Robotic Buggy Takes Stunning Photos of African Wildlife

[The Straight Story]

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.

Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/robotic-buggy-takes-stunning-photos-of-african-wildlife/#ixzz0let3je2k

[greencharlie]

1. INCREDIBLY cool... nt

[ensho]

2. ditto

nt

[Yunomi]

3. Heh.

All the animals at the link are like "WTF?!?!"

[Fumesucker]

4. I have everything I would need to do that.. Cool idea..