A Camera Lens Made from an Iceberg(mathieustern.com) |
A Camera Lens Made from an Iceberg(mathieustern.com) |
No you didn't. You could have done this with warm distilled water, then frozen, at home and had better results. But I suppose it's a good excuse to go to Iceland :) (If there was ever a need for an excuse!)
But I’d much rather make an ice lens on an arctic beach from an iceberg than walk a couple blocks and get an off cut from the ice sculptors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory
(No Homeo! ;)
People tend to wonder why I don't wear glasses, and I tell them it's because they don't really help since I don't "blurry", I see "smudged". It's as if you took a picture with a camera with long exposure and moved it, but not quite.
The pictures taken with this lens are a surprisingly good approximation of how I see with that one eye (perhaps sans the whitewash).
If I close the good eye, or focus on high-contrast, fine-detail things the effect will be clear, but I can thankfully go on my day to day without much hassle.
Few people will see this but I'll mention it for good measure. If you notice your glasses aren't quite right, or you need a new (especially if it's a very asymmetrical) graduation often, make sure to see an ophthalmologist. The earlier you detect keratoconus the earlier you can stop it from progressing-- I'm certainly lucky I caught it before both eyes were really affected.
I don't know what I expected.
it says made from an iceberg... as in from part of an iceberg... do you know how big an iceberg is?
I know that it's a fallacy to say that one person isn't enough to make a difference, but I think taking a lens sized chunk of ice off a multi-acre glacier is, really, not making a difference.
Start with good water.
Freeze in a gradient(top down is easiest) half of your ice will still be garbage.
Explicitly: by gradient I mean put it in an insulated container so that it freezes starting at the top and ending at the bottom.
I've always wondered why it's a top down design instead of a bottom up? It seems to me like if you were to freeze a container bottom up, the impurities would be pushed out towards the top, and eventually out of the water into the air above, instead of making bulging shapes as ice expands and wasting half your ice with trapped impurities.
I should test the theory later at home.
Top down you can put the the water in a small ice chest and the insulation will slow the freeze in the bulk. otherwise it freezes outside in
That ice floats may play some role, I am not sure if for or against.
I made a couple of attempts, just for fun, and found the ice chest necessary but never made a systematic study of the process.
Probably better if you don't expose the water to air after heating it until it is frozen.
To get clear ice, you need to freeze water directionally, in layers. It's the only way to get clear ice.
I guess what I’m getting at is, the claim that glacial ice was needed, what particular property of glacial ice can’t be replicated by careful ice making?
Apropos the lens museum, I've great difficulty in chucking out lenses that no longer fit any camera that I now own. To me, lenses are precision instruments and its their 'exactness' I don't want to see escape off into a world of higher entropy.
Pinhole lenses can do lots better:
https://www.mathieustern.com/blog/2018/10/22/l437fjpq58g619v...
It doesn't just link to the content. Kottke posts are usually as entertaining and thoughtful as the content it links to.
You also have all the different pictures in a nice slider.
CORRECTION: A piece of _iceberg_, which makes this all even _more_ awesome.
> Each lens is made of two flexible membranes that move either inward or outward depending on the amount of fluid - a silicone solution - they contain.
> The lenses are connected to a small syringe that sits on each arm of the glasses, and the wearer can adjust a dial on the syringe to pump fluid in or out of each lens. When fluid is pumped in, the power of the lens is increased - correcting hyperopia, or farsightedness - while pumping fluid out decreases lens power, correcting nearsightedness.
Additionally he gave a Ted talk on the subject https://www.ted.com/talks/josh_silver_demos_adjustable_liqui.... Pretty interesting stuff. Granted this is all circa 2009-2015. Not sure what the current status of the project is.
While he's possibly the first to think of it in a photography context, I have heard of an ice lens being recommended in a survival context -- fashion a lens to start a fire with the sun.
I've had no idea if it is actually practical; I'm sure you'd need some very good dry & fluffy tinder. This photo experiment tilts it much further into the 'Plausible' zone.
I’m incredulous.
What about a wristwatch made of meat? Opening a parachute underwater? Stacking seven iPhones as a doorstop?
I suspect that lab ice made with the express intention of being clean would be far cleaner.
I was of course referring to the fact that for a handful of clear ice he travelled 3000 km, contributing to climate change to visit one of the natural objects that exact behaviour is rapidly exterminating.
I wonder where fossilised humans will turn up in 200 million years...
I'm surprised that nobody managed to commercialise it in that niche yet.
If you make a parachute for divers that uses thermal currents to lift them up at the correct rate for avoiding the bends, then you’ll help them focus on underwater photography rather that dying, to their benefit.
If you build a doorstop out of iPhones, you might not get a front page, unless you do something more interesting.
You’re thinking along the right lines! Keep it up.
Any beginner tips for brainstorming lead into gold?
Using a cooler means the sides and bottom are insulated from the cold and won't start freezing as quickly. As it freezes top down there won't be any bubbles stuck there.
Demo on clear ice using a cooler from Cocktail Chemistry on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUHcCHbgX_o
I wonder if patent trolls ever snoop around here. ;-)