Flowers

Who quite knows how we all see or perceive colours. Especially if we are colour blind. Although quite a long time ago, I worked for Plessey as a student in the LED lab and they were quite keen to ensure I wasn’t colour blind, and I wasn’t. Well I wasn’t colour blind enough to select the wrong colour LEDs anyway.

It does seem to me that here in the UK the “green” traffic lights now look a bit bluer than they used to. I don’t know whether that is to help people with colour blindness or because they are using LEDs for the light source. Whilst checking on the web to see if there was any information on the colour change I found this Wiki article on Green,  There are languages where green and blue are one colour – old Chinese, old Japanese, Thai and Vietnamese.

Also this post on Traffic Lights in the UK reckons that if all the  traffic lights in the UK were switched to using LEDs it would save enough energy to power the city of Norwich. This article discusses the idea – it would not be cheap though.

I was rabbiting on about colour because it interests me how badly digital cameras seem to record some colours. To be fair so did film cameras. An artist friend always used to used Kodak Ektachrome, which he used to take slide and then he would print on Cibachrome  paper. It had a rather nice punchy effect. Although at that time most of my pictures were black and white as I found colour work too expensive.  So I probably only saw his successful pictures whereas I see all my pictures.

Flowers that are blue and purple can be tricky to get right and require a bit of post-processing. I have always assumed that it was to do with UV light, but the link suggests that it is to do with Infra-red light. I rather like Alliums and was out in the garden taking some family pictures. (My brother-in-law had popped over from America for a few days and so the cameras were out.)

I rather like Alliums and Agapanthus, they are both rather like small frozen firework bursts.  This one looked a lot bluer in real-life.

Allium

I also like the Iris, this was also a bit bluer than it looks here. Both pictures were taken with my Panasonic Lumix GH). Perhaps I ought to try out some of my other cameras and do some comparisons.

Iris

And finally I was trying to take a picture of a butterfly, using my Galaxy S4. I learnt that it does not have a very close focus distance.  The focal length of the S4 is 31mm (35mm equivalence).  A search has not thrown up what the minumum focus distance is for the S4, however I found it to be longer than I had expected the first time I used it. Although the problem might have been when I tried to focus the flowers were blowing in the wind.

The flowers look rather like bluebells and they were slightly bluer. (Although they could be Harebells?)

As for the butterfly – I think it is a Brown Argus.

Brown Argus Butterfly

I must make a trip up the Cambridgeshire guided busway – apparently the flowers are look good there.

Also in the mixed messages we seem to be getting from the Government on roads and safety there is talk of 80mph motorway speed limit trials. The trouble is the speed limit is  a very blunt tool. Consequently it is open to criticism. After all even I believe that a car going along an open road on a dry, clear day can safely drive faster than one on a wet or icy day, with cars tail-gating each other.

I guess my question is why is the DoT even bothering to do this. Do they intend that the Police operate a speed limit with a margin so that. Which according to this website is +10% plus 2mph then that would mean cars being able to drive at 90mph. What is the cost-benefit analysis – what about the extra noise and cost of fuel, not to mention extra accidents.

WhatCar suggests that fuel consumption would increase by 17%. which would increase running costs by £300 every 12,000 motorway miles and you would save 10minutes for every 100 miles on clear motorway roads.

So there would be little benefit, why even run the trials, why not focus o something more worthwhile. More traffic police perhaps – Police arrest 30 motorists on suspicion of drink driving.

Finally some picture – “Death Valley’s ‘sailing stones’” – they are cool, the $17bn new subway line for New York. At lastly, a pilot who likes HDR and aerial photography.