Every photographer knows about visible light being used to capture photographic images digitally or with film, but there are other kinds of light that we can't see. Light with wavelengths from approximately 700 and 900nm (nanometers) is called infrared light. Interestingly, this band of infrared light is a thousand times wider than that of visible light, but is invisible to...
A typical digital camera’s sensor sees a range of light in wavelengths from approximately 350 to 1000 nanometers. A nanometer (nm) is a metric unit of length equal to one billionth of a meter. Your eyes usually see a range of light from approximately 400 to 700 nanometers. Most digital cameras place a low pass filter directly in front of the imaging sensor to allow low frequency light visible to the human eye to pass through to the sensor. It blocks unwanted light from the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums (the high end and the low end wavelengths) from polluting a photograph’s color. As owners of early Leica M8 cameras quickly discovered, this piece of glass is very important for maintaining maximum color fidelity.
Happy New Year! I'll leave to others to debate whether or not the next millennium actually begins at midnight December 31, 1999 or on December 31, 2000. For digital imagers, the new millennium is already here. It wasn't all that long ago that a...
"Adapt or perish, now as ever, in nature's inexorable imperative."--H.G. Wells, 1866-1946
Your digital camera is a time machine that lets you show how the people and places look at this particular point in time. Many people think they need to travel to exotic locations in order to make great...
"What we are seeing now is the first wave of changes in our industry in which computers, telecommunications, and entertainment will merge"--Joe Farace, February, 1985
Last month, this column was about software; this month the focus is on hardware. I'm writing this on a Boeing 777 as it flies across the Pacific Ocean toward Japan and will complete it on the way back. In between I'll visit representatives of...