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Longest known exposure photograph ever captured using a beer can
- cromwellian 6y agoFlat earth, busted again.
- raister 6y agoThis is similar to the "_______ DESTROYS ___________" in YouTube videos. It's one way of getting likes/upvotes/karma points. It has to draw attention somehow. It has to have some weird thing (unexplained to the eyes of the author), a rare event (a Black Swan?) or something that is highly controversial so gets the discussion going. It has been like that since the first headline on the first newspaper ever made by man (perhaps earlier, under other medium).
- smusamashah 6y agoI find it very interesting though
- raister 6y agoIt is, indeed... I was just pointing out how they draw attention nowadays (ever?).
- bigmattystyles 6y agoI’m just glad she’s alive, the article made me think she was no longer alive.
- piratejon 6y agoReading the last paragraph, I did not come away with the same impression you did: "Regina is now a photography technician at Barnet and Southgate College."
- notimetorelax 6y agoI think OP meant the past tense they used when talking about Regina. The last paragraph did clear the confusion.
- globular-toast 6y agoAnd the fact that it was "discovered" which makes it sound like it was found in a dead person's lab or something. The article really gives the impression that she's dead, which is odd if that's not what is intended.
- unsignedchar 6y agoYes, the article is definitely in need of an editor's touch. The sentence "She placed a can on one of the Observatory’s telescopes, which had been forgotten about until September this year ..." makes it sound like it was the telescope that had been forgotten.
- Baeocystin 6y agoThat is a fascinating picture to look at. I wonder how much data could be reconstructed from image analysis?
- keithwhor 6y agoIf we knew enough about the structure of the aluminum and the method of recording I suppose some people might say, "everything."
- winrid 6y agoAs cool as it would be, there is a lot of information lost and some overwritten. Think of it as a one way hash...
- evan_ 6y agoIf it had only run for one year you’d be able to reconstruct the weather- or at least the cloudy days. 8 years probably mashes the data too much.
- chris_wot 6y agoThat's a weirdly specific headline.
- mindracer 6y agoYou can buy solarcans that will produce a similar capture https://solarcan.co.uk/ https://solarcan.co.uk/
- jonplackett 6y agoHow come this wasn’t completely over-exposed after so long?
- rubatuga 6y agoMaybe if you make the pinhole the right size and match the ISO of the paper? I can barely get digital photography exposures right lol.
- jonplackett 6y agoYeah maybe it was just a really tiny hole! It’s strange though because you usually need to figure out how long the exposure would be and then use the right size hole / paper. But this sounded like it was accidentally left for all this time.
- chairmanwow1 6y agoI wonder how much post-processing they had to do?
- tmhrtly 6y agoFrom the instruction manual [1] for the Solarcan (a premade product that operates on the same principle), it appears pretty much all you do is scan the image and then invert it. Take a look at the images in the PDF - they're pretty cool. [1] https://solarcan.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/solarcan-the-booklet-3-web.pdf https://solarcan.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/solarcan-t...
- earlz 6y agoThere's a few different actions. First, since it isn't developed the paper effectively acts extremely slowly. Whereas normal photographic paper would be around 6 or up to 20 ISO, doing it this way is almost immeasurably slow. Getting similar results without a pinhole and just something layed on top (photogenic drawing), it would take several hours in direct sun to get a decent image. The next contributing factor is that some papers "print out" easier than others. The hard ones will take hours in direct sunlight, while the easier ones might take "only" 30 minutes or so. The final factor is that pinhole is a very slow and low contrast method of exposure. Silver halide paper suffers from "repricocity failure" where basically during a very long exposure, the material becomes massively less sensitive. This is why film is so hard for astrophotography. A 100 ISO film over several hours can become something more like 1 ISO. Either way, the end result is that the paper gets very slow and gains a very wide exposure latitude, nearly impossible to over expose.
- pystar 6y agoInteresting
- raverbashing 6y agoI am surprised photographic paper will last that long while being undeveloped.
- graderjs 6y agoThis is extremely cool. It makes me think if you were an alien life form who lived for eons, maybe eight years would be like an eye-blink (in some sense), and perhaps this is one of the perspectives you would have, if you wanted it. You know how successful artists often have a line or series that they return to and that really identifies them? I hope this is or can become that for her.
