Kitty and Spider

I learned something new about spiders.

The cat was chasing something around the living room floor that I expected was probably a spider.  When the chase finally took the kitty behind the armoire, my daughter took a picture of him back there with her phone.

As usual, it was a picture of a cat with eyes glowing brightly from the flash.

I remarked that it would be really funny if you could, in fact, see the spider's eyes glowing, too.

Looking at the picture, she replied, You can!

So there they were, a kitty and a spider, both with glowing eyes.  I had no idea that spider eyes did that!  (Or at least some part of a spider).

We could even stand there,  sight along our phone flashlights aimed directly at the spider and see the little reflections, very distinct and bright.  It looked like there were two of them even though I was pretty sure that arachnids have eight eyes.

Beyond The Rule of Thirds: Advanced Composition With David Brommer

In this B&H Event Space seminar, David Brommer takes you “Beyond The Rule of Thirds” by discussing many different aspects of photographic composition. The entire seminar will take about two hours to watch from start to finish, but the information Brommer covers — from positive and negative space,...

via Flipboard

The Lost Beatles Photos

Rare Shots From 1964-1966

Photos of the Fab Four by photographer Bob Bonis from Rolling Stone.

Amazing Star Trails

RT @matthiasrascher

Star trails over the Australian Outback by photographer Lincoln Harrison. http://t.co/4xqLJQun #photography #space

My Next Camera?

Samsung Introduces A Trio Of New Cameras as reported on TechCrunch by Jordan Crook.

I really like using my Nexus S as a camera but it lacks a good zoom lens. So, what I really need is something like a smart phone with a bigger lens stuck on it. The Samsung MV800 really looks a lot like this! The other two models in this article also look intriguing.

Could this be enough to make me give up my infatuation with the Olympus PEN series, which is probably too expensive anyway?

My main motivation is the growing need to replace my aging DV tape video camera.

***

Mon 2012-04-02 03:58:19 -0400


Updated.  Here are the cameras I'm referring to above, for reference.


Samsung MV800
Samsung NX200
Samsung WB750

Pretty Time Lapse of Night Sky

[VIDEO] A radio astronomer's eyes.

Feeling Deep, Heavy Pain

At the passing of Kodachrome.

There's a Kodachrome slide of me as a baby with almost perfect color.  I shot many rolls of Kodachrome 25 and Kodachrome 64  in the latter half of the 70s and early 80s.  Because it's Kodachrome, we'll be looking at those brilliant reds for years to come, but there won't be any new images.

This past Thanksgiving I drug out my old Kodak Carousel projector, dug out some old slide trays and old yellow boxes, went to the old camera store and bought a spare ELH lamp in case the over-25-year-old bulb in the projector expired (it didn't!) and showed some slides to the family.

Like everyone else, I've succumbed to making digital images for the past few years.   I knew this day was inevitable.  Still, it's sad to see it come.

So long.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPvF1MOU2kE

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/us/30film.html?_r=3

Digital Photography

I have to say, I'm not convinced that unloading, editing, cropping, fooling around with color corrections, uploading, organizing, adding captions, publishing on-line, putting them in the blog, etc., is less time-consuming than mixing D-76, stop bath, fixer, loading the tank, printing contact sheets, etc., etc.

Or at least dropping rolls of Kodachrome in the mailers and sending them to the Kodachrome lab was pretty easy.

But, yeah, the finished product is different.  I guess it's apples and oranges.  Still, there's no push button convenience to be found here.  Where are the Jetsons when you need them!

Truth be told, there's something I really miss about the equipment, chemicals, working with light of an enlarger, etc., though I don't think I could ever go back.

Best Space Probe Photographers of the Decade

The images in this Discovery Space article, Best Space Probe Photographers of the Decade, are amazing and fresh!  They are different from the images we see the most.

Pictures of Comet McNaught

These are amazing pictures from Comet McNaught C/2006 P1 from back in 2006.

Seeing the Invisible

Wow, these shadowgrams in the New York Times are amazing! They were made by Gary Settles, director of the gas dynamics laboratory at Penn State.

I really like picture 3 of the AK-47 shooting a bullet. The bullet is supersonic and has a nice double-shock cone along with a little trail of turbulance. It's clearly outrunning the spherical shockwave from the main explosion from the gun muzzle. It's also extremely interesting that there is no sound or anything else coming from any other part of the gun than the muzzle.

There's also that dark puff of gas that's moving very fast out in front, leaving it's own cone-shaped trail of turbulence behind.

I'm curious about the spherical shock wave that's a bit in front of the main spherical shock (they look like circles here of course) but only inside the bullet cone. It joins the front of the double supersonic shock where they intersect.

There's also a faint horizontal line in front of the bullet and along its path. What in the world is that? Is it some artifact from the picture making process?

Picture 4 of a revolver shooting is a great contrast to picture 3. Here the bullet is clearly subsonic, and behind the main shock. There's a shock from the back of the gun as well as from the muzzle. The things that I find fascinating here are (1) how the center of the main muzzle shock comes from in front of the muzzle and (2) how the spherical waves from the back of the gun seem to be retarded by the muzzle explosion. They are pulled back and distorted there.

Note how much comes out of non-muzzle parts of the revolver compared to the AK-47.

All of these photos (except for the last one of the insect) show how senstive light travelling through air is to disturbances. This is one of the main problems that astronomers worry about when using a telescope. Any disturbances in the atmosphere in front of the telescope (all the way to the edge of the atmosphere) and inside the telescope have similar effects. They aren't as pronounced but, then again, the high magnification involved, well, magnifies the effects. Pictures 6 and 7 of the hair dryer and candle, though dealing with unusually hot air, illustrate this well. In both picutres take note of the less extreme turbulence in other parts of the room that's still visible.

Telescope users are plagued by warm air rising from people (in front of the telescope), buildings, warm pavement, and then of course the weather. You can easily see the effects in a very similar way, but live!, if you rack a really bright star like Sirius or Vega out of focus. A hand in front of the telescope will have a smoky pattern rising from it, clearly visible, just like the effects in these pictures.

Addendum: Hah! Well, reading the attached article, Prof. Settles discusses how the images are made with a light source, curved mirror, (lens), and a razor blade. That sounds exactly like a Foucalt tester which is used when grinding and figuring a telescope mirror!