
A Camera Lens Made from an Iceberg - tbgvi
https://www.mathieustern.com/blog/2018/10/22/l437fjpq58g619vlkm6t1iwhk8s6dr
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deanclatworthy
> I needed to find pure ice.

No you didn't. You could have done this with warm distilled water, then
frozen, at home and had better results. But I suppose it's a good excuse to go
to Iceland :) (If there was ever a need for an excuse!)

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DonHopkins
10,000 year old glacier ice has much cleaner water memory.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory)

(No Homeo! ;)

[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=no%20homeo](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=no%20homeo)

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akiselev
Yes and it wants to tell everyone to get off its lawn so that it can melt in
pesce.

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aylmao
Tangential note that I thought was interesting: I have an eye condition called
Keratoconus. It developed mostly on one eye before I had a procedure done to
stop it from progressing, but my vision on that one eye is affected
permanently.

People tend to wonder why I don't wear glasses, and I tell them it's because
they don't really help since I don't "blurry", I see "smudged". It's as if you
took a picture with a camera with long exposure and moved it, but not quite.

The pictures taken with this lens are a surprisingly good approximation of how
I see with that one eye (perhaps sans the whitewash).

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frostburg
You probably already know about this (especially since you likely had cross-
linking done), but your vision might be helped by a custom scleral lens
(they're unfortunately somewhat expensive).

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aylmao
Thanks for the tip, though yeah I have (: Fortunately, the brain is magical.
It's mostly one eye that saw progression before my cross-linking-- the other
one sees pretty clearly, so my brain has gotten used to it and I guess
stitches things in a way that means most of the time I don't really notice it
at all.

If I close the good eye, or focus on high-contrast, fine-detail things the
effect will be clear, but I can thankfully go on my day to day without much
hassle.

Few people will see this but I'll mention it for good measure. If you notice
your glasses aren't quite right, or you need a new (especially if it's a very
asymmetrical) graduation often, make sure to see an ophthalmologist. The
earlier you detect keratoconus the earlier you can stop it from progressing--
I'm certainly lucky I caught it before both eyes were really affected.

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runxel
I am somehow disappointed that the lens was actually just "your average lens
size", and not really ... an iceberg infront of a camera.

I don't know what I expected.

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doctorRetro
Yeah, the title is a bit click-baity. I too was expecting some interesting
experimental imagery where an entire iceberg was used as a lens, either
literally or metaphorically.

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trumped
> I too was expecting some interesting experimental imagery where an entire
> iceberg was used as a lens,

it says made from an iceberg... as in from part of an iceberg... do you know
how big an iceberg is?

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jacobush
I thought it might be something similar to the neutrino detector. Where they
somehow used an iceberg to deflect and focus some kind of radiation. The
actual article was obviously in a very different direction but cool too in its
own right.

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doctorRetro
Exactly! It'd be different if the heading said "A Camera Lens Made from a Part
of an Iceberg". But as it stands, I went in hopeful that an entire 'berg would
be used in some creative or ingenious way.

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m31415
Why is this surprising at all? Any transparent material having a refractive
index larger than air can be made to work as a lens. Pinhole cameras are much
more interesting than this -- there the phenomena isn't refraction. An even
more interesting lens is the Frensel lens [1].

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_lens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_lens)

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floatingatoll
I, personally, have never considered shaping a piece of ice into a temporary
camera lens. It's awesome, because someone's done it, and no one thought to
previously. It's surprising that no one's done it, because in hindsight it's
obvious. Why hasn't someone done this previously and posted on the Internet
about it? Because human ingenuity is awesome.

CORRECTION: A piece of _iceberg_, which makes this all even _more_ awesome.

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blcArmadillo
While not a lens shaped from ice there are people who have been working on
lenses made from untraditional materials. For example here is a guy, Prof.
Joshua Silver's, who has been working on eyeglasses for the developing world.
From
[https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/302550.php](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/302550.php):

> Each lens is made of two flexible membranes that move either inward or
> outward depending on the amount of fluid - a silicone solution - they
> contain.

> The lenses are connected to a small syringe that sits on each arm of the
> glasses, and the wearer can adjust a dial on the syringe to pump fluid in or
> out of each lens. When fluid is pumped in, the power of the lens is
> increased - correcting hyperopia, or farsightedness - while pumping fluid
> out decreases lens power, correcting nearsightedness.

