Intense and beautiful circumhorizontal arc(fire rainbow) over florida

reply to post by FireballStorm

I study a lot of science and read quite a few scientific journal entries. I have to look up the definitions to try to translate things properly into a language of the regular people I deal with daily so I can explain things to them without intimidating them. I have to learn some scientific words because there is no substitute. I also compare the terminology of all the sciences against each other to find the comparable word in different sciences. This is very complicated to do. I am beginning to see that because of different words for the same basic thing, our sciences can't understand each other completely meaning translations are distorted which causes conflicts and extra testing by each science to understand each other. This puzzles me because you would think a Doctor of medicine should be able to understand a Biologists reports and a person studying vitamins should use the same terminology as a Doctor. Not so. Our English language is getting so specific that even highly educated people don't understand totally the research of the other sciences because of words. If you do not look up the definition when reading these research articles and all the parameters or definitions of the word than the knowledge you obtain is distorted. That's screwed up. I have seen some highly influential papers that have been created using information assumed to be in a research article and reference to the article was given in the credits. It appears that many of these things are not intentional but assumptions are made of the research from their personal knowledge of words that are not appropriate to the research. I also see repetition of this same error almost like a parrot wrote it. These researchers must pull out all their hair when they read the articles.

I want to translate everything properly so I can tell friends and acquaintances of things without intimidating them. Many people with great knowledge of these things do not know how to even apply these things to daily life or translate them to regular laymen. I was shocked to find this out. Communication has become a problem within society.

Originally posted by tracehd1
HARRP?

Displays like this have been documented long before HARRP ever existed.

Originally posted by tracehd1
Haven't people caught colors like this in the sky before a huge EQ?

Yes similar colours, but NOT the same phenomena as shown in the images the OP posted.

The phenomena filmed in Sichuan Province, China before the earthquake was a circumhorizon arc, but there is no evidence that earthquakes and ice halo displays like circumhorizon arcs are connected.

It's just pure coincidence that there was a circumhorizon arc display before the earthquake. Displays like this are actually quite common when the conditions are right, which they were 30 minutes before the earthquake in Sichuan Province.

One coincidence does not constitute evidence. Just a case of un-informed people randomly "joining the dots" FYI.

Originally posted by grobi77
Do I have this right?? Reducing the dimensions of a picture, will increase the saturation?

I've certainly never come across this before.

Originally posted by grobi77
Or do you talk about color depth (8/16/32bit)

If you down-sample, from 12 bit to 8 bit for example, that would reduce the number of colours available, but it's not the same as adjusting the saturation. It might make an image appear more unrealistic and perhaps a bit more saturated though. I don't think that is what we are seeing here.

reply to post by FireballStorm


Me neither!

Loophole in Covenant-

I said I would not destroy the world with another flood not a state.
יהוה

reply to post by rickymouse


I've missed out on photographing impressive sights on many occasions because I did not have a camera ready, so you are not alone. Often the most impressive displays are fleeting, so you have to be quick!

Originally posted by rickymouse
I have seen a huge fireball go overhead finding out it crashed in Canada above Duluth in the newspaper a few days later. It looked like it would have crashed within twenty miles but it was huge and was much higher than I knew.

A common illusion with large fireballs - their brightness tricks us into thinking they are much closer than they actually are. It's funny how many people will swear that it was close, despite the masses of hard evidence that bright meteors and fireballs are actually many tens if not hundreds of miles away in the vast majority of cases.

Originally posted by rickymouse
If I had not looked at the picture in the link at full size I would have assumed it was fixed purposely to look more impressive. The camera could have been set to a higher saturation but a fake looking picture is not desired by a good photographer. That is why I think it's altering was minimal..

When I first became interested in photography, I would often over-saturate my images, thinking that it gave them more impact. When I look back at those images now, I think "WTH was I doing!?". I don't see why that couldn't be the case here, or perhaps as you suggest, the saturation could be down to camera settings.

I have to go and make some dinner, but I'll be back in a few hours to reply to more posts.

reply to post by FireballStorm


I have a Panasonic camera with a Leica Lens. It sometimes gives a glowing effect to objects if the lighting is wrong. I haven't taken a picture of clouds but many time wet crystal structure rocks being photographed turn out glowing under certain lighting. Sometimes clouds contain crystals. 35mm cameras never did things like that.

reply to post by rickymouse


No argument from me there. Terminology can be very confusing.

Originally posted by rickymouse
I have a Panasonic camera with a Leica Lens. It sometimes gives a glowing effect to objects if the lighting is wrong. I haven't taken a picture of clouds but many time wet crystal structure rocks being photographed turn out glowing under certain lighting.

