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Although I knew most of technical aspect described having immersed myself in Photography several years ago, I cannot express properly how GOOD this article is.

Although I knew most of technical aspect described having immersed myself in Photography several years ago, I cannot express properly how GOOD this article is. The sliders and diagrams are brilliant for helping a layperson understand how it all works. Kudos!

echelon 6y ago
You'd like their other work : https://ciechanow.ski/lights-and-shadows/ https://ciechanow.ski/lights-and-shadows/ https://ciechanow.ski/gears/ https://ciechanow.ski/gears/ https://ciechanow.ski/tesseract/ https://ciechanow.ski/tesseract/ Etc. Check out the whole blog! It's amazing. These are some of the most intuitive explanations coupled with the slickest animation / demo work I've ever seen. All of that put together into crystal clear educational material is such a rare gem and requires incredible talent. Impressive as hell. I hope someone is paying them to do this full time. I'd pay for this.
- kruxigt 6y ago
  And the articles renders so fast and so smooth on my laptop. In fact they render more smoothly and loads faster than 99% of all much much less technically advanced articles out there. Wow!
  - Wistar 6y ago
    Heck, they render fast and smooth on my 3 year old iPad.
- arendtio 6y ago
  Added the blog to my Thunderbird RSS-Feeds :-)
- dzhiurgis 6y ago
  I was wondering why it was lighting up as visited link. Turns out it’s same blog that posted few years ago something so special it took me entire Christmas to read!
- emergie 6y ago
  I also like his floating point numbers' explorer https://float.exposed/0x3fb999999999999a https://float.exposed/0x3fb999999999999a
- alxndr 6y ago
  The final words on the Tesseract page are lovely! > I find it very inspiring that while we can’t physically experience a four dimensional space, with just a bit of ingenuity we can easily simulate how a tesseract and its shadow would look in our day-to-day world. > You may find math’s indifference to the limitations of our human perception quite cruel, but I think it’s liberating. Reflecting on higher dimensions is transcendent – it removes the shackles of the physical world and allows us to explore the realms we’ll never encounter.
- hnuser123456 6y ago
  Regarding the lights and shadows articles, how they hell are they getting raytraced-quality lighting, with no noise, with changes to the scene in realtime?? Are these all pre-rendered PNGs?
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Probably closed solutions to those simple lighting situations.
IshKebab 6y ago
I agree, it's pretty basic but for people that don't know any of this it's an excellent explanation.
- labcomputer 6y ago
  I wouldn't say it's basic at all. It's an excellent distillation of the physics of cameras. My one minor nit-pick would be introducing the wave nature of light so early--to motivate Snell's law and total internal reflection, but without discussing diffraction until well later and only in passing. Snell's law can be motivated from a purely classical particle-based model as: 1. Light travels slower through media other than vacuum (This is mentioned, but hand-waved as boundary conditions, which probably isn't meaningful to the intended audience). 2. Light takes the shortest (in time) path between two points. (Light... finds a way). Either way, the audience might find the obvious "why" for the first point more satisfactorily addressed with a short sidebar on permittivity and permeability of materials (their electrical properties, effectively the capacitance and inductance "density"). That can also lead to an interesting discussion of why conductors are usually not optically transparent and insulators are.
  - IshKebab 6y ago
    I agree I think the motivation for refraction was the weakest point - they introduced waves, and even showed that the waves have to be continuous at the boundary... and then... back to rays! It just needs a diagram showing the waves refracting, and the geometry of the wave fronts. (Pretty annoying that they never explained refraction like that in school either - Snell's law was just a given when it's actually really trivial to derive from first principles.)
mrandish 6y ago
+100 because I came here to post exactly what you did. I just bookmarked this to share with my tween who's getting interested in photography and starting to ask things like "Why that camera?" and "Why this lens?"
hilbert42 6y ago
You're right. Similarly, I cannot express how good this site really is in just a few words. Having been an enthusiastic amateur photographer for decades as well as having worked in electronic imaging for about as long, this is one of the best practical illustrations of the subject that I've come across. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who is seriously interested in the underlying 'mechanics' of imaging. (Incidentally, anyone whose has read my many anti-JavaScript raves, then I'd only say this is exactly how JavaScript ought to be used.)

