how to take an interesting picture without really trying

[Beyond]

A few nights ago i walked down the road a little ways to take some shots of my neighbors Christmas lights to send to a guy in Austria.
They don't do to much in the way of lights there, so i thought I'd show him what some of us crazy americans do.
So i took my trusty Canon Power Shot A490 and headed out in the 18'-f weather.
I'm not too used to taking pictures, so everything is set on automatic.

When i took the first image and saw it in the view window, i said "...." and then took three more, one of which i deleted later.
When i put them on the computer and saw the first one, i said "WOW!" That's neat!

So now i have to figure out how to post them here. If you "see" this, then you know i succeeded. If you don't "see" this post, then you won't know that i failed

YEE-HA!! My first attempt at posting an image.

[Chris Peterson]

A few nights ago i walked down the road a little ways to take some shots of my neighbors Christmas lights to send to a guy in Austria...

What I like (not the only thing) is that you can see how common LED lighting is getting. All the dashed lines are LEDs, the solid lines are older incandescent lighting. The former flash on and off with the line frequency (60 Hz or 120 Hz, depending on the lighting), but the latter are hot, and don't cool enough during the low voltage parts of the power cycle to change brightness significantly. By looking at the different lengths of the dashes, you can also see just how you jerked the camera during the exposure. Nice.

[rstevenson]

I learn something new every day here at the Asterisk*.

Rob

[Beyond]

A few nights ago i walked down the road a little ways to take some shots of my neighbors Christmas lights to send to a guy in Austria...

What I like (not the only thing) is that you can see how common LED lighting is getting. All the dashed lines are LEDs, the solid lines are older incandescent lighting. The former flash on and off with the line frequency (60 Hz or 120 Hz, depending on the lighting), but the latter are hot, and don't cool enough during the low voltage parts of the power cycle to change brightness significantly. By looking at the different lengths of the dashes, you can also see just how you jerked the camera during the exposure. Nice.

Nice deduction chris, except there are NO blinking lights in this picture. Just in case my memory had escaped me, i just went and watched them for a bit.
NO blinking lights.
I must admit that it would be nice to have a camera with anti-shake!

On the other hand, one of my other neighbors HAS some blinking lights and i took two pictures and would you belive i was fortunate to get ALL the lights ON in both pictures? Sometimes when you don't really know what you are doing, things come out decently. Must have to do with an anti-Murphy's law.

[Beyond]

I learn something new every day here at the Asterisk*.

Rob

Hi Rob.
Being somewhat fearless at times, could you expound a trifle on what you learned today

[jman]

I think Chris' point was that all led's blink, even the static ones - just that they do it too quickly for us to normally see.
Those "hyper" blinks appear as dashes in your image.

[Chris Peterson]

Nice deduction chris, except there are NO blinking lights in this picture. Just in case my memory had escaped me, i just went and watched them for a bit.
NO blinking lights.

The LEDs blink, just too fast to see. In fact, looking at the profile of the dashed lines they make, I can tell you that they are only illuminated for less than half a line cycle. So they are blinking at 60 times per second, on for about 7 ms and off for about 10 ms.

BTW, there is a way to see this with your eye. While viewing the scene, push your eyeball around by wiggling your finger on your lower eyelid. You'll easily see the 60 Hz pulsation. This works on many other LED sources as well- car taillights, traffic signals, etc. Some non-LED lighting pulses as well- fluorescent and cool gas lights, for instance.

[Beyond]

Well, looks like rob isn't the only one to learn something new today!!
But how come those l-o-n-g lines appear? Those lights are facing every-which-way and yet they are all going up.

Now if Rob could only get his Bespeckled Toroids to 'light up'.

[Chris Peterson]

Well, looks like rob isn't the only one to learn something new today!!
But how come those l-o-n-g lines appear? Those lights are facing every-which-way and yet they are all going up.

The long lines are incandescent lamps. They don't flicker, because they don't have enough time to cool down as the AC voltage swings.

[Beyond]

Dagnabit!! I'm missing something here. I took (4)-pictures of the same scene and only (1)-has the long light lines. I deleted one that was just plain blurry and the other two aren't the clearest bulbs in the tree, so what makes the first one that i took have long color lines??
If i had know that was going to happen, i would have taken a little higher shot to see how far the colorful lines extended.
Also, apparently the trees on the right side are blocking a lot of the red lines from showing.

[Chris Peterson]

Dagnabit!! I'm missing something here. I took (4)-pictures of the same scene and only (1)-has the long light lines. I deleted one that was just plain blurry and the other two aren't the clearest bulbs in the tree, so what makes the first one that i took have long color lines??
If i had know that was going to happen, i would have taken a little higher shot to see how far the colorful lines extended.
Also, apparently the trees on the right side are blocking a lot of the red lines from showing.

Not sure. Were the same lights on each time? I think you need to take your camera back out and experiment, now that you have a better idea what to expect.

[Beyond]

I'll try again in a few days or so to see what i can "shake" up.
I was going to put a colorful sunset or sunrise in this post, but the "...." Asterisk computer keeps telling me my pictures are invalid
After (5)-times i quit! I guess i was fortunate to sneak the two Christmas lights photos through.

[jman]

This belongs in the "how to take an interesting picture when you're really trying" thread...

[Beyond]

This belongs in the "how to take an interesting picture when you're really trying" thread...

Things are a little different up there in the "North Country", eh

[jman]

BTW, there is a way to see this with your eye.

Thanks for pointing this out. Now that I've noticed the effect, I'm totally obsessed - They're everywhere!!!

[Beyond]

Here's another picture that i was going to delete, until it came up on the computer screen and i saw a "smiley face" looking at me. I didn't see it while taking the picture.

This picture can be seen at https://hiddenimpressions.wordpress.com ... teresting/ click on the 3rd picture icon img_0355 with the smiley face amongst the telephone pole wires. Clicking on the picture will bring up a bigger version that will reveal two more objects. One is like the smiley face, except it seems to have a vertical black stripe around it and another object that is like a two-toned blue square with a white spot in the middle. Any one have any ideas of what these objects are?? The icicles were NOT dripping at the time. One of the other two objects can be seen near the top of the photo, to the left of the icicle.

For those of you that would like to see more colorful icicles and things, even a young Bobcat, Go to http://hidden-impressions.at.tf/ It is one of Thomas Hofstatter's sites that he lets me post at.

[Beyond]

A DRIP AND A HALF

I finally got a shot of a drip leaving an icicle. I had to hand hold the camera high enough to get a darker background so the drip would show up.
As it turns out, i actually got a drip and a half. Well, nobodys perfect