http://www.satugo.com/

Simply throw SatuGO into the motive to catch the moment, where it hits you get a picture, or take air photos by activating the timer before throwing (it)(…) SatuGO is based on a simple wish to be able to take more fun and edgy pictures where the photographer is part of the action.

Camera tossing is a technique for taking pictures by throwing a camera in mid- air; it is fun and quite addictive, but it can be quite risky too, especially for newcomers: -”I failed to catch the camera, and it almost broke!”, a reader told me yesterday. Even though there´s many of us who have at least one old digital camera that we can afford to break, not every cheapo webcam has a built-in timer, which limits very much the scope of results you can obtain. In this way, I certainly can´t but applaud the initiave hold by freelance designers Eschel Jacobsen and Mads Ny Larsen, who have devised a camera which works best when tossed. The SatuGO (short for See, Aim, Throw, captUre and GO) is an almost impossible acronym but a very plausible concept. Externally it looks like a stylish webcam, and in fact it can work as a webcam, but the Satugo will take pictures when hitting something. Even more, it has a built-in timer, so you can throw it and it will take a picture while in mid-air (you can take regular pictures too, of course, and it has an internal 1GB memory). Nice, isn´t it?

So far the Satugo is a concept, but I don´t see any reason why it couldn´t be a success. Its main drawbacks, from my point of view, are the lack of an exposure time control, which would be very useful in obtaining spirograph-like pictures, a design which looks kinda fragile (you´re supposed to be throwing it so that it hits stuff), and a price, 69$, perhaps too high (though an estimate for now). The only other thing I didn´t like is more about the marketing in the camera´s web site (linked above): if you read the descriptions, there´s a point where it says: “SatuGO is not just fun and games. If you want to take SatuGO seriously then use it as your webcam”. Actually I think that the SatuGO should be marketed as the camera-of-choice for serious camera tossers; since the technique is getting widespread, but is still not globalised, there´s a chance that the SatuGo could become a synonym of it, much like the minimoog is for synthesizers. Or maybe not, but it won´t pass into History as a webcam (though a very stylish webcam -have I said this before? ).

All said, Eschel&Mads are searching for support, both from the manufacturers and the users. Their site is a little misleading in respect to how many people already have expressed their desire to buy the camera, but I´ll take the number of 4003 people, which certainly is not bad at all. There´s 52 pages of feedback in the site, with some interesting remarks and suggestions (underwater pics! nice idea, especially if you throw it and it falls in a puddle). Really, with some tweaks and that little bit of luck, this camera will rock&roll!!

ps. Tarugo is spanish for blockhead (not really an insult); the title in spanish “no seas tarugo, lanza tu satugo” just sounded too good to discard it -I think it´s just as cheesy in english anyway

Related Article: Throw the camera!

Tags:experimental , gadgets , photography

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