echelon 6y ago

You'd like their other work : https://ciechanow.ski/lights-and-shadows/ https://ciechanow.ski/lights-and-shadows/ https://ciechanow.ski/gears/ https://ciechanow.ski/gears/ https://ciechanow.ski/tesseract/ https://ciechanow.ski/tesseract/ Etc. Check out the whole blog! It's amazing. These are some of the most intuitive explanations coupled with the slickest animation / demo work I've ever seen. All of that put together into crystal clear educational material is such a rare gem and requires incredible talent. Impressive as hell. I hope someone is paying them to do this full time. I'd pay for this.

kruxigt 6y ago
And the articles renders so fast and so smooth on my laptop. In fact they render more smoothly and loads faster than 99% of all much much less technically advanced articles out there. Wow!
- Wistar 6y ago
  Heck, they render fast and smooth on my 3 year old iPad.
arendtio 6y ago
Added the blog to my Thunderbird RSS-Feeds :-)
dzhiurgis 6y ago
I was wondering why it was lighting up as visited link. Turns out it’s same blog that posted few years ago something so special it took me entire Christmas to read!
emergie 6y ago
I also like his floating point numbers' explorer https://float.exposed/0x3fb999999999999a https://float.exposed/0x3fb999999999999a
alxndr 6y ago
The final words on the Tesseract page are lovely! > I find it very inspiring that while we can’t physically experience a four dimensional space, with just a bit of ingenuity we can easily simulate how a tesseract and its shadow would look in our day-to-day world. > You may find math’s indifference to the limitations of our human perception quite cruel, but I think it’s liberating. Reflecting on higher dimensions is transcendent – it removes the shackles of the physical world and allows us to explore the realms we’ll never encounter.
hnuser123456 6y ago
Regarding the lights and shadows articles, how they hell are they getting raytraced-quality lighting, with no noise, with changes to the scene in realtime?? Are these all pre-rendered PNGs?
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Probably closed solutions to those simple lighting situations.

IshKebab 6y ago

I agree, it's pretty basic but for people that don't know any of this it's an excellent explanation.

labcomputer 6y ago
I wouldn't say it's basic at all. It's an excellent distillation of the physics of cameras. My one minor nit-pick would be introducing the wave nature of light so early--to motivate Snell's law and total internal reflection, but without discussing diffraction until well later and only in passing. Snell's law can be motivated from a purely classical particle-based model as: 1. Light travels slower through media other than vacuum (This is mentioned, but hand-waved as boundary conditions, which probably isn't meaningful to the intended audience). 2. Light takes the shortest (in time) path between two points. (Light... finds a way). Either way, the audience might find the obvious "why" for the first point more satisfactorily addressed with a short sidebar on permittivity and permeability of materials (their electrical properties, effectively the capacitance and inductance "density"). That can also lead to an interesting discussion of why conductors are usually not optically transparent and insulators are.
- IshKebab 6y ago
  I agree I think the motivation for refraction was the weakest point - they introduced waves, and even showed that the waves have to be continuous at the boundary... and then... back to rays! It just needs a diagram showing the waves refracting, and the geometry of the wave fronts. (Pretty annoying that they never explained refraction like that in school either - Snell's law was just a given when it's actually really trivial to derive from first principles.)

mrandish 6y ago

+100 because I came here to post exactly what you did. I just bookmarked this to share with my tween who's getting interested in photography and starting to ask things like "Why that camera?" and "Why this lens?"

hilbert42 6y ago

You're right. Similarly, I cannot express how good this site really is in just a few words. Having been an enthusiastic amateur photographer for decades as well as having worked in electronic imaging for about as long, this is one of the best practical illustrations of the subject that I've come across. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who is seriously interested in the underlying 'mechanics' of imaging. (Incidentally, anyone whose has read my many anti-JavaScript raves, then I'd only say this is exactly how JavaScript ought to be used.)