More snippets

Apologies for not posting yet this year ... but here are a few items to make up for it.

Towards the end of last year I came across a claim that a special diet could extend human vision into the edge of the near infrared.

Petapixel carried an explanation of the research project and also a rebuttal by a neuroscientist. The original crowd-funded experiment page is on experiment.com and the group carrying out the research is called Science for the Masses. Since last August the web seems to have gone quiet on the project.

A slight increase in deep red sensitivity would be useful for astronomers wanting to view the universe at the wavelength of hydrogen-alpha: 656.28 nm. Canon produced a camera modified to give similar better response a few years back and Nikon have now also done so, although theirs is a high-resolution full-frame camera. It's the D810A. The older Canon still had some infrared filtering in place so it couldn't be used for infrared photography, but it is unclear whether this is the case with the Nikon. The press release is unclear although DP Review suggests that there is still filtering.

For those of you interested in the BBC's natural history infrared shooting, there is a training film on line where Colin Jackson explains his technique. However, this his team moved on to using modified Canon DSLR cameras rather than 'pure' video cameras so the film is a little out of date.

Finally, a thermal imaging video showing cloud formations across the earth, shot from space at a wavelength of 6.5 µm. (This is worth expanding for a better view.)