Robotic Buggy Takes Stunning Photos of African Wildlife
Wildlife photographers will risk life and limb to get the perfect close-up, but a few ingenious hacks can make the process easier.
Shutterbug Will Burrard-Lucas and his brother Matthew rigged up a four-wheel-drive, remote-control buggy called BeetleCam that has a DSLR camera mounted on top. Almost Wall-E like in its appearance, the BeetleCam can click photos of African wildlife from a ground-level perspective.
“We like to get really close to the animals with a wide-angle lens,” Will Burrard-Lucas told Wired.com. “That’s the photo we really enjoy getting.”
Conventional photographers use either a telephoto lens or camera traps — stationary cameras triggered to click when an animal breaks an invisible infra-read beam — to get close-ups of wild animals. But while telephoto lenses zoom in on the animal, they cut out the beautiful landscape, while camera traps require a great degree of patience and more than a fair share of luck.
A remote-controlled buggy with a wide-angle lens could offer a new perspective, says Burrard-Lucas.
“We can find the animals and use BeetleCam to approach it and we wouldn’t have to fear for our lives,” he says.
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http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/robotic-buggy-takes-stunning-photos-of-african-wildlife/#ixzz0let3je2k