Photography is the closest thing we as humans have developed to being able to freeze a moment in time in order to look at it after it has passed and read the reality of the moment. However, even this is futile as even in photos, nothing is captured exactly as it is, but as this phenomena is appropriately called, we are left with only a circle of confusion through which we hope to achieve the least amount of confusion possible. The mathematical equation used to determine the diffraction of light into the circle of confusion seems to demonstrate man's need to understand and try to control reality in such a way that we are not deceived by what we see, but are able to understand that what we see may not be what really is.
What most captivated me about this article was the fact that no real lens can ever capture a single point; rather, we are confined to visualizing and interpreting that points as one spot. This reminded me of the idea of relative truths, that even though certainty about an object or idea exists in the metaphysical world it matters little in the physical realm. Instead, we are destined to understand to captivate only part of its significance, of is nature. But what also interested me is the fact that as a point becomes less focused the spot created by the lens becomes wider and larger. As such, this indicates that we did not fail to understand a concept because of its complexity; instead, we failed to capture its simplicity. Human-created complexity is simply a way to cope with artistic and philosophical mechanisms that do not allow us to perceive the simple meanings of certain ideas.
What Pedro says here is much of what I got out of the article as well. While the more complicated math was again beyond me, I better understood this further exploration of the idea that reality is all relative. Here we find that light creates depth but still that is a perspective- as all humans may have different visions this idea that there is one true way to capture an object is wrong. Instead the many thousands of visions all combine to create a multitude of realities, and thus unite in this way.
I'm certainly not going to try and understand the math behind all of this stuff, but we learned about the circle of confusion in my Sensation and Perception class when we were discussing vision. The circle of confusion is an interesting idea when it is related to photography. It depends on three things. Visual acuity is pretty easy to understand as is viewing conditions. What I think is most relevant to our class right now is enlargment. As we are enlarging our images from film to negative to photo, it will become increasingly important for us to keep this idea in mind.
I have always really liked short depth of field; I think it's very striking and can provide nice separation between a subject and the background (especially in portraits). I knew that, when you have a short depth of field, the out of focus areas become even less focused and lights become large unfocused circles. Despite this, I never knew what the principle behind this was but now I do. I had also never really though about the fact that this phenomenon occurs with the human eye as well. I guess this is because this is how I always see the world so I don't notice it; however, it makes sense now that it has been pointed out to me. It is especially apparent at night when you let your eyes defocus and all of the lights look like large out of focus circles.
So, just to help people understand the physics of lenses, I'll provide a little study guide: Each lens has a certain focal length, which is usually half the radius of the lens. This focal length is the length from the lens at which point all reflected light rays (that were initially parallel) converge. This is important, as we can use this principle to focus energy at certain points. This is how we as kids used tiny lenses from science class to burn bugs alive.
Photography is the closest thing we as humans have developed to being able to freeze a moment in time in order to look at it after it has passed and read the reality of the moment. However, even this is futile as even in photos, nothing is captured exactly as it is, but as this phenomena is appropriately called, we are left with only a circle of confusion through which we hope to achieve the least amount of confusion possible. The mathematical equation used to determine the diffraction of light into the circle of confusion seems to demonstrate man's need to understand and try to control reality in such a way that we are not deceived by what we see, but are able to understand that what we see may not be what really is.
ReplyDeleteWhat most captivated me about this article was the fact that no real lens can ever capture a single point; rather, we are confined to visualizing and interpreting that points as one spot. This reminded me of the idea of relative truths, that even though certainty about an object or idea exists in the metaphysical world it matters little in the physical realm. Instead, we are destined to understand to captivate only part of its significance, of is nature. But what also interested me is the fact that as a point becomes less focused the spot created by the lens becomes wider and larger. As such, this indicates that we did not fail to understand a concept because of its complexity; instead, we failed to capture its simplicity. Human-created complexity is simply a way to cope with artistic and philosophical mechanisms that do not allow us to perceive the simple meanings of certain ideas.
ReplyDeleteWhat Pedro says here is much of what I got out of the article as well. While the more complicated math was again beyond me, I better understood this further exploration of the idea that reality is all relative. Here we find that light creates depth but still that is a perspective- as all humans may have different visions this idea that there is one true way to capture an object is wrong. Instead the many thousands of visions all combine to create a multitude of realities, and thus unite in this way.
DeleteI'm certainly not going to try and understand the math behind all of this stuff, but we learned about the circle of confusion in my Sensation and Perception class when we were discussing vision. The circle of confusion is an interesting idea when it is related to photography. It depends on three things. Visual acuity is pretty easy to understand as is viewing conditions. What I think is most relevant to our class right now is enlargment. As we are enlarging our images from film to negative to photo, it will become increasingly important for us to keep this idea in mind.
ReplyDeleteI have always really liked short depth of field; I think it's very striking and can provide nice separation between a subject and the background (especially in portraits). I knew that, when you have a short depth of field, the out of focus areas become even less focused and lights become large unfocused circles. Despite this, I never knew what the principle behind this was but now I do. I had also never really though about the fact that this phenomenon occurs with the human eye as well. I guess this is because this is how I always see the world so I don't notice it; however, it makes sense now that it has been pointed out to me. It is especially apparent at night when you let your eyes defocus and all of the lights look like large out of focus circles.
ReplyDeleteSo, just to help people understand the physics of lenses, I'll provide a little study guide:
ReplyDeleteEach lens has a certain focal length, which is usually half the radius of the lens. This focal length is the length from the lens at which point all reflected light rays (that were initially parallel) converge. This is important, as we can use this principle to focus energy at certain points. This is how we as kids used tiny lenses from science class to burn bugs alive.
swag
focal length is the distance between the lens and sensor or film plane when the lens is focused at INFINITY
Delete