- chairmanwow1 6y agoDragons’s Egg [1] is a great sci-fi novel that explores this concept in the other direction. Humans are the slow ones and the Aliens are creatures living on the surface of a neutron star. Humanity makes contact and generations of the aliens live, die, and develop technology over the course of several subjective days for the humans. Highly recommend giving it a read~ [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/263466 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/263466
- graderjs 6y agoThanks, I'll check it out! :) ;p xx
- ghaff 6y agoThere's a ST:TNG episode in a similar vein, Blink of an Eye, although this involves different techobabble (tachyon field).
- T-hawk 6y agoMinor nitpick, that episode is Voyager, not Next Generation. And it was directly inspired by Dragon's Egg.
- ghaff 6y agoOops. You're right. I remembered it as TNG and didn't notice when I looked up the episode name. Wikipedia says "believed to be inspired by" but it would surprise me quite a bit if it weren't. I didn't love Voyager overall but it had some pretty good episodes scattered throughout.
- DavidVoid 6y agoThere are a couple of people on reddit[1] who take some neat photos like that (but with 1-4 years of exposure time and not 8). [1] This one for example: https://old.reddit.com/user/Solargraphy/submitted/?sort=top https://old.reddit.com/user/Solargraphy/submitted/?sort=top
- 93po 6y agoWhat qualifies as the longest exposure ever? Does it have to result in a photo of something distinguishable? Surely there's an old camera out there with a broken shutter that's been exposing some piece of film for decades, even though it's just an entirely exposed piece of film at this point
- bondarchuk 6y agoI would say a fully exposed piece of film is not really a photograph any more, or perhaps we can discard it as a "trivial" case. On the other hand, there is certainly a surveillance camera somewhere quietly humming along for way longer than this, and you could make a photograph by simply averaging all the video frames.
- jlarocco 6y ago> On the other hand, there is certainly a surveillance camera somewhere quietly humming along for way longer than this, and you could make a photograph by simply averaging all the video frames. Sure, but that's a different thing, even if the effect is similar.
- Blikkentrekker 6y agoOne can argue that light degrading a centuries old stone wall counts as a long exposure photograph.
- kaffeemitsahne 6y agoI'm pretty sure I've seen some examples of this but I can't find them now. Besides the better-known pinhole photography, there is also pinspeck photography, and some random object standing in front of the wall could perform the function of the pinspeck. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinspeck_camera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinspeck_camera (p.s. you seem to be shadowbanned)
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
- stareatgoats 6y agoThere are several traces of light that don't seem to be made by the sun, a zigzag pattern running vertically on the right among other things. Wonder what those could be?
- aubergene 6y agoperhaps internal reflection within the beer can
- therealcamino 6y agoPossibly "...the atmospheric gantry, built halfway through the exposure, can be seen from the centre to the right."
- pontifier 6y agoMy guess is meteors. Some can be very bright, and over the course of 8 years it's quite likely to have captured at least a few bright ones.
- throwaway744678 6y agoWhat's specific about the beer can? Couldn't any material be used for a pinhole camera?
- miahi 6y agoThe beer can is round and somewhat easy to reseal. The round part is important, as the photo paper will be wrapped around the interior[1] for a wide field of view without a lot of distortion. [1] https://www.instructables.com/Solargraphy/ https://www.instructables.com/Solargraphy/
- person_of_color 6y agoI want to make my own but where can i get photographic paper?
- tim333 6y agoebay eg https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313&_nkw=photographic+paper&_sacat=0 https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057...
- gdubs 6y agoWhen I was in college I spent a summer abroad at an art school in the south of France. It was a medieval village, and so instead of dorms everyone was scattered in various places throughout this village on a hillside. Anyway, a couple of our classmates turned their entire room into a pinhole camera — a “camera obscura”, where the image of the whole valley was projected upside down on the wall. It was pretty magical being inside of that.
- nightcracker 6y agoIt's camera obscura, not obscure.
- gdubs 6y agoThanks - typo: fixed.
- smcameron 6y agoI accidentally turned the bedroom of an apartment I once lived in into a camera obscura. There was an annoying streetlight outside and I wanted it darker at night, and the view was only of a parking lot, so I blocked off the window with a big piece of plywood, but it was about 1 inch too short, and the blinds behind it left also left about 1 inch uncovered, so there was about a 1 inch by 1 inch opening left uncovered. And funny enough, I didn't lose the view of the parking lot, as it was projected upside down on the opposite wall.
