The Sony 90mm macro-lens reveals details invisible to the naked eye. I was lucky to discover the fly 'Bosrandroofvlieg' Neoitamus cyanurus sitting on a wooden fence. It's a predatory insect which preys on flying insects. A strategy similar to dragonflies. The animal kept returning to the same spot on the fence after short flights. Luckily, it wasn't too afraid of my camera. I could come rather close to it. It cooperated just enough to take high quality pictures.
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Bosrandroofvlieg; Common Awl Robberfly;
Neoitamus cyanurus image 3x scaled down (but blogger will resize it again) |
Luckily it was not sitting on a leave. The notorious disadvantage of
leaves is that they nearly always move even when there is hardly any wind.
That's a big annoyance for macro-photographers.
The quality of the original was good enough to show the individual lenses of the compound eye:
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same picture (original 600x600 pixels) |
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enlarged detail of the above picture |
These are really big eyes! Most part of the head consists of eyes. By the way: a surprising effect appears when step wise reducing the display size of the picture on a computer screen:
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| example screen capture (enlarged) |
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| example screen capture (enlarged) |
These patterns appear dynamically depending on the zoom factor. It's really fun to experiment with it. Because the effect is dynamical, the patterns could disappear when blogger displays them. So, I made screen-shots of two different zoom factors in the image viewer (above). To see the dynamical aspect I made this video:
video produced by SimpleScreenReader 0.3.6
You have to watch the video in full screen mode.
A requirement for the effect is that the original picture of the eye of
the fly is in focus. When even slightly out of focus the effect
disappears. I was fascinated by the effect and wondered whether I could
reproduce it with any artificial design on my computer. So, I created this
mega chessboard:
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chessboard 800x800 pixels, 160x160 squares |
To see the full effect, you can download the chessboard from my
website
and view it in your image viewer. Watch different zoom settings in your
image viewer. Amazing patterns are produced. They seem to appear out of
nothing. The specific patterns and the order in which they appear seem to
be unpredictable.
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screen capture 1 |
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screen capture 2 |
Do you see them too? By the way: a completely different effect appears
when slowly scrolling up or down in the browser (especially # 1). This
depends on how fast your screen is updated.
So, yes, one can reproduce the dynamical patterns of the eye of the fly with an artificial chessboard. Let me know below what is our experience?
Sorry, I got distracted by these strange phenomena. They have nothing to do with the Sony lens or camera. Or my computer. Or my screen. Or my eyes. My guess is that the algorithm of the image viewer that shrinks an image systematically deletes a number of pixels. That is the only way to shrink a picture without distorting it. The artificial dynamical patterns are a side effect of this algorithm. Not intended. Not created for a purpose. In evolution side effects appear too. Sorry, again for the distraction. In a next blog post I will focus on the insect world as revealed by the macro lens.
Details:
Camera: Sony α6400
Lens: Sony FE 90mm f/2.8 Macro G OSS
Aperture value: f/8.0.
Exposure time: 1/125 sec
ISO speed rating: 3200
Focus: autofocus
Image stabilisation: ON (but the lens was also stabilised because it rested
on the fence)
Hi Bert, thanks. I did now about Moiré patterns, but I did not make the connection. I have to study the details, but I wonder whether every similar pattern to those mine are Moire patterns, or are there also non-Moire patterns?
ReplyDeleteThank you Bert for this beautiful image of an optical illusion.
ReplyDeleteIs it visible to the naked eye, or only on the picture?
By the way: a nice way to 'distribute' pictures without the need to copy them.