First-Ever Hyper-spectral Photo of Auroras

Auroras are quite popular as a photo subject these days, especially for time-lapse photography, but a team of researchers in Norway recently snapped pictures of one in a way that hasn’t been done before: with a hyperspectral camera. The special device can simultaneously capture multiple spectral bands of light. The composite photograph above was created by combining three such bands of light, with each one assigned a different RGB color.

Called the NORUSCA II, the camera was being tested earlier this year, but its findings and details were just published in the scientific journal Optics Express (the paper is titled “Hyper-Spectral All-Sky Imaging of Auroras”).
Ordinary cameras like the DSLRs used by night-sky photographers can be thought of as simple buckets — they collect all the light in the scene and spit out a single photograph based on what’s gathered. While they can make for gorgeous photographs of the natural phenomenon, they’re not as useful for scientists who need to look at specific bands of light within the aurora (you would need to use special filters to block out certain wavelengths).
The NORUSCA II can switch between 41 different optical bands in a matter of microseconds, allowing scientists to detect things in the atmosphere based on their “light fingerprint.”
See that photo at the top of this post? That was actually captured through a layer of clouds, meaning ordinary cameras wouldn’t have been able to “see” the aurora at that time.
Here are a couple of photos by photographer Njaal Gulbarndsen showing what auroras look like to normal cameras, and showing the researchers conducting their experiments:


We’ve written about hyperspectral cameras a couple of times in the past. Last year we shared about how you can turn a Canon 5D DSLR into a hyperspectral camera using off-the-shelf parts. Back in August, we also shared about how some scientists are using the special cameras to unlock mysteries in ancient documents.


Read more at http://www.petapixel.com/2012/12/01/first-ever-hyperspectral-photo-of-auroras/#e0KksrDP9uCHgl0i.99 

Comparison: The Canon 6D Next to the 5D DSLR Lineup

Left to right: 5D III, 6D, 5D II

If you’ve been wondering how the Canon 6D compares to the 5D lineup in terms of size, control layout, and ergonomics, here’s a side-by-side comparison photo in which the 6D (center) is placed next to the new Canon 5D Mark III (left) and the older Canon 5D Mark II (right). The cameras are each ever-so-slightly different in their shapes, but the 6D is noticeably smaller than its pricier siblings. It’s more than 10% smaller in its dimensions, and is ~10% lighter than the 5D Mark II and ~20% lighter than the 5D Mark III. Here’s a larger version of the image.
(via LensRentals)

Read more at http://www.petapixel.com/2012/11/30/comparison-the-canon-6d-next-to-the-5d-dslr-lineup/#MgoFYviBAD3UTvLU.99 

How to Quickly Resize Multiple Photos in Mac OS X Using a Terminal Command

If you use a Mac and regularly need to resize batches of photos, there’s actually a tool built into your operating system that lets you do just that without having to open any image editing program. It’s called “sips”, which stands for scriptable image processing system. It’s extremely easy to use, but you’ll need to know how to use Terminal to take advantage of it.

Simply put copies of all the photos you’d like to resize into a directory, navigate to that directory within Terminal, and run the command:

sips -Z PIXELS *.EXTENSION

Where PIXELS is the maximum number of pixels you’d like the width or height to be, and EXTENSION is the file type you’re working with (e.g. jpg, png, gif).
For example, if you’d like to shrink a large batch of JPEG images down to 620px in width/height, you would run the following command in Terminal (assuming the present working directory contains the files):

sips -Z 620 *.jpg

That’s it. The tool quickly resizes all the images in the directory down. Be aware that this overwrites the original files, so you’ll want to make sure you’re only doing this to copies of photos, not the originals themselves.
To save time, there’s way way to easily open up Terminal in the directory containing the photos you’d like to resize. It’s a right click option that you’ll need to enable: go to System Preferences->Keyboard->Keyboard Shortcuts->Services->Files and Folders and making sure New Terminal at Folder is checked.

