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fraywing 3 hours ago

This is really cool -- pedantically, I've always thought "full spectrum" is actually misleading from a traditional photographic sense. Like IR + visible light + UV != full spectrum. I'd love to see post-processed imagery of every-day life through an extended view of broader EM energy (similar to astrophotography)... like what does a city scene look like with x-rays and microwaves included?

Side note: have always loved this image https://imgur.com/NZjWfWT of rainbows with UV and IR visible.

IAmBroom 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You'd obviously have to use false-color, as most modern astronomy pictures do (even the ones that use visible tend to pump the saturation UP!).

However, the amount of light from the sun drops off exponentially away from the peak at green-blue (yellow-green, after atmospheric filtering). You'd also have to really fake the dynamic range a lot to get it to look any different from IR+Vis+NUV. (If there was 0.001% as much x-ray light as there is, say, red light, DNA could only exist in the lightless depths of the ocean.)

So, it would look like an IR+Vis photo (light falls off pretty fast in the UV, too), except the ones you've seen oversell the IR.

So it would look like a Vis-light photo, with slightly shinier objects in it.

Sorry.

mncharity 10 minutes ago | parent [-]

I like distinguishing "light" (physical world) from "color" (species-specific biology). Sunbeam blue light is already less intense than NIR-I, but human bio juices the blue. Most humans are bright-light trichromats and low-light monochromats. Rod sensitivity is 3 orders of magnitude up, with single-ish photon sensitivity. Some amphibians have an extra rod type, for low-light bichromaticity. Some deep-sea fish are bright mono and dark lotschromats (12+ rod opsins). So why not imagine seeing the world with a triple (or more) of short-wavelength super-rods, a few orders of magnitude more sensitive still, with whatever curves seem fun? Perhaps curves naturally selected for by "makes for intriguing images of the world on social media"...