Ubi-Camera Makes Your Fingers The Frame

Making a frame of your fingers, peering through it and telling pretty people "yeah baby, yeah, work it for the camera" may one day actually result in photographs rather than odd looks, if researchers at Japan's Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences get their way. Their Ubi-Camera concept puts the lens onto a finger and uses the wearer's distance from the finger-frame to control zoom, DigInfo reports, doing away with viewfinders and displays that add a layer of disconnect between you and the subject.

A proximity sensor in the lens assembly tracks the distance between the wearer's face and the frame they make with their fingers. "When you take a photo with your face close to the camera, you get a wide-angle shot like" the team behind the concept says, "and if you move it further away, you can take a close up shot."

The current prototype is tethered to a nearby computer, which does the heavy crunching for things like zooming, monitoring user position and the like. However, the eventual goal is to package everything up in a standalone unit which could be easily dropped into a pocket.

It'll need a few more tweaks before that's ready, though, including changing the proximity sensor system. Right now, an infrared range sensor is used, which apparently can be confused by direct sunlight. A more polished version could use a second camera for facial-recognition instead.

[via Dvice]