That sounds like lens flare to me although lenses with large front elements tend to be most prone to it, and your camera no doubt has a relatively small front element. Leica also has a reputation for producing lenses that don't flare easily, keeping in mind almost any lens can suffer from flare under the right circumstances (ie pointing them towards a bright light source). Care to post an example or two?

Originally posted by rickymouse
Sometimes clouds contain crystals.

That is true, but in the case we are discussing here (a pileus cloud), the cloud is made up of small droplets.

Either way, a camera does not care how the colours/light are/is produced.

Originally posted by rickymouse
35mm cameras never did things like that.

Perhaps a good reason to invest in a DSLR?

I personally think the output from a DSLR and the flexibility they offer over other digital cameras is well worth paying a bit more. I mostly buy on the used market though as I don't like to pay more than I have to. It works well for me, and I'd say that even though my newest DSLR is over 5 years old, the images it produces easily hold their own compared to the best current point n shoot type cameras.

Megapixels don't really matter much unless you are a pro, and your particular assignment requires high resolution and quality, but sensor size, which is always greater in a DSLR will always win out overs cameras with smaller sensors, especially when shooting in low light.

reply to post by FireballStorm


My camera is only a 2 megapixel Lumix DMC-FZ1. It's good enough for what I take pictures of. I don't use the digital zoom much, the pictures come out better with the optical zoom. I've had it for quite a few years now and I had to get a new battery this year. What does dslr mean?

reply to post by rickymouse


Well, if you are happy for the most part with the images that your Lumix produces, it might not be worth it for you to go the DSLR route. That said, I'd be surprised if you compared the output of a DSLR and your camera, and were not blown away by the difference in quality produced by the DSLR, keeping in mind that there is a learning curve if you want to make use of the extra quality DSLRs offer.

Digital single-lens reflex cameras (also named digital SLR or DSLR) are digital cameras combining the parts of a single-lens reflex camera (SLR) and a digital camera back, replacing the photographic film.

Source: Wikipedia

One of the main advantages of DSLRs is that they feature interchangeable lens systems. Being able to use different lenses for different situations is a major plus for me. It's even possible to use lenses from different/rival manufacturers with the right body/lens mount and the appropriate lens-mount adapter - for example, I use Canon, Nikon, and occasionally Leica lenses on my Canon bodies.

Whatever you do though, don;t use digital zoom. It's basically a con/sales hype.

If you want to "zoom in" more than your optical zoom allows, take the shot at maximum optical zoom, and then crop the image later on. Digital zoom does just that (crops the image), but if you do it yourself later, you have more freedom to crop your image, and can take your time deciding exactly how you want to crop your image. Digital zoom just throws away data that you may or may not decide you want later on.

Certainly if you find that you don't have enough optical zoom in some situations, a DSLR with a long focal length lens will give you better results than cropping/using digital zoom. The downside is that long lenses can be quite expensive, especially for the very long lenses - but then I minimize the damage (as much as possible) to my wallet by buying used/older lenses.

Here for example is a shot of the sun I've posted on ATS before, and you can even see fine detail in the sun spot groups, especially sun spot group 1193. It was taken on the 21st April last year.

The first is a "crop" ("zoomed in") of the original photograph.


This one is a further crop (even more "zoomed in")of the same photograph to show details in the sun spots.


Admittedly it was taken with a super-telephoto lens (600mm and a 1.4x tele-converter, which extends the focal length by a factor of 1.4x), which was expensive even though it was old (30+ years now) and quite worn, but it serves me well never the less.

Anyway, I'm going quite a bit off-topic now - apologies to all reading this who were expecting on-topic discussion. I guess it's obvious that I'm "a little" obsessed with photography

reply to post by FireballStorm


Well, do all those lenses we have for the Pentax camera we have fit on the dslrs? My daughter has a camera with switchable lenses but I think hers is a Nikon. I think that was a lot more expensive than the four hundred I paid for my camera, but she takes a lot more pictures than I do. She's been all over the world taking pictures. She can squeeze every penny out of a dollar to make these trips possible and stays with friends she has met most of the time when she is gone. She reminds me of myself when I was young, a curiosity that can't be quenched. She understands now what I told her about college teaching way to slow. College bored me, so did having a job where I had learned all it had to teach.
I don't quite understand why digital cameras seem to lack the depth perception as you used to get with a good regular camera. When taking pictures of artifacts made of rock it's hard to see the depth of the artifact. Maybe it's because I grew up with Kodachrome film that it is easier for me to see depth in it. I see people posting pictures on this site and without depth caused by the blurring of focal change the depth perception is not there and it's hard to discern what the object actually looks like. I never tried taking my camera off Auto focus and disabling the stabilizer system, maybe that would help with depth.