Do this, and you’ll see an option for “New Terminal at Folder” when you right click the folder containing your images:

sips can do much more than the simple batch resizing outlined in this post. Check out the command’s manual for all the different functions and options you can use to edit photo files from the comfort of command line (e.g. cropping, editing the color profile, padding, flipping, rotating, etc…).
(via Lifehacker via MacLife)

Read more at http://www.petapixel.com/2012/11/21/how-to-quickly-resize-multiple-photos-on-a-mac-using-a-terminal-command/#GbTRg1CVd0l0lRSq.99 

American Tintype: A Portrait of a Tintype Portrait Photographer

Documentary filmmaker and photography enthusiast Matt Morris recently noticed a magazine article about a tintype photographer named Harry Taylor based in his hometown of Wilmington, NC. Having recently gotten engaged, Morris and his fiancée decided to have Taylor shoot their engagement photos using the 150-year-old photo process. They ended up sitting for a 5-hour-portrait session, and Morris was stunned by the results.
A few months later, he decided to return to Taylors studio with two Canon 5Ds in tow and spent an afternoon documenting Harry’s work. The fantastic 4-minute documentary above is what resulted.

One of Morris’ favorite tintypes that resulted from the shoot

Here’s what Morris tells us about what attracted him to Taylor’s work:

I was smitten with the idea of getting tintypes made. I’ve got thousands upon thousands of RAW files and JPEGS, and just like most of your readers, almost none of them are printed. I’ve got files backed up, as well as published on various social media sites, so if something accidentally gets deleted, it’s no big deal.
A tintype is different. A tintype is a unique, physical, one-of-a-kind object. It doesn’t sit on your hard drive, and it’s not a negative that you can print as many copies as you want from. These are heirlooms, meant to be taken care of and passed down generations. Each one is filled with personal significance- we spent about 5 hours with Harry and wound up with 11 tintypes. If your head wanders a little too much during the 15 second exposure, you have to do it again. The process took about 20 minutes per photo. There are issues on Harry’s end as well- exposure times, chemical balances. Once you get it right, you’re thrilled. It really makes you appreciate how accessible photography is now, and also has made me take a little more time taking photos.

You can find more of Taylor’s work — both tintype and not — on his website here.

Read more at http://www.petapixel.com/2012/11/13/american-tintype-a-portrait-of-an-tintype-portrait-photographer/#LzWWJYXu2VHDLUS0.99 

Photo Stacking Technique Makes Clouds Look Like Brush Strokes in the Sky

Stacking long-exposure photos of stars leads to some pretty neat photos and time-lapse videos, but what happens if you use a similar technique for clouds? That’s what photographer Matt Molloy does. His “photo stack” images of landscapes show clouds that look like smears and brush strokes across the sky.

Here’s what Molloy tells us about how the images are created:

To make these ‘photo stacks’, I first shoot a timelapse, taking a photo every 5 seconds or so. (Settings differ depending on the subject and lighting conditions). I then merge several photos into one image using Photoshop. I start with the first image from the timelapse as a normal photo and then blend the rest of them with the ‘lighten’ blending mode. This only adds things that are brighter than what was in the first photo, and so you can see things like the paths of stars as they move across the sky. (The movement of the stars is actually from the earth’s rotation).
I think it’s an interesting way to observe time. You can see a time frame of several hours in one image, something our eyes can’t do naturally.

You can find more of Malloy’s work over on Flickr and on 500px. He has an entire set devoted to images created with this photo stacking technique, including many photos of stars.

Read more at http://www.petapixel.com/2012/11/10/stacked-photos-in-which-clouds-look-like-brush-strokes-across-the-sky/#46gjtE1H1LLzC8yf.99 

An Arm’s-Length Self-Portrait Captured Millions of Miles Away

Facebook users here on Earth aren’t the only ones shooting arm’s-length self-portraits: NASA’s Curiosity rover over on Mars is doing it as well! Curiosity captured the image above a couple of days ago using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), which is attached to an extendable robotic arm. The image is actually a composite of 55 separate photos shot using the 2-megapixel RGB color CCD camera.

