Photography Questions

[Mktbjc]

In photography, light behaves as it moves in what?
A. Arcs
B.waves
C.pulsations
D.pinpoints

[Khandro]

Photons

[fiction-factory]

E. particles and waves?

[Baldric]

Is Spam a good subject?

[JF85]

C. Pulsations. Until relatively modern times the human eye was an unsophisticated thing, allowing us to believe it had been designed by a supernatural creator.

The advent of cinema, however, required our eyes to work in synchronisation with the flickering image. In the UK this meant 25 fps, the speed of early cine film and a harmonic of the frequency of the television transmission rate of 625 lines per second.

This was also the reason why UK electricity is set at 50Hz, another harmonic of the frequency at which our eyes work. As it is double the speed of our eyes, we are still able to watch TV and blink without missing too much - if we miss one light pulse we should be able to catch the next one.

In the same way that right-hand drive vehicles are a good indication of a country being part of the former British Empire - think of Australia, Japan and the parts of Canada where they don't speak French - so 50Hz electricity is also an almost perfect coalition. Cyprus, the Pitcairn Islands and Sark all use 50Hz, while Kenya and Zimbabwe use 75Hz, another compatible frequency.

The United States, predictably, chose to use 60Hz which is why their films always look dependent on CGI (it is a necessary process to align their films with our eyesight). Canada is a real conundrum. Quebec has followed the French lead and adopted 40Hz, while most of the country has gone with 50Hz. New Brunswick, the bilingual province, works at 45Hz in an attempt to compromise, but instead they have simply never made a watchable film or TV show.

I hope that is of some help.