By the way, thanks for the information about cameras. I like the 12 times optical zoom on my camera, it makes up for the 2 megapixel limit of the camera on most things.

Originally posted by rickymouse
Well, do all those lenses we have for the Pentax camera we have fit on the dslrs?

It depends on the DSLR/lens mount. I suspect Pentax make DSLRs that would fit, but can't be sure. Likewise for Sony DSLRs. I personally would say stick with Canon or Nikon DSLRs, since they seem to be a bit ahead of the rest in terms of their sensors, but because of the size of their lens mounts, only Canon EOS DSLRs will allow old Pentax lenses to be mounted.

There are a few things you should be aware of though:

Firstly (and perhaps obviously), when you adapt lenses from rival camera makes, even if they have electrical contacts, features like auto-focus, and aperture selection via the camera body won't work. You have to use the camera in manual mode ie focusing manually, selecting the aperture manually, and selecting the exposure manually. Metering (how much light is needed for the correct exposure) is also a little different - you'll be using so called "stop down metering".

It's really not a problem though, as long as you are not trying to photograph fast moving subjects, although even this is possible (with a little practice), but you won't get as many keepers as you would with auto-focus with fast moving subjects.

Secondly, you'll need lenses that have manual aperture control rings, and manual focusing rings, or you won't be able to change the aperture/focus. Older lenses have these things, so that's not a problem - your Pentax lenses should work fine.

Originally posted by rickymouse
My daughter has a camera with switchable lenses but I think hers is a Nikon.

You can also use your daughters lenses on a Canon DSLR, but certain (newer) Nikon lenses might not let you change the aperture. In fact, thinking about it, some more recent to appear on the market lens mount adapters overcome this problem with certain Nikon lenses.

Originally posted by rickymouse
I don't quite understand why digital cameras seem to lack the depth perception as you used to get with a good regular camera. When taking pictures of artifacts made of rock it's hard to see the depth of the artifact. Maybe it's because I grew up with Kodachrome film that it is easier for me to see depth in it. I see people posting pictures on this site and without depth caused by the blurring of focal change the depth perception is not there and it's hard to discern what the object actually looks like. I never tried taking my camera off Auto focus and disabling the stabilizer system, maybe that would help with depth.

You almost had it there - it's to do with what is in focus, and what is out of focus (blurred). The size of the camera's sensor is what causes this primarily. Your Lumix has a small sensor (in terms of it's surface area) compared to that of a DSLR, and cameras with small sensors (or film format) will always have greater depth of field (what is "in focus"). With small sensors it can be very difficult to get enough elements in the scene you are photographing out of focus enough to give your image a sense of depth.

So a DSLR is the solution, although I should say that it might be worth turning off auto focus on your Lumix and experimenting a bit, but I think it wont make much difference unless you are photographing quite small subjects, at close range where the DOF is smaller.

Note that there are a few different DSLR sensor sizes/formats available, all the way up to "full frame" sensors which are the same size as 35mm film. Full frame sensors will give you the same sense of depth that you had with your Pentax 35mm, but they are more expensive. A smaller format sensor (APS-C for example) will be cheaper, but it should still give you a sense of depth that is much nearer to what you had with 35mm than you have with your Lumix currently.

It's worth getting a full frame sensor if you can though, as they have other advantages over smaller cropped-format DSLR sensors, such as less noise (especially at higher ISO settings), which is useful if you are shooting in low light.

Originally posted by rickymouse
By the way, thanks for the information about cameras.

No problem. I'm always happy to discuss cameras.

Originally posted by rickymouse
I like the 12 times optical zoom on my camera, it makes up for the 2 megapixel limit of the camera on most things.

12x optical zoom isn't bad for sure. As you suggested though, 2 megapixels can be a bit limiting. You'll definitely see the difference with even an older DSLR @ around 8-10 megapixels.

Feel free to U2U me if you want to discuss cameras some more, I think we have been hogging this thread a bit too much. I'll be more than happy to help you choose a suitable DSLR model if you decide to take the plunge.

It can be a bit of a mine field, especially if you decide to buy a used DSLR, but I firmly believe used is the way to go. It's not that different to buying a used car in many respects - you can get a DSLR that is hardly used and save quite a bit at the same time as long as you choose carefully.