- moftz 6y agoI stayed at a quirky hotel in Amsterdam where all of the rooms had different themes. The theme for this room was camera obscura. One wall had these large windows that had metal doors to totally seal out the light but the door in the middle had a small hole to make the camera obscura. The next morning we had a pretty cool shot of the buildings nearby. I hadn't ever actually seen a camera obscura before so I had no idea it looked as good as it does. https://ibb.co/Lt60R7v https://ibb.co/Lt60R7v
- matthewmcg 6y agoUnfortunately there have been instances of solar cameras being reported as bombs. Police even “detonated” one with a robot a few years ago here in Atlanta. https://petapixel.com/2015/02/02/looks-like-someones-solargraphy-camera-just-got-blown-atlanta-bomb-squad/ https://petapixel.com/2015/02/02/looks-like-someones-solargr...
- Cancan82 6y agoTalk about being confused; show up to look at the results and there is just black burn marks all around... haha
- sradman 6y agoTL;DR: Eight years of sun arcs were captured using long exposure solargraphy [1] at a teaching observatory near London. The pinhole camera was forgotten and left out longer than the typical 6-12 months. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-exposure_photography#Solargraphy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-exposure_photography#Sola...
- z5h 6y agoPhotographer: “check out my really long exposure”. Regina: “Hold my beer”.
- makeworld 6y agoWhat does this comment add to the thread?
- z5h 6y agoIt’s a joke. See here for more https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke
- panda88888 6y agohttps://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hold-my-beer https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hold-my-beer
- grupthink 6y agoThe next logical step is to string hundreds of beer cans together to create a time-lapse stop-motion film on the order of years.
- mattsoldo 6y agoIs it the longest known exposure ever, or longest ever with a beer can?
- dahart 6y agoThe (very short) article clarifies the title is suggesting this could be the longest exposure ever. And just happens to have been taken using a beer can — which is important because the metal can is better at withstanding the elements for such a long time than photographic paper. The title could have maybe used a comma before “using a beer can” to clarify.
- kebman 6y agoIt's a beautiful image having the quality of capturing an astronomic event over time. Could it perhaps be used to tell us something about the solar system? I remember my astronomy and maths teacher, Franck W. Pettersen, rest his soul, teaching us how to build a telescope from scratch. We got a long cardboard tube, and some other pieces that we put together quite cheaply. The most expensive part was the lens, which we put at the end of the tube. Earlier he worked as the director of the Northeren Lights Planetarium in Tromsø, but he quit the job, citing that it was much more rewarding to teach astronomy and physics to pupils rather than showing tourists around. It is perhaps unseremonious, but the first use the telescope saw, was us boys trying to peek at the girls at the neighbouring high school, three kilometres away at Kongsbakken (King's Hill) accross the sound. It was a success. We could even read what the teachers there wrote on the blackboards with it. Personally I've always liked night photography, and I've spent many hours making time lapse photography of the Aurora Borealis phenomena that is so common in the North of Norway. However I think this image is a testament to how also daylight photography of certain phenomena might also be very beautiful, and even moving.
- fnord77 6y agothis has a picture of her beer can camera https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/photography/2020/12/longest-known-exposure-taken-by-makeshift-camera-forgotten-inside-uk-telescope https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/photography/2020/12/lon...
- berkes 6y agoI once noticed how a newspaper would become yellow, except for square covered by a magazine. So I put newspaper with a large unprinted area in an old camera, left it exposed for a week and behold, it did show a vague skylines. Later I used red post-its, since red really bleaches in sun. Also worked, though not significant better. A fun experiment.
- buserror 6y agoYou don't risk "overexposing" (as the article says) anything with film/paper; basically you reach the "reciprocity failure" where the rule of exposure fails, and you can pretty much ignore the exposure time /completely/ at that point. Double it? fine. 4 times? still fine :-) I've done many 30 minutes+ exposures on both pinhole and large format cameras. On the later, it captures an insane amount of tonalities from what you are imaging, almost like "HDR" but well, with just a piece of carboard for shutter and a watch to time how long your patience lasts :-)
- pavlov 6y agoIn fact the term HDR (High Dynamic Range) originates from film scanners and the data formats used to preserve this detail. Decades before anyone had an HDR TV, film frames were being stored in HDR formats for digital processing.
- pmiller2 6y agoYou sound like a guy I know who builds 2 element lenses using dollar bills for the barrel.
- latchkey 6y agoLink with the photographer and the can... https://petapixel.com/2020/12/11/shot-with-a-beer-can-this-is-likely-the-longest-exposure-photo-ever-captured/ https://petapixel.com/2020/12/11/shot-with-a-beer-can-this-i...
- schuke 6y agoIs it only me who found the title misleading? I thought it was a record for can-exposed photos only.
- IamZeroBalance 6y agoThis is really amazing and interesting!