Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Newton Strikes Again

If you look at the second photo down, of the traffic without the fire engine, you'll notice some funny rings in the middle of the picture. This happened the last time I took photos on the road at night and I thought it was maybe the zoom lens that was doing it. But as it happened again with the prime lens I had to rethink the whole problem.

Anyway, dredging up stuff from back in the mists of time when I was a physics student, it occurred to me that the pattern looked vaguely familiar, and indeed it turns out to be an example of Newton's Rings, almost certainly caused by the UV filter. Will need to try again without it on.

I must go into town and take some night shots there actually, the city council - who probably feature in the dictionary definition of 'light pollution' - have gone completely mad on coloured floodlighting over the past few months. Which makes a nice change from the Stygian darkness of Cambridge where they considered even street lighting to be too tacky to contemplate.

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