Ubi-Camera: Turn your hands into the viewfinder

The Ubi-Camera is new, but it seems familiar the moment you see it. The ad hoc viewfinder is a throwback to the classic pose you’ve seen film directors strike to frame shots and it also bears semblance to the work done by Pranav Mistry on the Sixth Sense project.

The prototype device by researchers at Japan’s Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences is an experiment in designing a miniature camera without skimping on the viewfinder. There’s no LCD, instead, you slip the tiny camera onto your index finger, frame a shot with your L-framed hands and adjust the focus with the help of an infrared sensor: move your hands closer to your face for wide-angle shots or further away for close-ups. You snap a picture by pressing the side-mounted shutter button with your thumb.

In its prototype stage the Ubi-Camera has to be tethered to a PC to figure out the zoom and the infrared sensor can be thrown off by lighting conditions, but a mobile unit is in the works and the researchers hope to build in face detection to make measuring distance more precise.

We here at Gearburn have a suggestion for a front-facing camera gesture, vogue.