January 31, 2012, 8:44 am
The old saying goes, "where there is smoke, there's fire." I think we all are at least subconciously suceptible to thinking this way vis a vis the cancer risks in the media. We hear so much about these risks that, even if the claims seem absurd, we worry if there isn't something there. After all, if the media is concerned, surely the balance of evidence must be at least close - there is probably a small risk or increase in mortality.
Not so. Take cell phones. We have heard for decades concern about cancer risk from cell phones. But they are not even close to dangerous, missing danger levels by something like 5 and a half orders of magnitude.
Cell phones do not cause cancer. They do not even theoretically cause cancer. Why? Because they simply do not produce the type of electromagnetic radiation that is capable of causing cancer. Michael Shermer explains, using basic physics:
...known carcinogens such as x-rays, gamma rays and UV rays have energies greater than 480 kilojoules per mole (kJ/mole), which is enough to break chemical bonds... A cell phone generates radiation of less than 0.001 kJ/mole. That is 480,000 times weaker than UV rays...
If the radiation from cell phones cannot break chemical bonds, then it is not possible for cell phones to cause cancer, no matter what the World Health Organization thinks. And just to put the "possible carcinogen" terminology into perspective, the WHO also considers coffee to be a possible carcinogen. Additionally, it appears that politics and ideology may have trumped science in the WHO's controversial decision.
December 7, 2010, 11:58 pm
I am still trying to figure out how traditional film photographers got great outdoor photos. I struggle with haze and a loss of vibrancy in distant photos, as if the images were photographed through dirty glass. Maybe filters? More vibrancy in the film (I know that drove a lot of Kodak users to Fuji)?
Anyway, I don't have to rely on film, and can fiddle around with Photoshop until I get things right. I used it in this image to lighten some dark areas and then eliminated the haze effects by painting the whole image with a low-opacity color burn (I used to use a neutral gray for this but I have had better luck using a color with much of the blue taken out (using the RGB sliders in the color selection)). I gave a second helping of the color burn to the buildings only, to make them pop a bit. I try to stay far away from the contrast controls - every photo I have ever ruined started downhill with the contrast control. Instead, I went into each of the R-G-B channels in the "levels" section and fiddled with the distributions a bit, in effect widening the distributions (only a little) to get a tad more contrast.
I think it came out pretty well -- I was at an art show with a guy selling almost this exact same photo from the exact same spot and I think mine compared favorably with his art shot. The only thing I think might have improved it was to get morning light, but I was not going to camp out for 18 hours to do so.
Anyway, this is Vernazza, one of the five towns of Cinqueterre on the Italian Riviera, taken from the fabulous walking trail the connects the five towns. As usual click for enlargement.
On the monitor screen, the colors are perhaps a bit over-saturated but by trial and error it looks great on paper (at least with my printer -- the color variation among printers and papers is really astonishing once you start paying attention to it).
Below, by the way, is the original digital image. If someone can tell me what I am doing wrong (filters, camera selection, etc) to get such crappy original images, I would be appreciative. It looks like I haven't cleaned the lens or something. All I am using is a pretty good quality UV filter (mostly just to protect the lens) on a Nikon D50 with the stock Nikon lens.
October 13, 2009, 11:12 pm
I am working on the first module in a new N-scale model railroad layout. In this urban scene, I am using florescent paints of various types under black light to simulate neon and other lighting in night scenes.
I use printed paper in a lot of applications in my modeling - not just for business signs but highway signs, tar paper on roofs, some areas of brick and concrete, small details, etc. The unexpected problem I am having is finding any white printer paper that doesn't fluoresce under black light (it is the whiteners that are used in modern papers that fluoresce -- in fact one test to see if you have an older document in your hand is to put it under black light). Stop signs and tar paper roofs of buildings and manhole covers should NOT be glowing at night.
I am told some art supply stores sell non-fluorescent natural white papers, but I have yet to track any down. I went into the OfficeMax yesterday with a handheld black light (we all own these in Phoenix for finding scorpions in our houses at night, as they fluoresce too, but that is another story). The good news is that Homeland Security did not bust me for odd behavior, but I did not find anything that would work. I actually have some clear paint that is a UV block, but it dries glossy, so right now I am painting a layer of the block and then a layer of matte clear coat. This does not look entirely right, and is a pain to do for every item.
On the off chance one of you has an idea with this ridiculously niche bleg, fire away in the comments.
Update: Solution found! Thanks to commenter Agesilaus
July 29, 2006, 9:48 pm
I am only a novice photographer, but am trying to get better results than I used to with just a compact digital camera. I am using a Nikon D50, in this case with a 18-55 zoom lens and a UV filter. I am shooting at maximum res. and quality because I have a big memory card so what the heck.
This is the kind of shot that is frustrating the heck out of me. This was taken in the afternoon down the beach from the Torry Pines glider port. The problem is that the subject on this day looked gorgeous through the viewfinder, but the pictures are coming out looking much hazier than I remember it being. Is this a filter issue, a settings issue? Or is it just normal under certain light conditions? And is there anything in post-processing (e.g. photoshop) that I can do to get rid of some of the haziness? On the latter note, I played around with contrast and color saturation but couldn't get anything that looked natural. [click on thumbnail below to see larger version]
Update: I played around with this link in the comments, and got this, which is OK but I introduced some noise, but with some practice I got better.
After practicing, I tried it with my photos out the window of the London Eye and saw a great improvement, with before and after below:
Nothing substitutes, of course, for taking the right picture with the right initial settings at the right time of day, something I need a lot of practice on.
On the upside, I took some closeups of flowers that just looked gorgeous:
