Now without the text visible anymore, try and guess which musical instrument each picture represents. Then reload the page, enjoy the article, and check how many you got right. What's your score out of 8? I scored 5.
It's cool to see how much the older double bass and violin have been repaired. Those square/flat pyramid pieces of wood are cleats, which were added by a luthier to repair and secure cracks.
It's interesting how irregular the inside of the violins are - patches, struts, asymmetries, differing textures, etc. I guess these all contribute to the normal violin sound, but it makes me wonder if a perfectly symmetrical interior (& exterior - anything contributing to resonances) wouldn't sound better?
> if a perfectly symmetrical interior (& exterior - anything contributing to resonances) wouldn't sound better
I'm guessing it would likely look more pure on a frequency plot, but sound sterile if things were perfectly symmetrical. The little imperfections, materials, and design tradeoffs give each instrument its unique tone color (timbre). Often, musicians will chase a certain builder and year, and even within that, only a few instruments will be considered "great". For example, guitarists chasing the perfect Les Paul or most classical violinists chasing a Stradivarius.
In acoustics symmetrical and parallel surfaces lead to what are called standing waves, which heavily emphasizes specific frequencies. For the most part in things that are musical (instruments, recording studios) you don’t want that. Except of course where that’s the whole point, like the heads of a drum.
There’s a lot more subtlety to it, but in general, variation will produce richer more complex timbre.
Yes, but I suppose the general shape of a violin, curvy, pinched waist, bowed top and bottom surfaces, already avoids those kind of overly simple/concentrated resonances. On a side note, I wonder how much changing any of these shape factors affect the sound? Which are most critical? What happens without the pinched waist, or if it is made even narrower?
Interesting mix of wood too. The 1619 viola has a very tight grain spruce top and the maple back has a beautiful curl. Same with the 2019 Beilharz cello and the 1785 Storioni violin – the curly maple really shows. The back on the 1705 Goffriller cello seems very plain on the other hand, and suprisingly so does the 1717 Stardivari's. The 19th century Hopf violin has nice curly maple, but the grain on the top seems extremely loose. Any idea how do these compare musically? And does someone know if Stradivarius ever used curly maple and when curly maple was first used for musical instruments?
I remember around 25 years ago being in the big music hall in Philadelphia and feeling a bit like I was inside a giant cello.
The cheapest seats were in the coolest place architecturally because you were right up at the back, closest to the ceiling, which really was a bit like in these instrument photos.
I wonder if he would have been better off making a device to hold a small mirror steady and used a telephoto lens pointed at it from one of the f holes.
It says he had a 5 mm hole to work with. That would pass an 8 gauge wire with plenty of room to maneuver. Mount a mirror to the end, thread a two or three foot wire through the hole from the inside out, clamp it to a surface the instrument is sitting in to keep it from moving, and set up your camera from a low angle and the light positioned to not cast a shadow.
Alternately you could J hook a long, large diameter scope, and composite two shots with the cable visible on opposite sides of each picture.
It's an interesting idea - and I have played with using mirrors. But I run into a few problems:
Most mirrors will actually show a faint double image due to the silver being behind the glass. This becomes more pronounced if you're shooting at a steep angle. Single surface mirrors are pricy, and finding one that could slip through the f-holes of a violin is a challenge.
Also - if you're outside and pointing in, you're running into some similar issues - the f-holes are simply too thin to telephoto through without them blocking image at least partially - and then you're no longer shooting wide, so you wont see much of the instrument in the reflection anyway.
Why do these photos feel like they are so large? Is it just the lack of anything to reference size? I feel like if I stuck my phone inside of something small and took a picture it wouldn't look like this.
Typically, when we photograph small objects at very close range, only a narrow depth of field is in focus. The rest of the image appears blurred. The further other parts of the scene are from the focal plane, the more they blur. This shallow focus helps us to understand scale and depth.
However, in these pictures, the artist has cleverly avoided the blurring effect by combining multiple pictures taken at different focal distances into a single image. The resulting pictures look crisp and clear throughout, and as a result, lacks the usual depth cues we are accustomed to in macro photography. That's why these pictures resemble photographs of large halls!
A similar effect can be observed in ray tracing as well, where we are free to construct entirely imaginary scenes. While defining a scene that we want to be perceived as small, we need to remember to add focal blur [1] carefully. If we forget to do so, the resulting scene can produce the exact opposite impression, that of a vast space.
I think that's the most interesting part! From the article:
> Every part of his process is intentional because he doesn't want the images to look like miniatures. The focus stacking helps him avoid the typical aesthetic of macro photography by reducing the amount of background blur and focal compression. Creating an image that looks like it was taken with an ultra-wide-angle lens also results in leading lines we associate with normal-sized things, like streets and buildings, which tricks your brain into thinking the subject is not small. He also uses lighting to make it look like the sun is shining down, emphasizing the feeling that you are standing inside something.
