Triple helix - polarized images

[ashcroft]

All shot on laptop screen with polarizer filter on camera lens. Natural light, and about 1sec exposure. Surprisingly, they come out of the camera not too different to what you see here. Just some slight touching-up in PS.

setup - The screen was bright white - it doesn't show up here too well.


#1


#2 - I manually moved the ruler for this one to get the motion blur


#3

[Mike Buckley]

All of them are very appealing, each for its own reason.

[Nicks Pics]

Very creative, it's neat that you used the rainbow colors that cameras pick up from computer screens in an artistic way. What an interesting outcome. I assume that that the BG has been replaced in photoshop?

[ashcroft]

I assume that that the BG has been replaced in photoshop?

No, not at all. The background comes out jet black due to the polarizing effect from the lens polarizer. If you rotate it then it goes muddy grey, but there's a narrow angle that makes it pure black. See attachment for how it looks straight from camera with no processing. Amazing that it does it! The tricky part is finding subjects. These Helix items were a collection from a craft shop for £1

[chauncey]

I do envy your imagination Rob...will done!

[ST1]

Well done Rob thanks for the explanation of your technique I may just give this a try.

[Shadowman]

Nice concept.

[marlunn]

Nice Rob, this is used to check glass for stress - the colours are stress areas in the material picked up by the polarised light. I may have to get a filter and try with a few of my glass beads to check them out before I anneal them

[ashcroft]

...the colours are stress areas in the material picked up by the polarised light....

Yes, that's right. You don't expect anything to come out of so cheap and poor quality an item, but it does.

[IzzieK]

That is interesting information...I wish I have like a polarizer to take to the store everytime I buy something to see if there are stress marks on them so I do not make a bad purchase...

Anyway, the colours are interesting in your experiment, Rob...very artsy...as Rhonda will say...

[Nicks Pics]

Very interesting! I wouldn't have known that a filter does that.

[ashcroft]

Very interesting! I wouldn't have known that a filter does that.

I just tried it using a tablet (Kindle) instead of a laptop, and that works too. Not such a large area, of course, but much easier to use for small objects. In fact... if you wanted a shot on a good black background and the subject was NOT transparent or translucent you would get a high quality black background using this method. The polarizing wouldn't create those weird colours (because the subject is solid), but then you wouldn't want them. And the polarizer on the lens would improve the quality of the colours and remove any glare - which a polarizer always does on a normal shot. Why didn't I think about that before?