Additionally he gave a Ted talk on the subject
[https://www.ted.com/talks/josh_silver_demos_adjustable_liqui...](https://www.ted.com/talks/josh_silver_demos_adjustable_liquid_filled_eyeglasses?language=en).
Pretty interesting stuff. Granted this is all circa 2009-2015. Not sure what
the current status of the project is.

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dekhn
don't forget people making mirrors using spinning liquid:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_mirror_telescope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_mirror_telescope)

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baybal2
My favourites are the liquid crystal lenses. Essentially they are micron scale
Fresnel lenses controlled by electric field. No moving parts, very thin, ideal
for something like a camera module.

I'm surprised that nobody managed to commercialise it in that niche yet.

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zeristor
Do you have a link for that? They have used holographic optical elements to
make shorter SLR lenses, although I don't think the image quality was
excellent, but if they went to the trouble it must have been fairly good.

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dekhn
doesn't really seem commercial grade yet: [https://www.imaging-
resource.com/news/2015/10/05/this-smartp...](https://www.imaging-
resource.com/news/2015/10/05/this-smartphone-camera-uses-liquid-crystal-and-
electrical-currents-to-focus)

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quickthrower2
I wasn't expecting the video to be so professionally made. Before I watched I
thought "prepare myself for grainy, shakey video", then as I started watching
I was thinking "he must have a go pro" and then "hell this is good" and
finally "ah OK seem like he is a professional video guy"

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SiempreViernes
And _artist_ , a video guy likely wouldn't have hastened climate change for
the sake of poetic cred.

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whatshisface
> _a video guy likely wouldn 't have hastened climate change_

I know that it's a fallacy to say that one person isn't enough to make a
difference, but I think taking a lens sized chunk of ice off a multi-acre
glacier is, really, not making a difference.

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noir_lord
Unless he swam he probably flew to Iceland, which I suspect might be what GP
meant by hasten.

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Brendinooo
Reminds me of my high school photography class, where we made camera obscuras
(pinhole cameras) out of an oatmeal container. Did it make the best-quality
images? No. But it was still one of the more memorable projects I did in high
school.

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somacert
Making optical grade ice is not trivial. Not hard but I never did get good
results.

Start with good water.

Freeze in a gradient(top down is easiest) half of your ice will still be
garbage.

Explicitly: by gradient I mean put it in an insulated container so that it
freezes starting at the top and ending at the bottom.

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dekhn
BTW, this reminds me of an easy way to make a GRIN lens:
[http://www.laurawaller.com/opticsfun/sugarGRINlens.htm](http://www.laurawaller.com/opticsfun/sugarGRINlens.htm)

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aidenn0
That's neat; a friend of mine made a GRIN lens by letting gelatin set in a cup
on a turntable; the density increased with the radius so it acted as a concave
lens despite being disc shaped.

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fixermark
It gives a nice soft, watery focus, it appears. :)

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cromwellian
Couldn't you just make distilled water clear ice at home, or does it need high
pressure to remove aberrations?

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m31415
Chromatic aberrations cannot be removed using a material of just one
refractive index. And as the video shows this lens has chromatic aberrations.

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cromwellian
Some of the blurriness seems related to melting on the surface layer. I wonder
if he had made a metallic lens housing which was supercooled to prevent
melting if the result would have been better.

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dwighttk
That video is the definition of overwrought

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hilbert42
Ha, how wonderfully cute (can't say I'd have ever thought of doing it). All he
needs to do now is turn it into a multistage lens with multiple elements and
invent a melt-proof quarter-wave like coating to correct the aberrations. :-)

Apropos the lens museum, I've great difficulty in chucking out lenses that no
longer fit any camera that I now own. To me, lenses are precision instruments
and its their 'exactness' I don't want to see escape off into a world of
higher entropy.

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fudged71
Beautiful video! I love the idea of an ephemeral camera: custom made parts for
a specific time and a specific place.

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mirimir
Seriously?

Pinhole lenses can do lots better:

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/130436300@N07/44672960900](https://www.flickr.com/photos/130436300@N07/44672960900)

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tosser0001
Skip the blog spam:

[https://www.mathieustern.com/blog/2018/10/22/l437fjpq58g619v...](https://www.mathieustern.com/blog/2018/10/22/l437fjpq58g619vlkm6t1iwhk8s6dr)

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pcardoso
It is a blog but I wouldn't say it is spam.

It doesn't just link to the content. Kottke posts are usually as entertaining
and thoughtful as the content it links to.

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equivocates
The lens is not very sharp.

