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Comment by trhway | Hacker News Reader

strange colors - bluish/greenish like toys - real or camera/filter quirks?

One can wonder what images this camera would produce http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/146909-darpa-shows-off-1-...

"With an imaging unit that totals 1.8 billion pixels, ARGUS captures video (12 fps) that is detailed enough to pick out birds flying through the sky, or a lost toddler wandering around. "

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The "like toys" effect is from the tilt-shift lens he used for some of the shots. Not sure about the colors though.

Ahhh, thanks so much for that. I KNEW it looked like pictures from a diorama or a model train or something but I couldn't put my finger on WHY.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_faking

That's faking the effect of a tilt-shift lens [0] -- which gives you the same effect, but there are often details that are wrong because most people apply it in seconds in PS without thinking how far each thing should be, they just do a gradient.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt–shift_photography

"White" light sources are generally not really white. For example compared to sunlight ordinary light bulbs are a bit orange and fluorescent tubes have a green hue. Our brain mostly ignores these differences, but a camera sensor does not. The author might have turned up the saturation on these images though, I don't know how strong the difference is supposed to look.

NYC is supposed to complete its switch to LEDs by 2017 (but no idea on the current progress)

Street lamps in NYC are mostly the old-school sodium lights still, which give the eerie yellow hue to the smaller side streets. I with that when they switch to LEDs that they keep that would keep that color (but they wont).

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