If you’re wondering why the arm itself isn’t seen extending into the photo — as is seen when we humans capture this type of shot — it’s because the arm can rotate out of the frame for each of the 55 smaller sections of the image, resulting in a stitched image that doesn’t show the arm at all.
NASA writes,

The mosaic shows the rover at “Rocknest,” the spot in Gale Crater where the mission’s first scoop sampling took place. Four scoop scars can be seen in the regolith in front of the rover.
The base of Gale Crater’s 3-mile-high (5-kilometer) sedimentary mountain, Mount Sharp, rises on the right side of the frame. Mountains in the background to the left are the northern wall of Gale Crater. The Martian landscape appears inverted within the round, reflective ChemCam instrument at the top of the rover’s mast.

The space agency says that this type of self-portrait allows the scientists here on Earth to track the condition of the rover over time, since the MAHLI camera is the only one of the 17 cameras that can see certain parts of the craft.
You can find a higher-resolution version of the photo here.
(via NASA via DPReview)

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Image credit: Photograph by NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

Read more at http://www.petapixel.com/2012/11/02/a-self-portrait-shot-millions-of-miles-away/#U8hJT4Bhgejw5xi5.99 

Photog Archiving 100 Images for Billions of Years by Sending Them to Space

Of all the images that have ever been made, would you be able to select just 100 to represent our species and human achievement? Trevor Paglen’s Last Pictures is a project to do not only that, but also launch those images into geosynchronous orbit around Earth – all so that long after humans are gone, any space-wanderer will be able to fathom what humanity was all about.

The project is based on the idea that after billions of years, all signs of human civilization will have eroded away on Earth, but its satellites will still spin around the planet, making them the best bet for an indefinite time capsule.

“Any group of people would come up with 100 totally different images, but that is part of the fun. It’s an impossible project. Part of it was to engage peoples’ imaginations,” says artist Trevor Paglen, who conceived of the concept and collaborated with scientists, anthropologists, curators and corporations to get the images into space.

Writer and artist, Anya Ventura, coordinated the work of five researchers who whittled down the image selection from 10,000 to 500 to 100. With every choice open to debate, it was a mindful experience.

“We’re inundated with images, but we don’t stop to look at them,” says Ventura. ”The Last Picturesnecessitates the act of looking. It’s a project that sticks with me because of our discussions about what makes a good photograph. We were tackling issues of representation and decoding images.”

But choosing the images was only the beginning – two more giant problems loomed. Firstly, how does one fabricate those 100 images to survive billions of years in space? Secondly, how does one get them into orbit?

Brian Wardle, associate professor at MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and director of the Nano-Engineered Composite aerospace Structures (NECST) Consortium consulted on design and fabricated the vessel for the images. He and Professor Karl Berggren, a quantum nano-structures expert, were mostly concerned with preventing diffusion – the incredibly slow movement of molecules which over millions of years could potentially degrade the sharpness of the image.

“By using a single material, Silicon, and etching physical features in that material, the Artifact will maximally resist diffusion. Usually the ‘sands of time’ erase writings through erosion, but in this case we used sand/Silicon against time to resist its effect,” says Wardle with a poetic flourish.

To that end, the Last Pictures are nano-etched onto a silicon disc – referred to within the project as “the Artifact” – and secured within a gold-plated aluminum clamshell.

Paglen now knew the images could survive, but how to get them up there?

Creative Time, a stalwart New York arts organization, and Last Pictures partner was on board to help with the logistics, but even when the project manger telephoned every company that put hardware into space they drew a blank.

“The cold-call approach didn’t work,” says Paglen.

Short on options, Anne Pasternak, Executive Director of Creative Time, began making pleas to audience members at her numerous public speaking events for contacts within the satellite industry. Two connections and a few phone calls later, Last Pictures had an agreement with EchoStar Corporation, a Colorado-based telecommunications company responsible for maintaining Dish Network’s satellite fleet. (EchoStar also owns SlingBox.)

Once the deal was done, Paglen waited for a window. It came in December 2011 when Palo Alto-based Space Systems Loral were in the final stages of manufacturing the next EchoStar satellite.

“Echostar gave us a month to get the disc tested and flight ready,” says Paglen. ”Many engineers stepped up over the Christmas holidays.”

