Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Funny FX

I like this one. It's hand held, obviously, low ISO film speed, sodium lighting.
The top layer is clear enough we can see what it is, and the blur adds a thickness to the sign.

All pretty good.
Look at it closely. It's almost as if there were a strobe light going, there appear to be "slices" of sign, as shown in the detail below. Now the lighting was high pressure sodium as far as I can tell, you know, regular parking lot lighting. I guess there is an oscillation in the brightness going with the AC power delivery. I just wasn't expecting it in a night shot like this.

It could also be the camera processed several samples of image in the fraction of a second it took this photo. So the question is, is this a camera artifact, or an environmental influence? Either way around I like it, just not on all my night shots

1 comment:

Alex said...

If we can trust Google Translate, then Milk said:-
"
If you're criticizing others. You will not have time to give love.........................

"

This is my own photo, I'm not criticizing skill, or content. I am making an observation on the effect the long exposure had on the image. I do not have a comparable long exposure on film, so I cannot determine if the effect was induced by the camera's electronics, or ambient lighting when I took the photo.

The camera cost a chunk of change, but paid for itself in reduced processing fees, and the associated environmental impact of that. It has freed me up from going to freely go between 100ISO film speed to 1600ISO at the turn of a wheel, and I can bounce between B&W and color, so again, no complaints on the cameras performance.

This was an audaciously long hand held (not even a fence of gate post to balance on) shot, so I can't even begin to complain.

I am however an engineer by training, profession and inate nature, so I want to know how things work, to learn and grow.