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Science

Stalking the Wily Analemma 37

Posted by michael from the you-are-eaten-by-a-grue dept.
avi33 writes "Wired has an article on the short list of photographers seeking to capture a shot of the analemma - the sun's figure-eight-shaped declination in the sky over the course of a year. Only a handful of people are known to have done this, and of course the obstacles are many: maintaining the equipment and its positioning, the finicky nature of film, the weather, and the photographer's persistence. Is it just me, or is this crying out for digital automation? Mount a cam to a hardpoint, have it snap a shot every x hours, and overlay them? Why I bet some of you could do this with a perl script in an afternoon. There's a shortage of photos from outside the northern hemisphere, so get busy."
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Stalking the Wily Analemma More

Stalking the Wily Analemma

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  • YEAR! (Score:3, Informative)

    by dave_f1m ( 602921 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @04:11PM (#10603479)
    Did the submitter read what he wrote? It needs to be over a year. And the people doing it on film would not consider doing it with a digital and software to be an achievement. Kinda takes all the challenge out of it.
  • Notice how two of those photos had the foreground added in with Photoshop? That's really lame. The last picture says that the foreground was added as the last exposure was taken, that's a much cooler way of doing it.
  • Why bother? Someone will just photoshop it anyway. (BTW - the pics are really cool, but, they too, look photoshopped.)

    • Re:Yawn (Score:3, Insightful)

      by eingram ( 633624 )
      Like this [strangecharm.net]? I did that in a few minutes.

      I wonder how it's possible to check a digital image to see if it's real or not. I just took an existing analemma and overlayed a random landscape on top of it (which is similar to what is done on film, I think).
      • well, youll have to be slightly less random. given the assumption that the camera is level, you can calculate the location of the camera on earth relatively accurately based on the orientation, location, etc of the analemma.
        • That's true, but when you're done you can add in a landscape from anywhere on Earth. So you could take the analemma in Japan and then fly to Brazil and get a nice landscape.

          Maybe there should be some "Analemma Committee" where you send in your film and they judge it as real and post it on a website and give you the much deserved credit. And if it's not on said website, assume that it was done with digital assistance or it was done 100% digitally.

          Or maybe I'm making a bigger deal out of this than it is. :

      • Re:Yawn (Score:3, Insightful)

        by NanoGator ( 522640 )
        "I wonder how it's possible to check a digital image to see if it's real or not."

        I can see the extra JPG compression on the landscape versus the analemma.
    • It looks Photoshopped because it has been Photoshopped. The ruins in the first three photos were added in. Very disappointing.

  • Missing the whole point (Score:5, Informative)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @04:14PM (#10603516) Homepage Journal
    The whole point of an analemma is to do it on 1 piece of film - no fair taking multiple shots and compositing.

    Sure, taking the picture itself can easily be automated.

    But fixing a camera to a location so that it will not move DAMMIT (relative to the earth, that is), so that it won't get covered in snow/leaves/pigeondoo/..., so that the film won't be ruined by being out in the elements for a year, being in a location where you can reasonably count on having clear skies enough of the time to get the shots (a month of clouds will really screw you up), being able to judge the exposure needed for the sun shots without overexposing the film, then getting the final exposure (to get the background) right....

    That takes a lot of skill that you are not going to be easily able to compress into a Perl script.
    • Wow, that I did miss. I didn't realize that this was to be done on one piece of film... that does make it a wee bit more difficult.
    • If you did it with a webcam, it would be a different accomplishment, similar sailing across the Atlantic vs. kyaking.

      That doesn't negate that either would be really cool and fun to do. But the repeated exposure film is decidedly more impressive, IMO.

      --
      Evan

    • Re:Missing the whole point (Score:4, Interesting)

      by javaxman ( 705658 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @06:46PM (#10605155) Journal
      Sorry, I think the whole idea of "analog film is better" is a little silly. Not without it's merits, of course, but... at some point, there's a difference between science and art.

