Synchronised Fireflies
An ICM of the Christmas tree lights.
This is one of the most complex of the ICMs I took of the tree this year. And it's taken me several years to work out what is going on with the lights and their dashed patterns.
The LED lights scintillate at high frequency though not at a frequency related to the mains supply. It's about 100Hz.
I thought for a while it was the rectifier in the control converting the AC to DC rather crudely. But it's not that I think.
The lights have a control programme that we normally use that gradually dims and then brightens the string. The scintillations are caused by the controller chopping the current supply to cause the dimming.
The scintillations are too fast for the eye to see (we can see up to about 20Hz in flickering which is why many TVs refresh their screens at 40-60Hz).
So this is more an interesting image than a pretty one, and demonstrates one feature of the difference between our perception of motion and the camera's. That's one of the things I wanted to explore in the 100x Motion project I set myself this year.
Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image! Happy 100x :)
Synchronised Fireflies
An ICM of the Christmas tree lights.
This is one of the most complex of the ICMs I took of the tree this year. And it's taken me several years to work out what is going on with the lights and their dashed patterns.
The LED lights scintillate at high frequency though not at a frequency related to the mains supply. It's about 100Hz.
I thought for a while it was the rectifier in the control converting the AC to DC rather crudely. But it's not that I think.
The lights have a control programme that we normally use that gradually dims and then brightens the string. The scintillations are caused by the controller chopping the current supply to cause the dimming.
The scintillations are too fast for the eye to see (we can see up to about 20Hz in flickering which is why many TVs refresh their screens at 40-60Hz).
So this is more an interesting image than a pretty one, and demonstrates one feature of the difference between our perception of motion and the camera's. That's one of the things I wanted to explore in the 100x Motion project I set myself this year.
Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image! Happy 100x :)