All posts by Greg

White Vision

If you play white noise through a pair of headphones – then after a while, with a little practice, you can hear any tune you choose in full detail – it is quite astonishing.

So I wondered if you could do the same with vision. Here is a random array of dots. By staring at the image can you pull out a picture/shape of your choice?

In Remembrance of Tony Allen

Just received some very sad news that my high-speed videographer friend Tony Allen passed away last week.

We had a fantastic day in Tony’s studio in Oxford (quite a few years ago now) taking high-speed flash (stills) shots of water-filled balloons being shot by an air pistol. The high-speed flash was triggered by the sound of the pistol firing and we used the open-flash technique to capture the shot.

On a couple of the shots when I looked at the capture on the camera screen it looked like we had the flash trigger timing wrong as the balloon was still intact. But then a closer look at the image gave the stunning result shown above. You can see the pellet to the left of the balloon is still (remarkably) contained within the intact balloon. I like to say we got the flash synchronisation spot-on for this shot – but it was in fact pure fluke.

That was a great day Tony that I shall always remember fondly.

The Full Extent of the California Nebula

There is a LOT more to the California nebula than you usually see in the posted images. This is 24 x 20-minute subs taken with the Canon 200mm prime lenses, ASI 2600MC Pro OSC CMOS cameras, and the Optolong L-Enhance filters. Notice the long “nose” which is usually absent on images of this one. I wonder how much more I can get out of this one by getting more subs?