Despite being physically quite close to the subject, the ratio of subject-size-in-frame to distance-to-subject is usually still quite small (the angle of view for macro lenses is generally much smaller than what the focal length at infinity would suggest).
So for us, macro shots tend to have two characteristics: 1.) perspective is approaching an isometric drawing 2.) usually narrow depth of field.
These shots on the other hand were made with a very wide field of view and focus stacking produces a deep depth of field. I'm sure that if you worked out the angles and distances in e.g. the violin shot then the ratios will be basically the same as your typical 2.5 story architecture shot or subway architecture done with something in the 14-20mm FF range. Because the photographer went to great lengths to make it look like that.
There's also other cues, like the height of the camera relative to the floor and ceiling of the room, and of course the light.
I purchased two of his images a few years ago, and I'm very happy with the results. Looks like he has a few more images now, and I might buy another one. :)
But these are 100% static objects - why not just use a pinhole camera (= ~infinite sharpness) and just expose the picture long enough to counter the not extremely small aperture. Take even more exposures and average them to get rid of noise.
A little game for all of you: On Firefox or Chrome, go to Developer Tools (F12) > Console and execute:
Now without the text visible anymore, try and guess which musical instrument each picture represents. Then reload the page, enjoy the article, and check how many you got right. What's your score out of 8? I scored 5.No need to reload, you can hover over the image and read its filename to see the answers right after you guessed.
Did you get the viola/violin/bass right?
Those are the three I got wrong. I got the other five right.
Hint: Basses have the most wreckage.
-- Bassist
Haha! Yeah those were confusing.
Many more fantastic photos at his website:
https://www.charlesbrooks.info/
Did you read the very last sentence of the article?
The violins looks like the lower deck of a galleon. cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Victory#/media/File:Victor...
It's cool to see how much the older double bass and violin have been repaired. Those square/flat pyramid pieces of wood are cleats, which were added by a luthier to repair and secure cracks.
Here's a good step-by-step article on how cleats are made and installed, from stock to installation: https://trianglestrings.com/making-installing-cleats/
The repairs are hard to discern from the outside...
https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10162184681342501&vani...
The only pic I could find.
As the son of a mariner who was born a few miles from HSM Victory, I feel honour bond to point out that HMS Victory is not techically a galleon.
Honour bound is the best kind of bound.
It's interesting how irregular the inside of the violins are - patches, struts, asymmetries, differing textures, etc. I guess these all contribute to the normal violin sound, but it makes me wonder if a perfectly symmetrical interior (& exterior - anything contributing to resonances) wouldn't sound better?
> if a perfectly symmetrical interior (& exterior - anything contributing to resonances) wouldn't sound better
I'm guessing it would likely look more pure on a frequency plot, but sound sterile if things were perfectly symmetrical. The little imperfections, materials, and design tradeoffs give each instrument its unique tone color (timbre). Often, musicians will chase a certain builder and year, and even within that, only a few instruments will be considered "great". For example, guitarists chasing the perfect Les Paul or most classical violinists chasing a Stradivarius.
In acoustics symmetrical and parallel surfaces lead to what are called standing waves, which heavily emphasizes specific frequencies. For the most part in things that are musical (instruments, recording studios) you don’t want that. Except of course where that’s the whole point, like the heads of a drum.
There’s a lot more subtlety to it, but in general, variation will produce richer more complex timbre.
Yes, but I suppose the general shape of a violin, curvy, pinched waist, bowed top and bottom surfaces, already avoids those kind of overly simple/concentrated resonances. On a side note, I wonder how much changing any of these shape factors affect the sound? Which are most critical? What happens without the pinched waist, or if it is made even narrower?
Interesting mix of wood too. The 1619 viola has a very tight grain spruce top and the maple back has a beautiful curl. Same with the 2019 Beilharz cello and the 1785 Storioni violin – the curly maple really shows. The back on the 1705 Goffriller cello seems very plain on the other hand, and suprisingly so does the 1717 Stardivari's. The 19th century Hopf violin has nice curly maple, but the grain on the top seems extremely loose. Any idea how do these compare musically? And does someone know if Stradivarius ever used curly maple and when curly maple was first used for musical instruments?
Beautiful photos! I'd love to see a concert hall designed to look like something from this gallery.
I remember around 25 years ago being in the big music hall in Philadelphia and feeling a bit like I was inside a giant cello.
The cheapest seats were in the coolest place architecturally because you were right up at the back, closest to the ceiling, which really was a bit like in these instrument photos.
Some pictures here from a quick search: https://voithandmactavish.com/projects/the-kimmel-center/
Imagine a concert hall where the architecture mimics the ribbed interior of a violin or the layered gears of a grand piano action
I wonder if he would have been better off making a device to hold a small mirror steady and used a telephoto lens pointed at it from one of the f holes.
It says he had a 5 mm hole to work with. That would pass an 8 gauge wire with plenty of room to maneuver. Mount a mirror to the end, thread a two or three foot wire through the hole from the inside out, clamp it to a surface the instrument is sitting in to keep it from moving, and set up your camera from a low angle and the light positioned to not cast a shadow.
