Photography is a great art form, but it can be painstaking to get everything just right, particularly when it comes to lighting. After all, if you can’t see your subjects, what’s the point of getting a picture in the first place Well, the researchers at MIT and Cornell have come up with an interesting lighting solution – and it involves drones. Yes, drones.
The teams have created a flying flash rig that connects a light meter, photographic flash and continuous light source, allowing photographers to get their ideal shots from any given angle. The robot manages to figure out the position of the object and the shooter when it hovers, and can also light subjects with very specific lighting, which in turn lets the photographer take the shot they want.
According to the teams, the idea of “rim width – the desired width, from the camera’s perspective, of the subject’s illuminated border” to “enable delicate rim lighting of action shots” is put into play. From there, the lighting effect “is often referred to as back light or even hair lights, (and) is simply light placed on your subject which gives the appearance of a light outline.”
“The challenge was the manipulation of the very difficult dynamics of the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) and the feedback from the lighting estimation,” said researcher Fredo Durand. “That’s where we put a lot of our efforts, to make sure that the control of the drone could work at the very high speed that’s needed just to keep the thing flying and deal with the information from the lidar (the UAV’s laser rangefinder) and the rim-lighting estimation.”
No word on if the device will be available to the public, but chances are professional photographers would jump all over it. Will wedding parties begin to includes drones to help get the perfect shot
Source: TechCrunch
