it looks awesome
0xC0DEC0DE07EA@gsuberland @ancientjames there’s no way to do grayscale on that display, right? So you couldn’t balance the amount of light coming through over time or anything.
@c0dec0dec0de @gsuberland It's passive matrix, so reacts slowly - I'm doing greyscale in that port by alternating dither patterns between frames, which smooths adequately. I didn't make any attempt to keep the brightness level consistent though.
@ancientjames @gsuberland it’s fucking crazy, man.
poleguy looking for lost tools@ancientjames This is the best thing I've seen all week... all Month... only February... all year!
Mark J. Blair@ancientjames If you wanted to defy expectations, you could put a nice rickroll on it instead.
@NF6X That's one to slip into the background of a future video.
Greg Bell@ancientjames Doom doesn't make any sense in this application; so yes obviously.
@ancientjames the ⚠️ bokeh was so good
@gsuberland @ancientjames definitely a great one that would really make some photographs just pop.
Esteban Küber 
@c0dec0dec0de @gsuberland @ancientjames even better in video by taking advantage of it being animated, you can go from a circular iris to the ⚠️ smoothly while keeping the same f-stop. It would work great as a way of representing a spider sense kind of reaction.
Empterdose@gsuberland @ancientjames Yeah, that one made me cackle out loud.
Nathan Arthur@ancientjames @awilbert what an incredible breadth of skills you have! And the imagination (and fortitude!) to put them together this way! Just… wow!
Ge0rG@ancientjames this is so wild and exciting! 🤯
I couldn't imagine that creating an active lens mount adapter is within the skills of a single person. For sure it's far beyond my skills, even though I often wished I had a way to create an active adapter for my abandoned Samsung NX camera system.
@narthur
�@ge0rg @ancientjames @narthur i dont even understand how it works. sunglass + lcd = transparent? but as soon you add a pixel, it is intransparent?
Joe Mansfield@utf_7 @ge0rg @ancientjames @narthur
LCD panels work by changing the polarization of the light as it passes through. Adding the polarising sunglass lens at a perpendicular angle makes it able to turn on and off pixels to selectively allow light through.
The execution of the idea is incredible.
Luci Bitchface Angerfoot@utf_7 @ge0rg @ancientjames @narthur lcds require polarising filters to be able to see. Polarised light is interesting; it’s light with a grain. a filter that has opposite grain blocks the light. tilt it to match the grain it lets light through. the liquid crystal is like programmable polariser; you’re controlling the angle of the grain of the light passing through; not whether it gets blocked directly
@utf_7 @ge0rg @ancientjames @narthur a side effect is this could in theory be developed to a mode that automatically erases all reflections or deep atmospheric fog; (fog looks white cos it’s got chaotic grain. you can filter fog out with a polariser)
Fabian@ancientjames this is so lovely!
... Can you play bad apple on it?
max@ancientjames this is really cool. interesting to see the Uffington White Horse on there, are you from Oxfordshire or something?
Tobias@ancientjames This is soooo cool
lymenziesBrilliantly done with excellent fit and finish.
Bornach@ancientjames
You have completely generalised the concept I saw someone did mechanically in a short
https://youtube.com/shorts/hgjK57kYGks
Also if you used the same binary patterns as in structured light photography you essentially have turned your camera into a slow Lytro Light Field camera
https://youtu.be/TcXMf0mTh94
Although you'd need a very steady hand to capture the 4D lightfield
I Built a Spinning Camera Filter and This Happened!
@bornach Oh nice - my initial concept was going to be mechanical, like a zoetrope.
myrmepropagandistI have that same miniware hotplate love it.
Putting this right on #fediTV
Flipper 🐬🏳️🌈@ancientjames I love that you do this, but I hate that you make it look so easy, but I love that, because you make it look so easy, I feel encouraged to give it a try.
@flipper I really want people watching my videos to see that these things can be done by one person, quite cheaply, at home. I always try to include some of the missteps and experiments along the way, but I always end up cutting those bits because they make it hard to follow what's actually going on. The result is a video that makes it seem as though I knew from the start what I was doing and how to do it, but the reality is a lot more haphazard and meandering.
robryk@ancientjames @flipper
On the off chance you didn't try: would partitioning everything into "main flow" and "failed sidepath" and indicating failed sidepath with a colored border or something make things easier to follow?
On the off chance you didn't try: would partitioning everything into "main flow" and "failed sidepath" and indicating failed sidepath with a colored border or something make things easier to follow?
Gabriel N@ancientjames amazing stuff! The results are magical. This remind me of the weird shadows during an eclipse.
Z̈oé@ancientjames absolutely amazing! loved the build video and animation. great work
Lily Ingersoll / Briar@ancientjames stunning!
gustav@ancientjames This is amazing, great work!
Could you selectively open each cell in a grid in order to do make a light field representation of the image, sort of how the light field camera that came out a few years ago worked (Lytra iirc)?
Build question: How does the LCD let light through the sun glass shade? Something to do with polarization? Do you need to use special sun glasses or will any work? Would love to experiment with a diy projector using an LCD like this!
I've seen research work using coded apertures, this method would take it to another level.
https://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs448a-08-spring/levin-coded-aperture-sig07.pdf
@gustav LCDs need a polariser on the front and back surface, and the liquid crystal in between twists the polarisation so that it either passes through both, or is blocked by one of them. In modifying the phone screen to be transparent, I had to peel off the original (reflective) back polariser. The bit with the glasses is me replacing that with a transparent polariser.
@ancientjames holy fuckballs that’s such a simple idea with such a great effect. Not so simple to make though 😂 very impressive
Amazing
Chris Mills@ancientjames this is one of the coolest things I've seen in ages. I love it!
lj·rk@ancientjames This has some kiwami-japan vibes, absolutely mesmerizing!
@ancientjames are you kidding me? you invented a lytro lense by accident
Carlos Solís@ancientjames Today I learned you also have a PeerTube channel! makertube.net/c/ancient/videos
