Althouse: The BQE.

February 13, 2008

The BQE.

18 comments:

RobertL said...: Enough with that lens already...; 2/13/08, 7:42 PM
Anonymous said...: What? I'm digging the lens.

Every time (sine 2004, anyway) that I see the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway I involuntarily think, "The L.I.E., the B.Q.E., hippies at the Bandshell with the L.S.D."; 2/13/08, 7:53 PM
Simon said...: BQE?; 2/13/08, 8:02 PM
Simon said...: NM, I got it. (Thanks DewB); 2/13/08, 8:03 PM
Peter V. Bella said...: Thanks Althouse. You just cost me 600.00 plus change. I hope I have as much fun with my lens.; 2/13/08, 8:06 PM
Maxine Weiss said...: Too much Distortion. That scene is not what the eye actually sees. The naked eye doesn't view in horizontal lines.

Let's get back to realism in all things.

---What the eye actually sees. We don't need artifice and gimmick.; 2/13/08, 8:25 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Maxine, think of it as makeup.

Middle Class Guy: I hope you bought it by clicking on the link here!; 2/13/08, 8:40 PM
Peter V. Bella said...: I have a Canon. I had to search around for the best price. Wound up ordering it at a local store who gave me a discount.; 2/13/08, 9:18 PM
Michael The Magnificent said...: Ann could pass the blame onto me for bringing my Sigma 10-20 to the Madison Althouse meetup, but she has too much class for that.; 2/13/08, 9:31 PM
JohnAnnArbor said...: You can almost hear the Doppler shift as the cars go by.; 2/13/08, 9:45 PM
From Inwood said...: Wow!

(Why write 100 words when one will do?); 2/13/08, 10:19 PM
Ann Althouse said...: What influenced me to get the lens was taking photographs of that convex mirror (in a store in Austin). I thought I wanted the mirror, but realized a fisheye lens would get me the same effect in many more places.; 2/13/08, 10:51 PM
Anthony said...: When I lived in Williamsburg, you could see the BQE from my apartment. No matter hwat time of night, it seemed there was heavy traffic.; 2/13/08, 11:33 PM
Eli Blake said...: The Liberal observer:

Not as much traffic, courtesy of the investment that has been made in a good mass transit system.; 2/14/08, 1:32 AM
rhhardin said...: ...not what the eye sees...

The only distortion involved is creating a picture that ``normally'' would be viewed from an inch away, and letting you view it at normal reading distance instead.

A long lens creates a picture that ``normally'' would be viewed from very far away, and you view it instead at normal reading distance.

Viewed from the quoted ``normal'' distances, the eye sees what it sees in real life. But of course that's not where you view it from.

The fisheye has the great advantage that it has a much lower f number and so works in the dark better.; 2/14/08, 5:46 AM
rhhardin said...: A pin-hole camera would work the same way, just with a fisheye lens corresponding to a large sheet of paper at the back to capture the image, and a long lens corresponding to a small sheet.

The fisheye perhaps obviously would have diverging lines at the edges of the large paper, as it got very far from the pin-hole.

Camera obscura.

Anne Carson

What is an idol?

An idol is a useless sacrifice, said Isaiah.

But how do you know which ones are useless? asked the nation in its genius.

Isaiah pondered the various ways he could answer this.

Immense chunks of natural reality fell out of a blue sky and showers of light upon his mind.

Isaiah chose the way of metaphor.

Our life is a camera obscura, said Isaiah, do you know what that is?

Never heard of it, said the nation.

Imagine yourself in a darkened room, Isaiah instructed.

Okay, said the nation.

The doors are closed, there is a pinhole in the back wall.

A pinhole, the nation repeated.

Light shoots through the pinhole and strikes the opposite wall.

The nation was watching Isaiah, bored and fascinated at once.

You can hold up anything you like in front of that pinhole, said Isaiah,

and worship it on the opposite wall.

Why worship an image? asked the nation.

Exactly, said Isaiah.; 2/14/08, 7:02 AM
Trooper York said...: That's exactly what it looks like out the cab window when you are coming home drunk out of your face from the bars in Williamsburg and heading back to downtown Brooklyn.

Without the puke of course.; 2/14/08, 12:24 PM
rhhardin said...: At the bottom of the Carson link to Isaiah, there's a button

Report a problem with this poem; 7/21/13, 9:36 AM