June 17, 2020

I didn't think it would work...

IMG_6643

... but you actually can point your iPhone camera directly at the sun.

To the eye, the sun looked perfectly orange and the sky was blue. The camera interpreted the sun as white, and that required the sky to be perfectly orange.

27 comments:

Temujin said...

Cool! I pointed it directly at my wife and got a hand in the face that looked orange. Coincidence?

Nancy said...

Ann, that is stunning! I reiterate my request: a 2021 monthly calendar with your sunrise photos.

MadisonMan said...

I've been thinking a nice collection of your pictures would show, beautifully, the (very nice) northward march of the sunrise position from December onwards. I plan to just ignore what's about to happen for the next six months.

Howard said...

That's really interesting. It's too bad we can't see the blue sky and the orange sun how about the foreground was the blue sky and the orange sunlight intermixed on the water? It sounds like it would have been an orgasm of simultaneous contrasting vibration

rehajm said...

To the eye, the sun looked perfectly orange and the sky was blue. The camera interpreted the sun as white, and that required the sky to be perfectly orange.

One screen, two movies.

Fernandinande said...

To the eye, the sun looked perfectly orange and the sky was blue.

That depends on your color settings in the camera; "Daylight" vs "Auto" vs "Incandescent" etc.

The camera interpreted the sun as white, and that required the sky to be perfectly orange.

No, the sun will be white with any setting because it's thousands of times brighter than anything else (except specular highlights) and the camera sensors are maxed out.

Expat(ish) said...

It’s one of my favorite features in Southwest Florida. Terrific sunrises and sunsets.

The whole color mapping thing can get odd but often spectacular.

-XC

Oak Park Joe said...

So, if you adjust the color of the photo so the sun becomes orange, that should result in a corrected photo that looks exactly like what you saw.

rcocean said...

This is Wisconsin, Sir. When the Ipad sun becomes White & the sky orange, print it. Nice photo.

Oak Park Joe said...

So if you use the capability to adjust the photo properties, you should be able to make the sun orange which would then make the sky blue and the photo will show what you actually saw.

Oak Park Joe said...

That would be an interesting experiment.

Fernandinande said...

So, if you adjust the color of the photo so the sun becomes orange, that should result in a corrected photo that looks exactly like what you saw.

If you want the pic to (sort of) match what you're seeing, set the white balance manually with something white, like a piece of paper, illuminated the same way as your subject. It's tricky if the sun is still below the horizon but lighting clouds from below.

Using "Daylight" will make sunsets & sunrises more red, using "Incandescent" will make them less red, and "Auto" will make them less saturated and less red.

Bob Boyd said...

Trick photography.

DanTheMan said...

Your camera probably has auto white balance. If you set it to a specific setting like "Daylight" it will capture the colors more like what your eyes see.

If your camera has a RAW mode, you can adjust the white balance and lots of other settings anytime AFTER you've taken the picture, which is always nice. You can use Photoshop or something similar to do that. It works much better than trying to process a JPG.

loudogblog said...

The old tube video cameras couldn't handle being pointed at the sun. It could damage them. On Apollo 12, astronaut Alan Bean accidentally pointed a color video camera at the sun and destroyed it. That was supposed to be the first, live, color broadcast from the moon.

madAsHell said...

Hmmm......double posted!! I had to refresh the browser several times before the comment was accepted.

Fernandinande said...

I just got a flickr account so here are some sunsets. (IIRC, they were all shot on "Daylight" setting.)

#3 features a bat!

Wince said...

According to a tweet, Dylan Shakespeare Robinson was arrested in Breckenridge, Colorado. He is one of several suspects wanted for the burning of the police station on May 28.

Presumably, but not necessarily, his parents had higher hopes for him.

Ann Althouse said...

"the (very nice) northward march of the sunrise position from December onwards"

I'm super-aware of how much it moves from day to day (and the details of the features of that shoreline).

In the winter, the positioning makes it MUCH easier to find alternative vantage points and catch the earlier parts of the sunrise, which are often the best.

Original Mike said...

"I've been thinking a nice collection of your pictures would show, beautifully, the (very nice) northward march of the sunrise position from December onwards. I plan to just ignore what's about to happen for the next six months."

Yeah, the return of night. Wouldn't want to look at the icky stars and the icky galaxy and the icky universe.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

"Mama always told me not to look into the sights of the sun

...Oh but mama that's where the fun is"

Original Mike said...

I took a telescope to one of my dark sites last night. Only three hours of darkness. Three hours! Hardly worth the hour-plus set up and the hour take down time.

Did enjoy the time I had, though. It was darker than usual (I have a meter, so it is an objective observation). I'm in northern Wisconsin. I wonder if there are fewer people up here (and thus less light pollution) due to the Wuhan. Or it could be atmospheric conditions. There is a natural variation in sky brightness due to humidity, dust, solar activity, …

Static Ping said...

Whether the colors are correct or not, it is quite the pretty picture.

Original Mike said...

"The old tube video cameras couldn't handle being pointed at the sun. It could damage them."

They also couldn't handle looking at the same scene for an extended period of time. I once setup a Plumbicon on a workbench for a few days while I was working on it. Once it went back up on the x-ray image intensifier there was this static pattern on the image when it should have been blank. And the pattern looked familiar… it was the fire alarm on the lab wall that the camera (and I) had been looking at for days. Oops.

Fortunately, we were doing x-ray subtraction imaging, so the fixed pattern tended to cancel in grandma's x-ray imaging. And the pattern itself eventually faded away. Live and learn; only point your tube-based cameras at a featureless scene when working on it.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Ingachuck’s, “Chopsticks” is my favorite song!

Birkel said...

Some Canadians are smarter than certain cvnts on these boards:

https://c2cjournal.ca/2020/06/the-lockdown-contrarians-were-right/

"According to Public Health Agency of Canada data, there had been 7,773 Covid-19 deaths in Canada as of June 7. Federal Chief Medical Officer Theresa Tam has confirmed that 81 percent of them were linked to long-term care facilities. Of the remaining 1,482 deaths, most were people over the age of 70. Only 229 of the total deaths were aged under 60 and almost all of those had pre-existing health conditions. Clearly, for a healthy working-age person, the risk of dying from Covid-19 is significantly lower than dying by accident or from other diseases.

"If Canada’s working-age people hadn’t been removed from the workforce plus been subjected to such severe general restrictions – everything from being barred from medical and personal care appointments, to cancelling travel and being unable to go about their daily lives, nearly all of which involves economic activity of one sort or another – Canada’s economy would have continued to function without the job losses, bankruptcies and tragic social impacts including mental health deterioration, suicides and family violence. And without the need for the crippling increases in our national debt. In hindsight, keeping healthy working-age people away from their jobs – the first such quarantine ever undertaken – may be the most damaging decision in Canadian history."

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

@Char Char
good to know there are those who still appreciate the classics!