The other day I visited downtown Philadelphia for the first time. It’s a great city, and you can’t beat it for history! There are the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall and many of the “firsts” and “oldest” for our country. Opticians remember Benjamin Franklin, one of Philadelphia’s founding fathers, as the inventor of bifocal spectacles. Of course, there’s Market Street with great food shops, and the “Rocky Steps,” the 72 steps leading to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, immortalized by Sylvester Stallone. (Don’t ask. Just looking at those steps gave me leg cramps!)
The eye is a complex piece of anatomy capable of determining everything from broad shapes to precise details. Among the many tasks the eye is able to perform, one of the eye’s key tasks is to aid in the determination of the many variations of color.
So, it seems everyone wants the look of the big plastic acetate frames, fun, colorful, oversized frames. I get it, I wear them too, and truth be told, I love them. Hold on, Let’s rephrase this statement, I LOVE LOVE them!
You open the oven door to check your pizza, your glasses fog up. You’re speeding down a ski slope, your glasses and your goggles fog up. You step out of an air-conditioned car into the summer swelter, your sunglasses fog up.
Sunsets are red and so are tomatoes, yet these two reds are quite different. The word "red" by itself doesn't carry enough information to uniquely identify a particular sensation of color.
Different wavelengths of light (electromagnetic waves) create different sensations of color. For example, objects that reflect wavelengths of light in the range of 620 to 750 nanometers (roughly 200 time smaller than the width of a human hair) appear red/orange to us.
I am always amazed at the fact that things we see in color are actually a
sensation "felt." They are a sensory impression that is a physiological
reaction to the wavelengths of light received by the color receptors in
our retina.
To see how white balancing algorithms work in a computer (or digital camera) it's important to know what we mean by "white." First of all, "white" is relative. Something that looks white will look gray when compared to a brighter "white."
Strolling out of the theater after seeing the recent 3D movie, Gravity, my friend wondered why she felt slightly dizzy every time she watched a show in 3D.
