The Camera Restricta will force you to take unique photos
Sep 9, 2015
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Open any social media platform and you’re pretty much guaranteed to see the same type of photos. If you’ve got a friend in Paris there will a photo of the Eiffel Tower and your cousin visiting NYC just posted a filtered photo of the Statue of Liberty. Two of your friends posted selfies at the gym and fifteen others posted pics from last night’s concert.
Enter the Camera Restricta. This prototype camera uses a GPS to track your location and then searches for photos geotagged in the same area. Should there be too many photos uploaded online from your location, the shutter button will retract and the viewfinder will show a big red “X”, effectively preventing you from taking another photo at an already overly-popular location.
“Algorithms are already looking through the viewfinder alongside with you: they adjust settings, scan faces and take a photo when you smile”, Phillip Schmitt, a designer and artist, writes on his website. “What if your grin wasn’t the only thing they cared about?”
“With digital photography displacing film, taking pictures has essentially become free, resulting in an infinite stream of imagery”, he adds.
In order to determine if an area has been photographed too many times, an area of 35×35 meters around the camera’s location is scanned for photos geotagged on Flickr and Panoramio, with thousands of photos often found at tourist attractions.
In addition to a display on the camera’s screen indicating how many photos have been found from your approximate location, acoustic feedback is also provided similar to a Geiger counter.
Obviously the Camera Restricta cannot identify or rank a photo’s uniqueness, so while it might prevent exquisite photos at popular sites, it will guarantee its photos are at least somewhat unique by allowing them to be taken only at less frequently visited places. Such a device could even encourage people to discover new areas that have not been photographed previously.
The video below provides a few examples from across the globe demonstrating how many photos were taken at specific landmarks and how similar the photos are. Keep in mind that these are only the photos that were geotagged on Flickr and Panoramio, and only from within a 35×35 meter area.
Other than restricting photography at places that are too popular, Schmitt says the “disobedient tool“ could also be used to restrict photography at designated areas.
The recent proposal to amend the Freedom of Panorama, which allows copyrighted buildings and sculptures to be incorporated in photos, is given as an example of a situation when the Camera Restricta’s limiting features could be implemented. In this sense I’m glad this is just a concept design and luckily the proposal fell through.
Where such technology could be implemented more successfully is at museums and such. Other than it being easier to ban photography inside a building than outside of it, it is also more practical. This is due to the fact that you’d have to be in the museum itself to take photos of the artwork, while you could position yourself at extremely varying distances from a building and still be able to photograph it.
Schmitt compares this active form of censorship to that implemented in flatbed scanners. In case you weren’t aware, these scanners include software that prevents bank notes from being scanned.
In a sense this is very similar to the no-fly zones programmed into drones, and in theory this technology could be implemented in devices such as smartphones or camera which use operating systems such as Android.
The Camera Restricta itself is built of 3D-printed body, a smartphone that provides the GPS, data connection, sounds, and the camera screen, and an open source app. A built in microcontroller is in charge of retracting the shutter when needed.
“It is a speculation on a possible new generation of cameras where the once obedient tool becomes an authority,” Schmitt concludes.
The next step should be to invent a camera that prevents users from capturing selfies.
[via The Creators Project]
Liron Samuels
Liron Samuels is a wildlife and commercial photographer based in Israel. When he isn’t waking up at 4am to take photos of nature, he stays awake until 4am taking photos of the night skies or time lapses. You can see more of his work on his website or follow him on Facebook.
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19 responses to “The Camera Restricta will force you to take unique photos”
As an “art” and technology project this concept is both interesting and terrifying.
i will not buy it. that is for sure! :)
Phenomenally STUPID IDEA! The photographer should be encouraged to shoot a unique image at a popular subject, not restricted!
Another useless product that will die eventually after the hipster phase is over
gotta be a hoax :D No one would be stupid enough to buy this shit. :D
“Where the once obedient tool becomes an authority”
Because what we need in this world is another form of authority telling us what we can and can’t do…
are we really at that point? What about quality over quantity, there can be 19 000 000 pictures of a place, but how many of quality. And still in that lot, some are unique depending time of the day, event, season, and the photographic approah taken. I think this idea is more for instagram, geolocated crap pictures taken with a phone?
pointless and expensive.
Soooo… buy a camera that tells me when, where, and how I should take a picture??? How does that make anyone of us more creative?…
The point of photography is about capturing the moment that the photographer finds themselves in or the moment they are able to create… Sometimes that means taking a picture a million other people have taken (because that is your moment) and other times it’s to transport others to that moment…
Art project – but it reflects the underlying snobbery of some photographers.
I think the basic premise for this idea is flawed. It’s basically saying that once a sufficient number of photos are taken in a location, no other photographer will be able to produce a unique photograph there. I’d rather see that as a challenge than simply turn away to try to find something that hasn’t been visited before. Philosophically, it argues the value of the ephemeral, rather than the enduring. A decade from now, a century from now, should anyone bother to take a photo of the pyramids?
So there’s a built-in Geiger counter, I hear.
At first, while watching the video, I thought it was a joke, but now, if it’s actually real, it makes me wonder. On one hand it makes sense, it tries to make you shoot unique photos, but on the other, isn’t photography about learning to see things from a new perspective? Why “restrict” the photographer to shoot what they like? Obviously the design isn’t that perfect, it obviously can’t tell one angle from another to realize you’re shooting from a new angle. The camera itself has a completely comical design, especially with the antenna sticking out of it. If anything like this ever existed, I don’t see it appealing to anyone but hipsters like the “actress” in the promotional video.
stupid product
So what if I am at a popular spot and aliens land in front of it…to have lunch with a Sasquatch. I’m not going to be able to take a pic because my camera says there are too many pics already!? Yes, sign me up
So if aliens land in a well photograped place you will not get the best pay out shot of all time.
That camera sounded like a Geiger Counter!
Ha ha ha ha ha ha …….continues laughing for several minutes.
The Nanny State goes digital.
I think it will be more easier if someone just make an app for it. All the phone nowadays have GPS, Camera and internet. Why do I need another hardware for this?
Anyway, it wouldn’t be a bad idea if a Major Manufacture like Nikon, Cannon..etc integrated this tech into their camera and use the phone as a hotspot or wifi to obtain these kind of data for photographic purpose.