What the camera sees with everything aligned is actually the slight differences in the refractive index of whatever’s in front of the mirror. If you light a match in front of the mirror, light from the LED will change direction slightly differently as it passes through the warmer and cooler air around the flame.

We don’t normally perceive those differences, but this setup reveals them as lighter and darker spots to the camera. The same thing happens with, for example, butane escaping from a lighter. Light passes through it at a slightly different angle than the air around it, and the Schlieren rig captures those slight differences.

Suddenly, it’s possible to see the heat displaced when you rub your hands together, or worse, the stuff that flies everywhere when you sneeze. It’s pretty darn cool, especially when played in slow motion as in the video above.

Shot entirely in Ultra HD 4K resolution, this short time lapse film was shot during the Icelandic Midnight Sun in June of 2011.

For 17 days I traveled solo around the entire island shooting almost 24 hours, sleeping in the car, and eating whenever I had the time. During my days shooting this film I shot 38,000 images, traveled some 2900 miles, and saw some of the most amazing, beautiful, and indescribable landscapes on the planet. Iceland is absolutely one of the most beautiful and unusual places you could ever imagine. Especially during the Midnight Sun when the quality of light hitting the landscape is very unusual, and very spectacular.

Iceland is a landscape photographers paradise and playground, and should be number 1 on every photographers must visit list. Iceland during the Midnight Sun is in sort of a permanent state of sunset. The sun never full sets and travels horizontally across the horizon throughout the night, as can be seen in the opening shot and at the :51 second mark in the video.

During the Arctic summer, sunset was at midnight and sunrise was at 3am. The Arctic summer sun provided 24 hours a day of light, with as much as 6 hours daily of “Golden light”. Once the sun had set it wouldn’t even get dark enough for the stars to come out, and they don’t start to reappear until August.

My advice to everyone out there, photographer or not, is simple… You MUST visit Iceland sometime during your lifetime. You will never regret it.

Also check out what they have done to that poor Canon 7D!

Essentially, the technique involves recreating the scene in 3D space along with a smoothed out path that approximates the original path.  The scene is created from individual frames from the original video.

I’m sure as the Hyperlapse technique is refined, we will be seeing more interesting videos!

This doesn’t have a whole lot to do with photography, but is just “too cool for school”!  Growing up in the 1950s with “Rocky Jones” and “Buck Rogers”, they landed their spaceships vertically.  Well, SpaceX, the private space agency, has now done just that!  The video shows a 10 story booster rocket that takes off, then lands vertically on the same launching pad.  This is a test to allow booster stages to be reusable.  Also interesting is the fact the video was taken from a hexacopter!  NASA look out – these guys are good!

Who says you can only use a camera to produce photographic art?  Not these guys!  Listen to this symphony produced using $30,000 worth of Nikon cameras!  Remember, these guys are professionals, don’t try this at home!