Alternately you could J hook a long, large diameter scope, and composite two shots with the cable visible on opposite sides of each picture.
It's an interesting idea - and I have played with using mirrors. But I run into a few problems: Most mirrors will actually show a faint double image due to the silver being behind the glass. This becomes more pronounced if you're shooting at a steep angle. Single surface mirrors are pricy, and finding one that could slip through the f-holes of a violin is a challenge. Also - if you're outside and pointing in, you're running into some similar issues - the f-holes are simply too thin to telephoto through without them blocking image at least partially - and then you're no longer shooting wide, so you wont see much of the instrument in the reflection anyway.
Sounds plausible, do you have a telephoto and a string instrument (or friends who own the aforementioned)?
I’m not sure I have the patience to try to thread a long wire in and then back out again. Ten years ago I might have tried.
The challenge would probably be stability and alignment
If he’s compositing a thousand shots due to low light levels from the tiny sensor, he already has that problem.
Why do these photos feel like they are so large? Is it just the lack of anything to reference size? I feel like if I stuck my phone inside of something small and took a picture it wouldn't look like this.
Typically, when we photograph small objects at very close range, only a narrow depth of field is in focus. The rest of the image appears blurred. The further other parts of the scene are from the focal plane, the more they blur. This shallow focus helps us to understand scale and depth.
However, in these pictures, the artist has cleverly avoided the blurring effect by combining multiple pictures taken at different focal distances into a single image. The resulting pictures look crisp and clear throughout, and as a result, lacks the usual depth cues we are accustomed to in macro photography. That's why these pictures resemble photographs of large halls!
A similar effect can be observed in ray tracing as well, where we are free to construct entirely imaginary scenes. While defining a scene that we want to be perceived as small, we need to remember to add focal blur [1] carefully. If we forget to do so, the resulting scene can produce the exact opposite impression, that of a vast space.
[1]: https://github.com/susam/pov25#focal-blur
I think that's the most interesting part! From the article:
> Every part of his process is intentional because he doesn't want the images to look like miniatures. The focus stacking helps him avoid the typical aesthetic of macro photography by reducing the amount of background blur and focal compression. Creating an image that looks like it was taken with an ultra-wide-angle lens also results in leading lines we associate with normal-sized things, like streets and buildings, which tricks your brain into thinking the subject is not small. He also uses lighting to make it look like the sun is shining down, emphasizing the feeling that you are standing inside something.
It's basically the opposite effect of tilt-shift photography [1].
See an example: https://i0.wp.com/digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt%E2%80%93shift_photography
Despite being physically quite close to the subject, the ratio of subject-size-in-frame to distance-to-subject is usually still quite small (the angle of view for macro lenses is generally much smaller than what the focal length at infinity would suggest).
So for us, macro shots tend to have two characteristics: 1.) perspective is approaching an isometric drawing 2.) usually narrow depth of field.
These shots on the other hand were made with a very wide field of view and focus stacking produces a deep depth of field. I'm sure that if you worked out the angles and distances in e.g. the violin shot then the ratios will be basically the same as your typical 2.5 story architecture shot or subway architecture done with something in the 14-20mm FF range. Because the photographer went to great lengths to make it look like that.
There's also other cues, like the height of the camera relative to the floor and ceiling of the room, and of course the light.
I thought dpreview closed down. Happy to see it didn't. Who saved them?
https://www.dpreview.com/site-news/8298318614/dpreview-com-l...
https://www.gearpatrol.com/about/a44214660/gear-patrol-dprev...
https://www.gearpatrol.com/about/about-gear-patrol/
Gear Patrol: https://www.gearpatrol.com/about/a44214660/gear-patrol-dprev...
Previously - different sources (89 points, 3 years ago, 19 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32862697
(70 points, 4 years ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29389442
Sometimes it must be quite fun to be a bug.
underrated comment.
This is so beautiful. It contrasts really well with the cancerous viagra/fungi ai ads in this page!
I purchased two of his images a few years ago, and I'm very happy with the results. Looks like he has a few more images now, and I might buy another one. :)
But these are 100% static objects - why not just use a pinhole camera (= ~infinite sharpness) and just expose the picture long enough to counter the not extremely small aperture. Take even more exposures and average them to get rid of noise.
And the fact that the results look like alien architecture or dystopian cities? That's the cherry on top
Reminds me of the game The Room, especially the VR version, where you shrink down and go inside a pipe organ.
1000+ points and only 55 comments. That's some kind of record low ratio.
Do the inside of a concertina or accordion you cowards!
"A gentleman is a man who can play the accordion, but doesn't."
The amount of modal popups this website displays made me abandon the site. Such an annoying UX.
When I look at the inside of an instrument I can 'hear'the music playing.
Refer to the first vignette in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs for a nice guitar view.
Perfect scenery for a FMV point n click adventure
I want to live in a violin
Well that was amazing.
Endoscope photography?
damn that is cool
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