      If you're interested in the science, a set of digital photos of reasonably high quality which are then composited are just as good as a single piece of film.

      If you're looking at it from an art point of view, and more the 'art of photography' view rather than the 'look at this nice-looking picture' view, well, then maybe you want the one bit of film, so you can get the 'true nature' of the subject and appreciate the 'artists skill'.

      But, in the long run, the digitally composited photo is _still_ by definition a photo of an analemma, and can be just as pretty ( maybe prettier ) than it's analog component.

      • Additionally, the sun appears as nothing but a white dot. Any argument for "quality" makes no sense as the sun's just going to be white white white #FFFFFF anyway.

  • Submitter is tres-lame (Score:4, Insightful)

    by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <slashdot AT keirstead DOT org> on Friday October 22, 2004 @04:15PM (#10603524)
    Your computer can also re-produce Beethoven's 9th, "perfectly", as many times as you want.

    That is not the same an orchestra performing it.

    Some things are just cooler in analong.

  • Huh? (Score:3, Funny)

    by PrvtBurrito ( 557287 ) on Friday October 22, 2004 @04:15PM (#10603530)
    Did anyone else read that as "analenema"?

  • Neat (Score:1)

    by Nos. ( 179609 )
    I'd never thought about doing this. Several times I've considered making a short movie of either the clouds rolling past my house, or the stars over the course of an evening, or if the camera is good enough, the norther lights. Might be time to pick up a webcam and do some of these projects. In fact, it would be pretty easy to do all but two with the same camera. (The nothern lights are in the north (duh) and the sun here is always in the south).
    The only problem I forsee is if I mount the camera outs

    • Re:Neat (Score:3, Interesting)

      by angst_ridden_hipster ( 23104 )
      I've done a bunch of digital timelapse. Clouds are some of the best stuff, although pictures of flowers opening or groups of people doing different activities (parties, paying bills, etc) are amusing. I tend to do timelapse with frame capture rates between 20 seconds and 5 minutes.

      Some of them are online.

      Oh, boy, am I asking for a slashdotting? This is being hosted on a 300 MHz K7 on a 768 kilobit DSL line. I'll play it conservatively: just search google for webbwerks and timelapse. That should cut down t
  • are
    here [perseus.gr]

    Get in quick!
  • Someone from Australia should do this. Come on, it doesn't get that cloudy that often in many places there right?

    And can you imagine how cool it would be to have an analemma with Uluru in the foreground?
    • My family has a beach-house in Australia, and my Dad is putting another floor on it as we talk (i.e. its gonna be 3-story instead of 2) .. I've considered proposing that we embed a camera system in one of the limestone blocks he's using to build the house with, and making it part of the house computing system so that pics can be taken any time of the year of the incredible beach view from the house.

      This analemma idea might just be the clincher. It'd be superb for this house (on its way to being a historic
  • Ew. I'm a victim of misreading that word.
  • Of course, you wouldn't want to take repeated photographs of the sun with a digital camera, because you'll invariably burn the CCD out pretty quickly.
  • Many TV stations have "towercams" and they routinely get sunrises and sunsets for the weather.

    If any stations bothered to aim in the same direction every day at the same time, and keep the tapes, the raw data exists for an animation loop.

    Superimposing the stills and adjusting the exposure will give you the photograph.

    Sure, it's not as challenging, but it's still a sight to behold.
  • The "figure eight" analemma has a single point where the "loops" appear to cross over, close to the middle. Does the distance from the geometric center of that crossover point indicate something like latitude? Are the two loops the same size when seen from the Equator, and a single ellipse when seen from a Pole?
    • I would venture that it's a function of the tilt of the Earth's axis and the variation in distance from the Sun. I am under the impression that it is a constant shape, because I've seen it printed on a globe.
  • If you live in a place where they adjust the clocks twice a year (to better fit people's schedules with daylight), then be sure to IGNORE those adjustments when writing your automated snapshoots! Otherwise you'll be taking pictures an hour before (or after) the sun gets to the part of the sky you're shooting.

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