After two delayed launch attempts, the 6,600 kilograms EchoStar XVI is set for launch on November 20th, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, on the back of an ILS Proton Breeze M Rocket. EchoStar’s main cargo is 32 Ku-band transponders which will deliver direct-broadcast satellite (DBS) signals back to earth for suped-up local HD channels among other things.

Last Pictures‘ efforts have reminded many of  Carl Sagan’s Voyager Golden Record which included 116 images of animals, food, architecture, portraits and daily human life, as well as sounds. Ventura says the Last Pictures team were a bit sniffy about the appropriateness of Sagan’s images to farily represent unified humanity but when they took on a similar selection process, “we realized how difficult it was,” says Ventura.

“At the beginning we imagined the images as an archive, but later we started to think of them as a silent film, like poetry. We made aesthetic decisions,” says Paglen who in the book arranges many images in pairs based on formal relationships. ”I guess that’s where my artistic influence came in.”

Paglen and his team deliberately included images to challenge viewers.

“We’re making cave paintings for the future,” he says. “A lot of images are enigmatic. There’s stories outside of the images. Enough to keep the aliens on their toes!”

One curve ball is an installation shot of Malevich’s work at the Last Futurist Exhibition in St Petersburg, 1915. It is Paglen’s nod to the convergence of art, philosophy and science and to the definitive differences between the American and the Russian space programs.

“The U.S. space program has mythologies attached to pioneering and conquering, but the Russian tradition is very different,” says Paglen. “In the Russian tradition, the ultimate goal of humanity was to resurrect all humans. In the late 19th century Russian Cosmists such as Nikolai Fyodorov believed we need to go to space to collect all the particles of all the people who had ever lived. Cosmism says going into space is going into the past.”

The majority of the images, which are published in the Last Pictures book, carry layers of narrative. Percival Lowell’s 19th century maps of “canals” on Mars surface are typical of the tension between reality and perception. Lowell wasn’t out to fool anyone but the conflagration of tiny aperture and a eye condition he wasn’t aware of had him seeing things.

“He thought he was mapping canals on Mars, but he was really seeing blemishes in his own eye,” says Anya Ventura.

No one on the team is pompous about the selection. Rather Last Pictures is an interstellar version of the question, “If your house was burning down, which photos would you save?” It’s about questions, not necessarily answers.

“It’s a paradoxical project. It is about time and space, but also ambivalent,” says Paglen. “Last Picturesquestions material circumstances. What does it mean that we make machines that exist as long as the sun?”

For those who are uncurious about the answers to these questions, fear not. Ultimately the project taxed only a relatively small amount of resources.

“The Artifact hitched a ride on a satellite that was going up anyway, and the delta in payload was absolutely negligible relative to typical mass budgets and this one specifically,” says Brian Wardle of MIT.

The host satellite will only broadcast signal and orbit Earth for 15 years. Scheduled for 2027, the mission profile of Echostar XVI includes an end-of-life maneuver into a spacecraft junkyard just beyond the Clarke Belt.

“Creative projects are rarely the result of a single person’s efforts,” says Paglen. ”Technologically, it is not hard to launch an object into space. Emotionally, it has been difficult.”


Here’s a selection of the photographs chosen by Paglen:








In addition to being sent to space, the photographs have also been published as a new photobook titled “The Last Pictures.” Here’s the description:

The Last Pictures [...] is rooted in the premise that these communications satellites will ultimately become the cultural and material ruins of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, far outlasting anything else humans have created. Inspired in part by ancient cave paintings, nuclear waste warning signs, and Carl Sagan’s Golden Records of the 1970s, artist/geographer Trevor Paglen has developed a collection of one hundred images that will be etched onto an ultra-archival, golden silicon disc. The disc, commissioned by Creative Time, will then be sent into orbit onboard the Echostar XVI satellite [...] as both a time capsule and a message to the future.

Read more at http://www.petapixel.com/2012/10/30/photog-archiving-100-images-for-billions-of-years-by-sending-them-to-space/#zlghoEl6Bftaybm8.99