Another long delay… I’ve gotta stop promising updates. It will be a while longer for the review. There’s something weird going on with the item I’m looking at, so I’m taking a bit more time to do it right(… if only I was as fastidious in my real life, I’d actually be successful at something).
So, it’s 2020 now. At the end of last year, I escaped winter, taking a quick visit to Florida before Christmas. It was the perfect time to go; I missed our warm December to visit Florida during their cold snap, and made it back in time for OUR big cold snap! I get to experience all the cold weather. For the record, yesterday it dropped to -44° C, which is some absurdly low number in Fahrenheit that I cannot even count to(-47, for the math geniuses out there). Why would anyone run to Florida to escape this experience?
I didn’t do much swimming on the beaches, mostly due to the weather, which was a disappointment. The ‘cold’ weather there wasn’t the problem as much as the ocean- most of the beaches had red flags when I visited, meaning no swimming.
However, there was a beach I visited that was protected from the ocean.
Here is Museum Pointe Park, in Fort Pierce.
How was it for swimming? Well, It’s part of the Indian River Lagoon system. A chain of islands separates it from the open Atlantic. The water is brcakish, but not as salty as the ocean. The water is close enough to the ocean to be affected by tides, so I’m sure the salinity goes up and down.
No lifeguards here(of course, we never have any lifeguards up north in the parks, so it doesn’t worry me). The beach was fairly quiet, so I was the only person swimming. That would probably be due to the cold snap(a Florida ‘cold snap’ means the weather is like a nice summer day back home, but perhaps not a hot summer day) The water is murky, but very shallow- many areas farther out were waist or even thigh deep. I’d give it a grade of ‘B’: warm, calm water, but too shallow in spots. It would be a good place to visit with children.
And that wraps up this post, and another successful swimming hole review. Until next time.
…wait… you want something about different spectra? I’m abandoning the major point of my blog? I’m a WHAT? Well, there’s no need for THAT language.
Fine. Lets Spectra. Here’s that photo again.
The red, green, and blue channels break down like this.
Broken down, the photos are pretty much as expected. The sky is slightly darker in the red channel than the green, but it’s hard to tell looking at the photos side by side. The palm leaves have a bit more definition in red. In blue, the tree leaves are very dark, and the sky is extremely bright.
Without a filter, the sky and water are much more… vibrant? I’d assume that there is a bit more ultraviolet light influencing the blue channel, and the dark sky and water in infrared result in the red channel staying the same. Of course, the infrared has much more influence on the red channel when looking at the vegetation. The trees look… well, they look dead. Maybe they’re losing their leaves for the winter?
Let’s cut out the visible spectrum entirely.
The Schott UG11 filter blocks visible light entirely, so this photo is in ultraviolet and infrared. The leaves of the palm trees are a light green, the sky and water are indigo, and everything else is pretty much grey.
For this post, I’m starting with the ultraviolet. My short pass filter(ultraviolet and violet light, plus a bit of blue), has the usual strange look without setting the white balance:
Setting the white balance, the photo still looks purple, but not as purple:
Of course, on rare occasion, I can apply colour correction on the computer and convert the photo to something CLOSE to a neutral white balance. Can I do it this time?
YES! These three photo essentially have the same light entering the camera, so I’ll use this one to talk about the spectra. As with other UV photos, the leaves are much darker(as a lot of UV light is absorbed for photosynthesis). The distant shore is hazy; from the visible spectrum photo, you can tell that it is a clear day. The atmosphere scatters more light in the shorter wavelengths, so it will always look hazy.
These trends continue into a full ultraviolet photo. Combining my Schott BG40 and UG11 filters allows only ultraviolet light to enter the camera. The result is this:
If the trees look a little blurry here, that’s the result of the wind rustling the leaves. Even with optimal settings, the UV photo took 1/5 of a second’s exposure. I tried triple-stacking my filters, but the exposure was well above a second, so the trees were much too blurry to take a good photograph, so that wraps up Ultraviolet.
For the longer wavelengths, I’ll start with the Zomei 680 nm filter.
It’s a nice photo- the sky is dark, the water is black, and the trees are icy blue. As photosynthesis doesn’t use much infrared radiation, the trees reflect most of those wavelengths.
Further into the near-infrared range(with my Zomei 760 nm filter), the trend is pretty much the same. As it is further from the visible spectrum, there is less colour(which is only due to the camera misinterpreting the information, as it only has three channels to express the colour). The sky is faintly dark brown, but everything else is almost monochrome.
… and with a Zomei 950 nm filter, the last of the colour is gone. The photo is fully monochromatic.
This is the furthest photo I can take from the visible spectrum with my full spectrum camera, but the trends still hold. The trees are slightly lighter, than with 760 nm, and the water is perhaps a little darker.
As I said, I can’t go any farther into infrared with my camera. Good thing I brought another one.
Of course I brought another camera on my trip (In fact, I brought six, and I’m not joking). This is a newer addition to my photo-arsenal, a Seek Pro thermal camera. I’m going to talk about it more when I get around to finishing my review, but in brief, the resolution is about twice as good as my older thermal camera. With my preferred setup, it is monochromatic, and the left side shows the temperature at each shade of grey.
For this specific photo, the direction of the sun is clear- the tree trunks and wooden posts are warmest on the sunny side. The shadows on the beach are likewise cooler thn the surrounding sand. Palm leaves seem to do a good job at dissipating heat, as the leaves are uniformly cool in the wind. I’m not surprised, as they are thin, and likely change temperature quickly to match the air. The water and sky are coolest, but the water is still a good swimming temperature.
The thermal infrared range is far enough from the near-infrared range that there is no point in comparing the two. Still, just because it is pointless is no reason to not do it. The trees are prettier in near infrared, and I like the black water better. Thermal IR is prettier than ultraviolet, though, as the latter just looks like a badly exposed photo.
I’m sure I’ll talk more about Florida eventually, but for now, it’s -21° C (-6° F), and it’s time to go out and enjoy the warm weather. Maybe I’ll even take my gloves off!
The above photos were taken with a modified Canon Rebel T3i Camera.
Parallel Views 