366 Days of 2012, Day 205 - Laser Light

Trying to photograph an object by laser lighting is strange beyond expectations!

You might think that the coherent and precise nature of a laser source might yield better image resolution than natural light sources. Actually red laser light completely destroys it through interference rendering a perceived image acuity more reminiscent of a 640x480 VGA video camera.

It gets even stranger when you try to process the image in Adobe Lightroom. The sharpness and noise reduction sliders have almost no affect on the image at all! Somehow the captured patterns of interference seem to counteract the maths in the image processing.

Anyway, regardless of the curiosity of it all I am a little disappointed that the results were not as dramatic as I had hoped. Here is my image for the day, a single red laser beam incident on a prism in a smokey room.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 205 - Laser Light'. 30 secs f/16 ISO-100 100mm macro