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Cameras and Lenses

ciechanow.ski

181–190 of 241 posts

Re: Cameras and Lenses

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're lashing out in anger. Calm yourself. It seems like you dislike trans folk. I'm not sure what they did to hurt you, but I suspect your fears and hate are the result of conditioning. What harm is it to use singular "they"? It avoids assumptions. It also avoids sexism. Do you want a world where all contributions are assumed to come from men? You've got a lot of fear and anger. Reflect on it. Let it go. I don't kn…

Your rhetorical style is very harmful to the people you claim to support. You received criticism for your interactions and you immediately redirected that towards hatred for "trans folk" in an effort to smear the person who said it. > What harm is it to use singular "they"? That's not what the OP is saying. Because of course there's no harm in any pronoun. But there is societal harm in acting high and mighty about ho…

> What people who harp on pronouns... Mental breakdowns over pronouns... pronoun police

To my eyes, in this thread, the person who is harping on pronouns the most, seems to be closest to having a mental breakdown over them, who can most accurately be described as "pronoun police", and who shows the greatest explicit tendency to control others' use of pronouns, is also the person who in the first place corrected an in-the-wild usage of singular "them" to "him".

Like, can we step back and look at the thread and say that yeah, sometimes maybe it's the people who are pushing back against singular "they" that are blowing the thing out of proportion?

> I've never seen the pronoun police display actual concern for anything other than their ability to control people.

If you're open to a real example, the "pronoun police" at my workplace suggest that when writing about hiring candidates, we use singular "they" instead of "he" or "she", in order not to call too much attention to the gender of that person when those evaluations are read by decision makers. The intent is to reduce any possible gender bias in hiring.

This to me reads like an actual concern for something other than one's ability to control people, namely a concern for being more objective and unbiased in hiring decisions. (Or at least, if you want to be cynical about it, for seeming more objective and unbiased in hiring decisions.)

Re: Cameras and Lenses

#182
For a markedly less engineering oriented introduction see https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Modern_Photography/The_camera

One interesting thing I learned recently is how they make cheap plastic lenses, and the fact that plastic lenses were invented by an Australian. They are created by choosing a polymer with good optical properties and then thermoforming it by carefully applying air pressure to raise a rounded shape to a dome after clamping the edges, then holding the air pressure constant until it has cooled. Because nothing actually touches the lens portion, optical properties are preserved.

Re: Cameras and Lenses

#183
As someone who spends most of his time either shooting, teaching or hustling, this truly is phenomenal. It makes some of the more mind-bending aspects of photography perfectly clear. Great post!

Re: Cameras and Lenses

#184

For a markedly less engineering oriented introduction see https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Modern_Photography/The_camera One interesting thing I learned recently is how they make cheap plastic lenses, and the fact that plastic lenses were invented by an Australian. They are created by choosing a polymer with good optical properties and then thermoforming it by carefully applying air pressure to raise a rounded shape to…

Do you mean, like creating a bubble of plastic fed from below where surface tension holds it in a shape like a bubble? And then letting it harden while in that shape? Does the air pressure you talk about mean blowing a stream down onto the lens?

And then, no further polishing is necessary? I'm fascinated to learn more if you have a source to read more from!

Re: Cameras and Lenses

#186

For a markedly less engineering oriented introduction see https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Modern_Photography/The_camera One interesting thing I learned recently is how they make cheap plastic lenses, and the fact that plastic lenses were invented by an Australian. They are created by choosing a polymer with good optical properties and then thermoforming it by carefully applying air pressure to raise a rounded shape to…

Do you mean, like creating a bubble of plastic fed from below where surface tension holds it in a shape like a bubble? And then letting it harden while in that shape? Does the air pressure you talk about mean blowing a stream down onto the lens? And then, no further polishing is necessary? I'm fascinated to learn more if you have a source to read more from!

You can go up or down (probably sideways if you can account for gravity, eg. through rotary motion). Up is more common since you only need significant equipment on one side and access requirements mean that keeping the bulk of it 'down' is easier. No polishing is necessary. However, I recall reading that some polymers can be polished if you want, but IIRC it depends heavily on the polymer, the abrasive, intermediate fluids in use and result desired. Re: Source, I raided libgen for thermoforming over the last few months, visited about 10 equipment factories and studied their mechanisms and control systems, but actually learned this tidbit from 1000 Australian Inventions or some such book which I bought for my daughter before our family returned to China... to keep inventing ;)

Re: Cameras and Lenses

#187
post #34

FYI there are digital sensors which aren't using bayer filters. Some are classic sensors missing the bayer filter (leica monochrome for example) other are based on different tech like Foveon sensors [0] Many people also debayer their cameras themselves, especially in astro photography [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveon_X3_sensor [1] https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/166334-debayering-a-dslrs...

Bryce Bayer was my father. Hopefully I have a few more decades before I'm "debayered".

Re: Cameras and Lenses

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're lashing out in anger. Calm yourself. It seems like you dislike trans folk. I'm not sure what they did to hurt you, but I suspect your fears and hate are the result of conditioning. What harm is it to use singular "they"? It avoids assumptions. It also avoids sexism. Do you want a world where all contributions are assumed to come from men? You've got a lot of fear and anger. Reflect on it. Let it go. I don't kn…

Your rhetorical style is very harmful to the people you claim to support. You received criticism for your interactions and you immediately redirected that towards hatred for "trans folk" in an effort to smear the person who said it. > What harm is it to use singular "they"? That's not what the OP is saying. Because of course there's no harm in any pronoun. But there is societal harm in acting high and mighty about ho…

May I say a sincere thank you for taking the time to write an articulate, reasonable, credible counterpoint to the above discussion.

Re: Cameras and Lenses

#189

Great article. One thing that's always stumped me as an amateur photographer is how an object is "in focus" when the rays from that object coverage to the smallest point, thus the smallest amount of pixels are getting hit. It would seem to me you would want to collect the max amount of information and thus use more of the sensor. How does converging to less of the sensor give you a sharper photo?

It's more that the rays from a point on an object converge to the smallest point when in focus? The rays from the object as a whole are spread out over an object-shaped are on the image plane, unless the object is (effectively) at infinity, when they will converge to a point...

Re: Cameras and Lenses

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your rhetorical style is very harmful to the people you claim to support. You received criticism for your interactions and you immediately redirected that towards hatred for "trans folk" in an effort to smear the person who said it. > What harm is it to use singular "they"? That's not what the OP is saying. Because of course there's no harm in any pronoun. But there is societal harm in acting high and mighty about ho…

> What people who harp on pronouns... Mental breakdowns over pronouns... pronoun police To my eyes, in this thread, the person who is harping on pronouns the most, seems to be closest to having a mental breakdown over them, who can most accurately be described as "pronoun police", and who shows the greatest explicit tendency to control others' use of pronouns, is also the person who in the first place corrected an in…

Oh, also, regarding

> What people who harp on pronouns miss is that pronouns are not used to refer to someone's gender but their sex. I can see your sexual characteristics from across the room, and referring to them is a good way to narrow down who I'm talking about.

The thing you see about someone when you look at them from across the room isn't their biological sex, if anything it's their gender presentation. This chunk of youtube video (https://youtu.be/9bbINLWtMKI?t=548) talks more or less about that.

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